LastPass purchased by LogMeIn

[Presto]

If you're using LastPass, you may want to consider switching. LMI's MO is to remove features and jack up prices.

The maker of LastPass, a popular password manager, is being acquired by LogMeIn in a sale worth at least $110 million.

LastPass, founded in 2008, makes software that generates strong passwords and stores them in an encrypted vault. The software integrates with desktop and mobile browsers and automatically fills in password fields on websites when a user enters a master password. The basic software can be used for free, but individual users and businesses can pay for premium features.

Siegrist wrote that LastPass will continue to improve its software for free, premium, and enterprise customers. Siegrist's blog post drew a few dozen comments, with most expressing disappointment about the sale and criticizing LogMeIn. "While I congratulate the lastpass founders on a nice exit, we as an Enterprise user will monitor very carefully if that impacts the pricing," one customer wrote. "There’s a reason we never used LogMeIn, because they’re not delivering appropriate value for SMBs at their price points."

LogMeIn provides remote desktop management and support software to individuals and businesses. The company discontinued a free version of its product last year.

LogMeIn's announcement said it will close the deal with LastPass in the coming weeks, paying $110 million in cash upon close with an additional $15 million in payments to equity holders and key employees of LastPass contingent on reaching "certain milestone and retention targets" in the two years after the acquisition.

“LastPass has a great business, a beloved and award winning product, millions of loyal users, and thousands of great business customers—they are synonymous with the category,” LogMeIn CEO Michael Simon said in the announcement. “We believe this transaction instantly gives us a market leading position in password management, while also providing a highly favorable foundation for delivering the next generation of identity and access management solutions to individuals, teams and companies.”

Last year, LogMeIn acquired a password manager for teams called Meldium, with the promise that Meldium would continue to provide the same service. With LogMeIn's latest acquisition, Meldium capabilities will be integrated into LastPass. "In the near-term, both the Meldium and LastPass product lines will continue to be supported, with longer-term plans to center around a singular identity management offering based on the LastPass service and brand," LogMeIn said.
source: LogMeIn buys LastPass password manager for $110 million | Ars Technica

Here's a comment from that article of someone's un-unique experience of LMI. I think long-time LMI users can relate to this:

Here is my story about LogMeIn. Within 36 months my cost to remotely support about 60 computers (40 personal, 20 business, 10 sub accounts) went from free to $13,500 for the same basic functionality (remote connect and remote file transfer).

At first their products were fantastic, you could add unlimited free machines, group them into folders, and permissioned sub accounts to folders. I had all my extended family and friends set up to manage their own devices as well as request support from me. After awhile they limited the number of free accounts unless you were a paying customer (reasonable). So I started adding a few Pro licenses for my office machines and some small local businesses. Over time their free and paid products constantly "lost" features to new product tiers, most of these features were simple convenience things, others were account management items. Eventually I had to have a Pro account in each folder/sub account just to add new machines but there were some legacy workarounds. At the time this was about $350 per year but I could bill clients for about $200 of it so whatever.

They launched a fantastic app called LogMeIn Ignition which essentially saved your per device credentials and allowed you to single click to remote control or open a file transfer session for all your machines. I purchased several licenses of this for each sub account. At the time the price was small, around $10 per license. Over time, the price increased but occasionally went on sale. About a year later, LogMeIn started removing features from Ignition and their management portal. You couldn't link sub accounts without a Pro license, you couldn't group things into folders anymore. Then they start pushing out "updates" to Ignition that forgets your saved passwords making the app completely frustrating to use. As far as I could tell, their updates did absolutely nothing else besides forget your passwords, remove connection functionality, and prompt you to try their new LogMeIn Central for $239 which had all the removed features.

Just to keep using the desktop software I was still paying for, I had to save an old install file, backup my config files, edit registry settings, and ignore update prompts. I did this for about 6 months before the negative feedback in the forums prompted them to "make it right" by offering a free upgrade to the new LogMeIn Central service for legacy users. So I upgraded to the "new product" to get back the features I used to have minus the convenient desktop app. A few months later this "free" upgrade becomes a trial and then I am locked out of my accounts until I pony up $239 for each one. I should have left but I didn't have time to go to 60+ machines and 45+ locations to install an alternative, nor could I find a cheaper alternative for commercial use that had good iOS apps. I ponied up the money for about 4 of the 10 accounts and guess what happened, Free edition of the desktop client was discontinued, Ignition iOS pricing went to $999, and shortly thereafter Central increased to $499 for a stripped down version and $999 for what I needed. Within 36 months I had gone from paying nothing per year to $1,306 per year for less features. The new cost for basic remote control, file sharing, and single click access would now be over $13,500. I was also a Hamachi and LogMeIn Backup user which had similar functionality losses and price hikes which I did not factor in. LogMeIn is in the business of gouging corporate clients now, they have no interest in supporting end users or small businesses.

In summary, I am extremely stressed about this announcement, especially since LastPass has heavily been pushing their LastPass Enterprise pricing even to paying Premium members.

[fsy82]

Is there any logmein related client thats free still?

[Presto]

LMI has join.me, which is free (for now).

[willystyle]

Stopped using LastPass for awhile now. Even before it was bought out, the free features were quite limited. Using KeePass now and never looking back.

[!MiKrofT]

We just use TeamViewer for remote access. That guy in the post seems to have a unique predicament. Nobody in their right mind would manage 60 machines for free.