LogMeIn is the highly regarded company that makes the best known remote access program in the world. It also provides top-rated tools for enterprises and IT professionals, including LogMeIn Rescue, the support tool that I’ve used for years to start remote sessions on client computers.
I’m leaving LogMeIn. You don’t have to follow my lead (although I might tempt you to switch to a different remote access program), but let me give you some background about why I think LogMeIn is on the wrong track. It’s a story that’s mostly about money but also involves some annoying company practices.
LogMeIn’s primary product is a remote access program installed on Windows and Mac computers, allowing them to be accessed from remote computers and mobile devices. When you sit down at another computer and log in at LogMeIn’s website, you can connect to the remote computer and see the screen as if you’re sitting there. The technology improved over the years (as did Internet speeds) and LogMeIn sessions now are speedy and responsive, with very little lag as you move the mouse and work in programs.
LogMeIn was not the first or only company to offer a remote access program, but it became the market leader when it began to give away LogMeIn for free. The business plan made sense: give away a free service and try to entice a reasonable number of people to upgrade to the paid version, LogMeIn Pro, with premium features.
Numbers aren’t available but LogMeIn was apparently the victim of its own success. Millions of people used the free program but not enough could be tempted to pay for the Pro version. One feature of the Pro version is genuinely important to some people – the ability to print from the remote computer to your local printer. (It’s great when it works, but it’s hit or miss.) Other Pro features are seldom-used gimmicks better done with other products – sharing large files, or streaming high quality audio and video, for example.
LogMeIn is in the middle of an elaborate retrenching to eliminate millions of free accounts and increase the prices charged for its paid products. It discontinued the free version of LogMeIn more than a year ago. LogMeIn Pro is $99/year for two computers. LogMeIn went through a firestorm of criticism when it ended the free version but that was to be expected. If you need it, $99/year for LogMeIn Pro is not unreasonable.
Many of the other remote control program vendors are doing the same thing. TeamViewer has a free version that is losing features fast and is increasingly difficult to use without being cut off by an arbitrary declaration that you are using it for “commercial” purposes. At that point it stops working and your only option is to buy a license for $749 for one computer. (Theoretically it is a lifetime license but Teamviewer has a nasty habit of demanding additional fees for new versions.)
The other well-known service, GoToMyPC, is also expensive, more than twice as much as LogMeIn Pro: a license for for GoToMyPC is $115/year per computer.
IT pros were next to be hit. LogMeIn Central is a service that companies and IT pros can use to manage many copies of LogMeIn. I paid a few hundred dollars a year to get a dashboard listing all of the LogMeIn installs on my account. There was an important perk: through LogMeIn Central I could install unlimited copies of LogMeIn for free on client computers, even after the standalone version of LogMeIn Free was discontinued. I’ve had LogMeIn running on hundreds of computers.
Recently, though, LogMeIn decided to change the rules for LogMeIn Central. Last year it increased the price without any notice, hitting company credit cards for twice or three times or five times as much as before. Users started hitting the roof.
Then in January LogMeIn came up with new versions of LogMeIn Central, separating it into three different tiers. It’s impossible to make sense of the version lineup but one thing became clear: the effect was going to be another huge price hike, and there weren’t going to be any more free installs of LogMeIn. The backlash became vicious, in multiple forum threads.
There is one consistent theme in the user complaints: LogMeIn has sharply increased prices several times now without adequately notifying its customers. There are too many stories of people finding out about a 500% price increase by accident during a phone call. I had to dig to find out that my LogMeIn Central renewal is scheduled to be far more than ever before.
There’s another sleazy practice that isn’t easy to forgive. LogMeIn does not provide any notice that a renewal fee is about to be processed. For years I’ve been surprised to see a large renewal charge on my credit card, without the automatic courtesy email notice that we’ve come to expect. Auto-billing for convenience is nice, but not sneaky auto-billing to get a large price increase through without any notice.
So an unexpected big charge comes through and you decide to cancel the service. There’s no way to cancel LogMeIn online or turn off auto-renew, and many stories of difficulty reaching human beings to process the cancellation. At that point it begins to look like it’s company policy to act in an underhanded way.
The result is that I’m cancelling my subscription to LogMeIn Central, and removing LogMeIn from all the computers running it through my account. LogMeIn might learn a lesson and reform and earn my respect again, but at the moment I want them far away from my credit card.
(Added 04/06/2015: here’s another IT pro explaining why his company is leaving LogMeIn Central for BeAnywhere.)
LogMeIn Rescue is a separate product for IT support. It’s incredibly expensive, $1,300/year to support computers and $1,750/year to add mobile device support. I’ve swallowed that fee for years now and it has provided a nice experience for my clients who became accustomed to pushing the big “Support” button on the Bruceb.com website to start a LogMeIn Rescue session. Behind the scenes, though, I’ve been increasingly frustrated that the interface at my end is dated and clumsy. Instead of rewriting the dashboard to modern standards, LogMeIn Rescue has gotten nothing but minor cosmetic changes and gimmicky new features. The big announcement last week was Rescue Lens, which feeds video from your phone camera back to my screen. This would be helpful if I was helping you install a thermostat. Seriously, that’s the kind of thing it’s good for. It has nothing to do with my job of providing IT support.
I’m also going to cancel my LogMeIn Rescue subscription. A different company has taken over the big Support button.
Fortunately I have an alternative to LogMeIn for my clients to consider. In the next article I’ll tell you about Bruceb Remote Access, powered by BeAnywhere. You’ll like it.
I’m looking for alternatives to LMI, but until I find out I still canceled. My auto-renewal went up from $214 in 2012 to $349 to $839.99 set to renew 2/9/2018 for 5 computers… 5 computers! It’s unbelievable! I’m looking for an alternative.. I’m happy to pay a reasonable price, but that is ridiculous. It’s clear they are not a reputable company.
I don’t know if you saw my followup to this article – literally just posted today, 01/22/2018. LogMeIn Hopes You Won’t Notice That Its Price Is Absurdly High Take a look at Splashtop. It’s lovely.
So that explains why Lastpass suddenly without any noticed rased the price 100% last fall. I quit my subscription after 7 years and found an alternative to move to. (Enpass) I will keep my eye on this company so I dont by mistake use any of its products.
Go take a look at the current price for LogMeIn Pro as of 01/2018. It’s so shocking that I’m going to write an article about it in the next couple of weeks.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for this helpful review of alternatives to the rapacious Logmein! My Central subscription for just 25 computers was listed at $900 for renewal.
Overall, I like Splashtop very much. It seems fast and responsive. I especially like the feature to show the local cursor as well as the remote cursor.
I ran into a weird bug, however. When I logged into an XP desktop machine from the Splashtop app on my iPhone, somehow Splashtop fed the sound from microphone on the Logitech camera on the XP machine to the iPhone app, and I found myself listening to sounds in the room where the XP machine is located. Creepy! Hopefully they’ll fix it.
But overall Splashtop is a terrific alternative to Logmein, and for my application, about a fifth of the cost.
It is not that hard to reach a human to cancel your LogMeIn subscription – I just did it yesterday! Last year, I had to call and was successful at getting them to reduce the $149 renewal fee for LogMeIn Pro to $99, which was the price the previous year. I had expected that they might do it again this year, but when I asked, the price is now $249!! So from $99 to $249 in 2-3 years – yikes! Anyway, they did say they would honor last year’s “list” price ($149), but I declined.
Very happy with TeamViewer, a free alternative. LogMeIn needs to be taught a lesson in supply and demand – cancel your subscription!
https://simple-help.com/
If you don’t mind hosting it yourself, worth the $320 per year. That’s for one “technician” but unlimited clients. I’ve moved to Simple Help from LogMeIn about a year ago and so glad I did. I had over 120 client machines I was managing and the LogMeIn costs were creeping to over $1000/year. Looking at the latest pricing from the LogMeIn website now, this amount of agents would be about $3000/year!!! Simple Help has different pricing options depending on your needs. Check it out – you’ll be glad you did!
I thankfully was using ScreenConnect as my backup solution at the time of the price debacle. I started using it as my primary remote support and haven’t looked back. I acutally like it better, but I was reluctant to install agents on all computers until I had to. They actually just release a free version of ScreenConnect as well. It seems some companies are getting rid of their and others are still spreading the joy. I really can’t believe LogMeIn is still auto-renewing folks. I will never return to the dark side!!!
Same thing just happened to me, an unauthorised $219 ‘auto-renewal’ of Logmein which is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than last year’s $119 for a single user without any warning of such a price hike.
No way to opt out or cancel the account via my Logmein account on the website, but I was lucky enough to get a human on the phone and they refunded the money instantly, clearly a VERY common practice for them.
I will never deal with these sleaze-bags again, this is disgusting practice by a company that should know better.
Ouch!I hadn’t looked for a while – they’ve really jacked up the price of LMI, haven’t they? Sheesh. Take a look at Splashtop.
I just received an email showing the price increase. My problem with switching is the one-time pain of switching over 220 computers, a number of which have delegated users. it is not at all clear to me which of the alternatives has the Central features I want, including multiple monitor support, groups and delegated users.
I agree that price increases are really annoying, but simple math says that less than $5 per computer per year is really not much.
I removed Logmein from 300 computers after getting robbed by them with insane price increases.
I have used Screenconnect for several years$300 per concurrent licence one time charge and unlimited machines.
It has a ton of features like sending anyone a link to access any computer either as admin or view only and being able to have multiple people connected to the same pc. I host it on a $5.00/month linux vm. I am very happy.
I also left LMI this week. 2 years ago they charged $249.00 a year for 100 computers then 2015 renewal went up to $449.00 now this month 2016 they want 699.00 that’s just crazy what a rip-off company if I raised my prices like that on my customers I wouldn’t have any customers. I’m switching to Splashtop so far so good.
also left LMI for splashtop ~ 2 years ago…
Unlimited Central was $299 originally – started setting up a lot of free ver clients on it.
Clients are small offices and only break fix so not regular contracts – not worth the now ~ $1,200 price it’d be now.
Splashtop when I switched had a really good deal for Spiceworks Users – now its gone up a little but still works.
Don’t love the distribution method / mobile app – but it works and that is the key…
– they have done some major updates this year with autoupdate and other functions so I’m happy with the direction . – wish muliti screen was a scroll vs changing monitors all the time – but again – for the price it was an easy change.
I usually install with cmdline shortcut options to install without user interaction – https://goo.gl/gojGCh one way…
way I’m using https://goo.gl/BnYFuU – silent via cmdline or shortcut.
only a customer/user as well… glad I found a solution that works for me at least!
Good info. I’ve continued to get good feedback from people using Splashtop. Thanks!
I discovered Splashtop for Business and I have been very pleased with it. It is everything I need and more — remote control, remote printing, file transfer. I had been a LogMeIn customer for seven or more years and I had recommended it to others. Last year I paid LMI about $175 for “Pro” access to five computers and this year it was going to cost $349 to renew the same thing, which prompted me to look for alternatives. (By the way, I received no email notification of this dramatic price increase, I noticed on my LMI control panel that my subscription was about to renew and, fortunately in time, I went looking for the details.)
I am delighted with Splashtop Business — it is faster and easier to use than LMI and costs $60/yr for access to 10 remote computers. (There are many other subscription options.) I have moved two businesses so far over to Splashtop and I expect to move another one before year end when its LMI subscription comes up for renewal. It is a shame when a company with a good product gets greedy, as LMI seems to have done. Look at their financials: revenues and profits up over 30% 1Q16 over 1Q15. You can produce that kind of result short-term with dramatic price increases as they have done but I’ll be very surprised if that is sustainable long-term as they continue to drive away their long-term customers. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for a good product and Splashtop has met my needs so far very well. I am not an employee, shareholder, or in any way affiliated with Splashtop.
Good to hear! I’ve also been setting up Splashtop and having a good experience. I’m baffled by LMI. I keep waiting for them to suffer the effects of obnoxious business practices and unwarranted price increases, and their financials keep coming in solid, as if no one notices. Strange.
I find LiteManager it is free up to 30PC and lifetime license cost $300. There are a lot of features reemote desktop, filetransfer, chat, screenrecord and etc.
Yep I have also been scammed by LogMeIn.
They also have a practice of find your changed credit card details and billing you without your notice.
Cheaper to have you HDD encrypted by Trojan software and pay that out than deal with LogMeIn.
Just Google “LogMeIn Auto Renewal” to see just how pathetic this company behaves.
Interesting. I got a notification a couple weeks ago that my subscription price was going to double: $700 to $1403. (100 computers, 75 licenses in use, approx 41 paid customers).
After haggling, LMI offered $1200 for the 100 (with plus — which is a AV monitor and MS update monitor addin). otherwise it is basic LMI central 100 with no addons, for $700.
You may also want to try FREE for home and business remote desktop by AEROADMIN.
http://www.aeroadmin.com/
It’s quite smart, requires no installation and registration. Nat pass through. Very alike with teamviewer. Hope it helps.
Kind regards.
LogMeIn business practices are totally slimy. If you try to speak to a supervisor, they refuse to have anyone else speak to you and give you the complete run around. I would say it is like dealing with a sleazy porn site but that would be giving porn sites a bad name!
I just now saw this. Thank you very much Bruce!
We were an IT company that left them when they quit having the free version in January of 2014. We built a lower cost LogMeIN Central like product that we sell for much less, and it even has remote monitoring in addition to remote access. It’s called Remote To PC and you can find it here https://remotetopc.com
Nice! Glad to know about it. I hope you’re successful! LogMeIn continues to come up in conversation all the time – their price increases and failure to notify before renewals bothers people a lot. I’m not the only one worried about the future of LastPass now that LogMeIn owns it. Good luck!
Nice review you got here. I also use GoToAssist but started doing a demo of BeAnywhere Support Express this week. It’s really an amazing piece of software and for the price they’re announcing, I should make the move sonner than I expected.
i started using Beanywhere a year ago. It works great and for aprox $400 it’s affordable.
We have moved from Logmein Rescue to GoToAssist and finally to BeAnywhere which represents a much more cost-effective option and has a number of additional features that can be added including system monitoring. Clients love it, we love it and the support is excellent.
Glad to hear it! I’ve been having a great experience with BeAnywhere. I’m starting to set up clients with it now and it’s all good so far. Thanks!
I moved from LogmeIn Free to GoTo Assist and I’ve been happy with the result. Its about 700 a year for one person and maybe worth checking out as well.