Having doubled in price eighteen months ago, LogMeIn Inc. has again increased the price of its premium password manager LastPass Premium. In mid-2017, LastPass Premium was just $12 per year, when it doubled to $24.
Now, just eighteen months later, the price has gone up another $12 USD per year, settling at $36.
Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t seem that customers are actually getting anything more for their money. The beneficiary here is firmly LogMeIn, though undoubtedly some of that price increase will be taken up by overheads.
However, in 2019, when cloud computing and storage is getting cheaper and cheaper (rather than more expensive), one wonders exactly what cost increase could justify a 50% price increase. A user’s password vault (and other data) likely takes up less than a single megabyte of online storage, and the Internet traffic involved in allowing users access and syncing between devices could only be measured in megabytes each year.
In other words, maybe a dollar or two per year, per user. That leaves a good $35 for LogMeIn to use for other purposes. Of course it must pay staff, overheads and other things like any business does.
It must also, according to corporate lore, pay its owners tidy profits. What’s the best way to profit? Charge your customers more without offering more!
We could appreciate the jump in price if there was a new feature, or if literally anything had changed. However, the LastPass blog on the topic merely sets out what the product already offers, and implies that despite the price increase, the product is still good value for money.
I know that I, and likely many others, will be examining what other options are around come the end of my premium subscription end of year.
What do you make of the price increase?
Consider moving to Zoho Vault: https://www.zoho.com/vault/logmein-lastpass-acquisition.html
That’s now on par with 1password in terms of pricing isn’t it?
I have now moved over to Bitwarden and will let my LastPass subscription lapse. Bitwarden works well in my experience and for open source with a $10 pro version is much better value.
Keeper Security
I use the free version of LastPass. What extra do you get in the paid version?
Me too! Stopped paying for it when they doubled the price. I am hesitant in trying others, especially open-source products for security reasons.
I use Enpass, about $10 fee on mobile and free on desktops. Use your own cloud storage to replicate your passwords.
I like the Enpass’ ‘one time payment of $12/platform’ business model. I can combine it with Google Drive, which gives a good 15 GB of storage (with a dedicated Google account). But since Enpass also offers sync to Box, with which I have a 50 GB storage, I prefer that. If one expects total privacy, feature to sync with a local OneCloud/NextCloud server is a bonus.
+1 for BitWarden from me too
I found out recently that 1Password has an integration with HaveIBeenPwned, so I think it might be time to drop LastPass.
BitWarden here. I pay the $10 a year but it’s worth every single cent!
Time for another review of password managers so we can see if there’s more before it there?
we were just discussing that. and yes it is in the works. Any ones you want us to look at in particular?
I use Enpass, stores everything on Onedrive or Google drive etc
A comparison with 1Password for their enterprise offerings would be great
I’m using BitWarden, which I’ve found to be great and it’s free too.
Thanks for that. I had never heard of BitWarden. Looks great. Even has an option to create an organisation of 2 people for free.
I love and use KeePass. Free software, sync your database yourself with whichever cloud service you choose. There are a number of Android client apps available, both free and paid.
The concept of giving all my passwords to a provider seems crazy. Isn’t LastPass’s database a massive target for hackers?
Yes, LastPass’ database has been hacked quite a few times in the past.
The passwords are stored in encrypted forms. Encrypted in thousands of rounds. It’s practically impossible for the hacker to decipher.
Especially with the 2-factor authentication turned on, the hacker can’t pluck anything even if he gets access to the LastPass login credentials.
+1 for Bitwarden! I’ve found it’s more reliable than Lastpass and it even has a couple of extra features.
1Password and other cloud based that cover Win, Android and Apple seamlessly and with family plans, something along the lines of to 1 to 3 (or 5) user packs. Cheers
Scott, it would be really helpful if you could pay particular attention to the “families” aspect of password managers. We have so many log ins for things for the kids and the ability to share those between both my wife and me while each having our own LastPass account is invaluable.
+1 for Bitwarden