Logmein no longer free

[taq8ojh]

http://blog.logmein.com/it-management/logmein-changes

and FAQ about it
http://help.logmein.com/SelfServiceKnowledgeRenderer?type=FAQ&id=kA0a0000000shH8CAI

1. Q: Why are you making this change?
A: In order to address the evolving needs of our customers, we will be unifying our portfolio of free and premium remote access products into a paid-only offering. We believe this offering to be the best premium desktop, cloud and mobile access experience available in the market today

That's the most retarded answer they could think of, but perfectly in line with the popular corporate mantra "when asked A, reply with B or with total nonsense".
They don't even have to balls to say "we just want money".

Congratulations, now I have to move over to some alternative.
If it was one time payment just like buying software, I wouldn't mind. But the way it is, they can shove it as many times as they can. I am not paying a damn yearly subscription to be able to access family computers once a month.

The free version with its limited functionality was just about perfect. They could have attached a small fee to it or something, but no, they have to force us into buying the full pricy thing, which is completely pointless for regular home use.
I am pissed.

 

[Netopia]

TeamViewer

 

[Dahak]

teamviewer is not free either. it will time out after a bit. Although to be honest, it was every time I was connecting from my machine(free/no license) to my work machines.

I have not tried it from personal use to personal use mode


Logmein - I wish it would affect only new accounts that cannot do free, keep old accounts that where free still free
looks like I will need to find something else as well.

 

[MustISO]

Hope Teamviewer doesn't follow suit. That's what I use to support family and friends.

 

[Mushkins]

My jaw dropped when this showed up in my email about five minutes ago.

No warning, no real grace period, nothing. Just "this product is done as of today, cya!" A big "F you" to all us business users, I now have less than a week to research, test, implement, deploy, and train on a new remote access solution. Joy.

 

[Ken g6]

It is possible to set up a VNC server that can only be accessed over SSH, on Windows. This looks like a good, if old, description of the process. It's complicated, but it's free (and Free).

 

[Charlie98]

Hope Teamviewer doesn't follow suit. That's what I use to support family and friends.

+1... it's indispensable.

I wouldn't even mind throwing some reasonable coin at it ($25, ) just not what they are axing for a full-on commercial version.

 

[dpodblood]

Well that was short notice... Guess I will set up an SSH tunnel at home again. There doesn't seem to be any real alternative.

 

[Mushkins]

Well that was short notice... Guess I will set up an SSH tunnel at home again. There doesn't seem to be any real alternative.

It was, very unprofessional of them. I'm thinking of migrating to paid gotomypc subscriptions instead of potentially paying logmein for their services just because of how they handled it.

Unfortunately I'm sure there's tons of IT departments in panic mode because of this that are just going to shell out for at least a year subscription for their organizations.

 

[heymrdj]

My jaw dropped when this showed up in my email about five minutes ago.

No warning, no real grace period, nothing. Just "this product is done as of today, cya!" A big "F you" to all us business users, I now have less than a week to research, test, implement, deploy, and train on a new remote access solution. Joy.

You're using a free product for business use?

 

[dpodblood]

You're using a free product for business use?

Why not? It's not against their terms of use.

 

[Soundmanred]

The alternative is paying for it.
If it's the best option, why is paying for it out of the question?

 

[heymrdj]

Why not? It's not against their terms of use.

You pay for the support. Otherwise they just do this. This is what cheap thinking gets you.

 

[smakme7757]

Why not? It's not against their terms of use.

It's not, but you can't complain when the service moves to a paid model instead of a free one. That's the chance you take when you use free services, be you a company or a consumer.

The TOS was nice enough to let businesses use the free product, but the TOS goes both ways.

 

[Verse914]

I just swapped over to Teamviewer...so far so good. Not sure about the timeout that someone talked about in a post above - haven't seen that yet. Still trying to work through the different options in the software, but seems to be ok.

 

[Ketchup]

The popup I received:

As a loyal user, you’re entitled to discounted introductory pricing, with packages starting at $49/year for two computers.*

First off, I would be surprised if a "new" subscriber is charged more than that. If anything, they may get a better "introductory" price.

Secondly, they jump from free to $49 a year for two connections?

Um no. Fun while it lasted. Hopefully this move will make it easy for competition to swarm in.

 

[Mushkins]

You're using a free product for business use?

If I had my way, i'd have a terminal services server sitting in the closet. Unfortunately, that's not a cost the higher ups are willing to sink into remote access when the guy who was here before set them up with an "its free and it works well enough" solution. Believe me, one of the first phone calls I made when I was brought onboard was to logmein support to triple check it was free for business use as well and they assured me it was. We also have a handful of people that we're absolutely paying for the pro version for to utilize the pro features, I have no problem with that, and there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not pissed that they decided to go paid-only. Its their product and they can choose who to make it available to. What gets me is that it's pretty much industry standard to let your clients know about these kinds of major, sweeping changes ahead of time so they can plan accordingly. It's called courtesy, and doing good business. Dumping an email in your inbox saying "sorry brah, as of this morning we dont offer this product anymore" is a slap in the face whether you're a home user or a business. It's also the kind of thing that sways people with purchasing power towards your competitors products. At this point if we're going paid, I wouldn't even suggest sticking with logmein if this is the kind of customer service they provide to potential clients. Why would I pay them to solve a crisis *they* put my organization in? If they gave me six months notice that this was going to happen, i'd be calling their sales department to get a quote on bulk pricing and making the case to our executives that the free ride was nice while it lasted but now we should pony up. Instead i'm researching competitors.

 

[SMOGZINN]

For simple support for friends and relatives I now use Ammyy Admin.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Regarding Teamviewer, I've never seen a forced timeout for the free version. But, I only use it for 15-20 mins intervals.

 

[Golgatha]

TeamViewer

Started using this anyway due to Logmein switching over to an executable instead of a browser plugin. Don't they know corporate desktops are locked down and people can't install anything?

 

[heymrdj]

If I had my way, i'd have a terminal services server sitting in the closet. Unfortunately, that's not a cost the higher ups are willing to sink into remote access when the guy who was here before set them up with an "its free and it works well enough" solution. Believe me, one of the first phone calls I made when I was brought onboard was to logmein support to triple check it was free for business use as well and they assured me it was. We also have a handful of people that we're absolutely paying for the pro version for to utilize the pro features, I have no problem with that, and there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not pissed that they decided to go paid-only. Its their product and they can choose who to make it available to. What gets me is that it's pretty much industry standard to let your clients know about these kinds of major, sweeping changes ahead of time so they can plan accordingly. It's called courtesy, and doing good business. Dumping an email in your inbox saying "sorry brah, as of this morning we dont offer this product anymore" is a slap in the face whether you're a home user or a business. It's also the kind of thing that sways people with purchasing power towards your competitors products. At this point if we're going paid, I wouldn't even suggest sticking with logmein if this is the kind of customer service they provide to potential clients. Why would I pay them to solve a crisis *they* put my organization in? If they gave me six months notice that this was going to happen, i'd be calling their sales department to get a quote on bulk pricing and making the case to our executives that the free ride was nice while it lasted but now we should pony up. Instead i'm researching competitors.

Reading that, I definitely agree where you're coming from. :thumbsup:

 

[Golgatha]

Reading that, I definitely agree where you're coming from. :thumbsup:

Yea, saying pay up with pretty much no warning is just rude.

 

[Edgy]

TeamViewer is impressive.

switched all home computers from logmein to teamviewer and no regrets.

 

[jhbball]

FML. At least I spent $30 on their mobile android app! Might have to switch to team viewer.

 

[Golgatha]

FML. At least I spent $30 on their mobile android app! Might have to switch to team viewer.

I'd see if they will refund you or dispute the charge since they changed their terms of service so abruptly.

+1 for TeamViewer. Really awesome software. Only been using it for a week or two now, but it has replaced LogMeIn already anyway. Basically I was keeping LogMeIn installed as a backup in case TeamViewer would happen to go down.