LastPass has learned some of the wrong lessons from its corporate parent LogMeIn, with price increases for LastPass Premium that land unexpectedly like tiny bombs on the credit card statement.
TL;DR
No action needed. Most people use the free version of LastPass (still free!), and the Premium version is priced reasonably compared to the competitors. I’m ranting because this brings up bitter memories.
Background
LastPass is a free password manager that installs an extension to Chrome so it’s always available in the upper right corner. You can also install the LastPass mobile app on your phone to look up your passwords and log into phone apps.
You should use LastPass – or some other password manager, if you prefer, or a notebook where you write down your passwords, whatever works for you, as long as you create complex passwords and you never use each one more than once. Right? Don’t make me lecture you again.
LastPass makes money by selling a Premium version with extra features, and paid plans for groups – families, “teams” (small businesses), and enterprises.
Four years ago, LastPass was acquired by LogMeIn, causing many observers to shiver at the possibility that LogMeIn would kill the free version of LastPass and jack up prices. The free version of LogMeIn had been an IT standard for many years when it was abruptly killed in January 2014, and LogMeIn began punishing price increases, a bad habit that continues to this day. The article that I wrote about LogMeIn’s abusive price increases last year continues to get comments from frustrated ex-LogMeIn subscribers – prices unexpectedly doubling or quadrupling without any notice.
The free version of LastPass lives on, but LogMeIn can’t seem to kick the habit of price increases.
LastPass Premium price increase
I’ve been a LastPass Premium subscriber for nine years. A Premium subscription was required for many years to install the mobile app on phones; when the mobile app was added to the free plan in 2015, I continued subscribing to LastPass Premium out of habit.
My billing history above tells the story.
2011 – 2017: $12 per year
2018: $24
2019: $36
Price increases are never welcome but it’s the way they’re handled that annoys me. The price doubled last year and tripled this year but the renewals were processed with no notice whatsoever, either about the upcoming charges or the price increases. An email arrived after my card had been charged, but I still wouldn’t have found out about the price increase if I hadn’t started clicking links out of curiosity. This is the email, which carefully says nothing about the amount charged.
This is how I described LogMeIn’s deceptive business practices last year:
“LogMeIn has abused its customers for a long time. Its standard business practice – which appears to continue today – is to quietly increase its subscription prices, then process credit card renewals at the higher price without any notice. I had it happen to me – no email notice before or after the renewal, nothing that might call attention to the gouging. Oh, and no refunds, of course. LogMeIn disputes this and claims that it sends company executives to each subscriber’s house for prayer meetings and counseling about the price increases. And yet there are hundreds of stories online about price increases without any notice, going back for years and continuing today. I think the company is telling a little fib.”
Now they’re doing it with LastPass. I can’t be sure that I won’t be charged $48 or $72 for LastPass Premium next year. At some point it’s not worth it, and I don’t want to make that decision in hindsight and have to face a quarrel with a phone support rep to get a refund.
For what it’s worth, even at this price LastPass is not price gouging, at least not yet – at $36/year, LastPass Premium is priced comparably to the premium tiers of the highest-rated competitors 1Password, Dashlane, and Sticky Password. You can compare prices and features of the different programs at the end of this article. The LastPass Premium subscription adds some nice features – in particular, emergency access for trusted family members. I wrote about LastPass emergency access here.
The three important principles of LastPass
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a staunch LastPass supporter – frustrated by the price increase but a true believer in LastPass for security in an insecure world. I’m going to repeat this summary for anyone who skipped the other lectures.
LastPass is a place to write down your passwords and save them so you can find them later. It’s a notebook where you can look things up, with a design that’s perfect for passwords and confidential information. It’s more convenient than the notebook in the drawer because it’s easy to search for things and you can get to it easily from all your devices.
Your private information is stored in a vault that only you can open. There is a master password used to open the vault – a unique complicated password that only you know. You can’t open the vault without it.
That’s why there are three important principles for LastPass and other password managers.
(1) The master password has to be unique and very secure. It’s like a combination to the safe that holds all your money and everything dear to you. If someone can guess your master password, all your secrets are exposed and life is no longer worth living.
(2) You must never forget the master password. The safe cannot be opened without the combination. LastPass customer support cannot look up your password. They can’t help you change it. For all intents and purposes, if you forget the password, the vault cannot be opened. Ever.
(3) You must never forget the master password. You’ve got that, right? Let’s not have any terrible mistakes.
Plus two leaving Lastpass. My subscription did renew at $12 via paypal, but for some reason my wife’s identical setup did not, and she was demoted from premium without notice. We tried contacting Lastpass support (me with so-called premium support and she with freebie support) – 8 days and waiting. Then we found this blog post (for which many thanks) and the very reasonable comments.
If anyone from Logmein or the VC backer reads this: it may be time for you to go back to business school and re-do the course on pricing strategy. Don’t forget to run an analysis of long-standing customers lost and factor in the cost of acquiring customers. And you might want to review your MBA notes from the communication elective. We have been loyal customers for 10 years. Goodbye.
I found quite by accident that my Premium account had now been marked as a trial. I checked, and I found the last 7 years worth of payments, at $12 via Paypal, were fine.
My guess is that those who were paying by CC were hit by the annual increases, and Paypal payments slipped by unnoticed, until now.
My bill has more than trebled, to £37 a year. I’ve renewed for one more, to keep me going, but I’m done with them now.
With the lastpass hack, I’m surprised there haven’t been price drops
Unbelievable. The advertised “special” price for a family premium plan is $3 per month. Here in Australia, if you try to sign up, it is $6 per month, $72 per year. Sorry Lastpass, this previously premium customer will be going elsewhere.
CDN $51.00 year for me
ONWARDS AND FORWARDS OR TO THE FREE FOR NOW.
That is individual.
Holy cr*p, how is this legal? I only just discovered that my autopay LastPass Premium subscription, for which I THOUGHT I was paying $12.00 a year, jumped up a year or two ago to $24 and then to $36? With NO NOTICE?!?!???!
I have canceled my Premium subscription, but am very unhappy about the practice of increasing the amount of a subscription on Autopay with no notice to the Autopayor of a price increase. Apparently, these guys could have charged me $200 instead of $12 without ever telling me?
OMG… Same thing… I was reading a review of password managers and was about to comment about what a ripoff other services were compared to LP until I reviewed my most recent invoices. Now $50 for a family sub where it was half that before. I’m tempted to cancel just because of the fact that they didn’t tell me, but ugh… I’ve spent years getting my family used to using this one (with varying degrees of success), and to switch now… UGH
I literally just saw the news today about the changes LastPass is making to its free account, forcing people to move to a paid subscription. https://www.androidcentral.com/lastpasss-free-plan-will-soon-get-whole-less-lot-appealing There are going to be a lot of unhappy LP users very soon.
Also me, cancelled my premium due to increased prices each year
I just killed my LastPass subscription with the new amount, and the complete lack of communication. To say nothing of the fact that it very much becomes Nagware. I’ve been using LastPass since 2007, I think. I’ll give Dashlane a year to wow me.
Rather like the practices of Iobit, who reset your preferences without telling you wherever they update their apps, so they can take a whopping price gouging renewal fee from your bank account out of the blue. Despite telling you that you have not signed up to any subscriptions on your account page! I’ve given up on them because of 3 years of this shady practice.
I received an email today from LastPass that my subscription was jumping from $12.00/year to $36.00/year. I sent a website support ticket about the ridiculous 200% price jump. We paid $12.00 last year in April 2019 and all other years prior, for the Premium back to 2015. I received no notice from LastPass last year that there was even an increase coming which sounds like there were for some of you. Here is their response to my email today:
“As of February 7, 2019 the LastPass Premium is now $3 per month or $36 per year. The subscription price for LastPass Premium has been modified to reflect our continued investment in our industry-leading password management solution and ensure our products reflect the market value from both a feature, and pricing standpoint.
There is a possibility that your account will renew with the old price of $12 per year. Some of our customers that are long time subscribed via PayPal, still manage to renew their accounts with old prices.
This is due to PayPal policies – regardless that we canceled PayPal payments years ago, this is still possible. First price increase was in 2018. on $24 per year. Still, our PayPal subscribed customers had the previous price.”
This just seems weird that some “long time subscribed via PayPal customers” will still be charged only $12.00 whereas other will pay $36.00/yr. if customers weren’t previously setup to automatically pay via PayPal for a recurring subscription. Do I risk waiting until April 8th to see if they will only take $12.00 or, do I make the move now to find some other password vault? I’m checking into Bitwarden as some of you seem pleased with it. I don’t know if I have enough time in 30 days to change over all the passwords to a new password vault.
Wow, the Paypal part of that message is very strange. But a couple of things to think about. LastPass can still be used as a free product. If you don’t need any Premium features, maybe you can keep using LastPass for free. (And if you are using Premium features, make sure you don’t lose them if you move to something else. That would miss the point.) If you do decide to switch, BitWarden will import all your LastPass passwords. You still have a learning curve but at least you don’t have to type everything in manually. Good luck!
I had signed up using PayPal and through 2019 was still paying $12 for premium. In 2020, I got an email from PayPal that LastPass has suspended my automatic payments… So apparently there was a loophole but they have just forced it closed in a way that causes my account to no longer be premium because I got the email today and my account was set to expire yesterday. So instead of the automatic payment. I get downgraded. Professional practice indeed
Just noticed today my bank accounted had been debited $58.90AUD by LastPass. Was quite a shock indeed.
No Notification from LastPass. Quadrupled the original price with no option to cancel. I have disabled the auto renew and will look for a substitute. This is not sharp practice, this is verging on the dishonest.
My tip is to buy it via the Apple App Store (if you have an Apple device, obviously). That way you have the satisfaction of paying 1 penny less than buying it from Lastpass, PLUS you can revel in the fact that Apple is helping itself to 30% of Lastpass’s money (hooray!). Finally, Apple make it easy to turn off auto-renew on subscriptions, so no surprises in a year’s time.
It’s actually gone up to $43.20 with the tax which I can’t reclaim.
Can anyone tell me what the main differences are between the free version and premium please?
Also, if I cancel my subscription, due in a couple of weeks, will I still be able to access all my existing passwords using the free version?
I have now also untangled myself and every member of my family from Lastpass for the very same reason. The way they go about things are not cool.
We all have now settled with Bitwarden. it’s an open source application with a very reasonable $10/year premium option offering great options, functionality and very clear security strategies. Check out Lawrence Systems’ very detailed video on Youtube explaining it all
I just looked at Bitwarden. It looks like an ideal alternative to LastPass – uses the same security model. People in a position to know say it’s trustworthy. Good choice!
Recently cancelled my premium due to increased prices each year
Lots of people are holding their breath after the news that LogMeIn & LastPass are being acquired by a venture capital group. Will LastPass be left alone, or will prices steadily increase as the company is mined for cash? What about security?
Really useful interesting blogpost. Wish I’d read it three weeks ago.
My renewal has been and gone. The taxes (which they don’t mention) are no small change either. I’ve been looking at my Lastpass account details and it says I pay by paypal, and need to go to Paypal to cancel my account.
I don’t pay using paypal. Paypal has no record of any payments to Lastpass. The payment came direct out of my credit card, which presumably Lastpass have the details for stored somewhere.
A bit unimpressed. Lost £36 on a renewal I didn’t really want. Will probably just delete my Lastpass account and put it down to experience.
Maybe I am in a minority here but I actually did receive a renewal reminder. I was both glad and and pissed off to see it, as it reminded me to change to another password manager. C’mon $12 to $36 in 2 years – what a bunch of greedy gittes!
I am now using the premium version of Bitwarden which seems every bit as good, and is only $10/year.
Mobile account recovery is a large security risk. Enabling it is not a good idea.
Is agree. It used to be $12. Was gonna renew early, but not for $36.00.
Old users like me who had it for years should also be grandfathered into at least $18.
But, $36!? What?!?!? Is it gonna be $50 next, because I ain’t paying that.
Hello Bruce,
I just received this email from LastPass today. I am also frustrated with their triple increase but my email does state the new price increase. I hope this helps.
“Your upcoming LastPass renewal
This is a reminder that your LastPass Premium subscription will renew automatically on 11/30/2019. No action is required to continue your subscription.
Your LastPass Premium subscription will renew at $36 per year; this reflects the 2019 updated list price. As a reminder, your Premium subscription includes features such as:
● Password management across devices
● Advanced multi-factor options
● Emergency access
● One-to-many sharing
● Priority tech support
● 1GB of encrypted file storage”
Advance notice and disclosure of the price increase – that’s good. It would be better if they didn’t feel the need to bump the price, but it’s a start.
Incredible rude never mentioned price increase. Makes me super frustrated.
Thank you for this background. I have been researching password manager services for the past month and have narrowed it down to LastPass vs 1Password, which are comparable in nearly all respects. However LastPass’s sketchy / sneaky history of price gauging is the best predictor of their future behavior, so I won’t be signing up. Thanks for the honest feedback!
I signed up when it was 12/yr so I cud access LP on my cell. I didn’t even know they now give that for free. I got no adv notice this year until I saw the cc bill for 38$. this article was very helpful to explain the history. I’m gonna use them for one more year, then drop this. Tripling the price in 3 yrs is unreasonable. As said, who knows if they will double it again next year. tks for this useful info.
I completely agree with your characterization of these practices as “price gouging”! Somehow, last year, I completely missed the fact that they’d doubled my subscription price, so this year when I saw it tripled I was seriously ticked off! I was going to explore options before the autorenewal next year as well. Since I’ve already paid this year, I don’t see the point of quitting and having to pay some other service, although I may try contacting customer service and seeing what they say about refunding and letting me out. What a pity; I was really, really happy with the way things were!!!
What alternatives to Lastpass do you recommend. I’m currently quitting Lastpass.
The Wirecutter has a good roundup of the alternatives. https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-password-managers/ Depends on what’s important to you – free or paid, easy or full-featured. Wirecutter recommends 1Password, and I’ve heard good things about it from others as well.
Hi Bruce,
You can now recover from a forgotten master password via a lastpass app on the iphone, using touch id:
“Account Recovery”
I agree with your comments re price gouging, I’ll probably leave them if they keep increasing like they have.
I also loathe the latest browser UI changes.
I’ve had a couple of clients forget their LastPass master passwords recently, so Mobile Account Recovery is a big deal. I’m going to write an article about it soon.