Unannounced Lansweeper price quadrupling

[ThKl]

So apparently since today you have to license a minimum of 2000 Assets, quadrupling the price for everyone below 500 Assets.

We happily payed 500€ for 180 Assets. But paying for 2000? There is no way.
Will there be an option to stay on the 500 Assets tier for ongoing customers?

[Kendal]

They do nothing.  We have recently ended up with 510 assets.  We were told that we can keep our 500 license, but if we were needing to upgrade we would have to change to the new pricing model.  

I am an IT admin and found lansweeper back over 10 years ago.  I have recommended it at every employer I have been with and implemented it at 5 companies now.  With the new pricing model I can no longer recommend LanSweeper as a viable option for small or medium size companies.  With the packages in place and the new starter/pro/enterprise model I'm not sure I can even recommend it for anything but the largest of companies.  

[JasonP]

Again Lansweeper? I supposed we should have learnt the first time, when we were told that you would no longer renew unlimited asset licenses. Nobody believes the "we will honour your current pricing for next year" because we know, from experience, that you will force the quadrupled price license on us at some point in the future. It's a great way to reward customers who have financially supported you since you were a startup.

"We are rapidly developing the features of our software so our product can keep up with new IT assets and security risks." - yes, that's why we pay an annual licensing fee! Other vendors don't say this and then say "by the way, you've got to pay 4x the amount for it". If you want to add truly new stuff like your cloud platform, just add it as an additional paid option. It isn't of interest to us and we don't want to pay 4x the amount for something we don't need.

When we evaluated PDQ, a big factor in sticking with Lansweeper was that it was half the price. Now it's twice the price (and PDQ is unlimited assets). We won't be renewing out Lansweeper license.

[drobertson]

Need to be working down that 'wish list' to justify prices increases. the newest features are not that appealing, especially when the new price is figured into the equation. WE NEED MORE FEATURES ADDED - editing email templates, not just the content... editing web page templates (like smarty templates)... expand the API... addon modules and action hooks... the things of a real robust client support system... the helpdesk need some serious serious attention. lets get these updates rolling... big time!

At the current pace of updates, cheaper competition is looking real nice. Lets keep lansweeper in the fight, I like it.

[CyberCitizen]

Firstly, all new licenses and upgrades will tier per 2000 until 10000. However, you purchased your 500 assets before our tiering system was changed. So your subscription will renew next year at its current value

I don’t know what the future will bring of course but for now, I know that your renewal will just be for 500 assets as long as you don’t upgrade your license. You can always cancel your renewal if the pricing over the years will change.

Secondly, We are sorry to learn that you are unhappy about our pricing.
We are rapidly developing the features of our software so our product can keep up with new IT assets and security risks. We believe this new pricing will help us to maintain the data quality of our software and guarantee that you have 100% visibility of your entire IT estate at all times.

As your concerns are important to us, we would like to extend you an invitation to discuss your personal situation in more detail in a conference call. We can set up a Microsoft Teams meeting at a date and time of your choosing. Please let us know when we can contact you.

[cswroe]

CyberCitizen wrote:
Firstly, all new licenses and upgrades will tier per 2000 until 10000. However, you purchased your 500 assets before our tiering system was changed. So your subscription will renew next year at its current value

I don’t know what the future will bring of course but for now, I know that your renewal will just be for 500 assets as long as you don’t upgrade your license. You can always cancel your renewal if the pricing over the years will change.

Secondly, We are sorry to learn that you are unhappy about our pricing.
We are rapidly developing the features of our software so our product can keep up with new IT assets and security risks. We believe this new pricing will help us to maintain the data quality of our software and guarantee that you have 100% visibility of your entire IT estate at all times.

As your concerns are important to us, we would like to extend you an invitation to discuss your personal situation in more detail in a conference call. We can set up a Microsoft Teams meeting at a date and time of your choosing. Please let us know when we can contact you.

I know you just posted their reply to you, but this does not explain the punishment being applied to smaller organizations but still allows larger companies to remain unaffected. So we get a pass for the "next year" then if we don't take it, we should just cancel.

I appreciate the Cloud option, but if you are hanging your hat on this "new feature" as justification for sticking it to the little guy(s), you have more faith in that feature than most. It is nice, but not the reason I chose LanSweeper and not something that I find that much value in. In fact, I see it more as a method to combine small sites (that would be less than 100 under your new plan), and eventually come one day and say, "hey, pricing is going to quadruple again since you have a total of cloud assets that exceed our new pricing model".

It is not about the expense of R&D or support, it is that there were smaller organizations, businesses, and companies that have well below the 2,000 assets that previously supported LanSweeper over the years buying and using your product, that are now being unequally targeted in their budgets while the large businesses remain unaffected. If it was true, "new pricing will help us to maintain the data quality of our software and guarantee that you have 100% visibility of your entire IT estate at all times" then it would be applied equally to everyone who is a user regardless of the number of assets, and not just after those between 300-1500 assets.

Thankfully I can renew at the old price this one time, but the next year will be spent evaluating other options. If you want to set up a teams meeting that is fine, my email is in my profile, but unless you are planning on reevaluating your unequal application of the new pricing, it will be in vain.

I would suggest "circling back" and maybe looking at other options, like "across the board" increase or tiered pricing based on total assets. Making money on the backs of smaller companies is not a good look.

As far as options...that is going to be tough as I personally would rather have something on-site rather than hosted. We are looking at a couple of options, but have to verify that they can operate without going off-site. It is going to be difficult to replace LanSweeper, but it has to be done eventually as far as I am concerned. If someone has any suggestions, let us know.

[jconn1980]

I asked our vendor to check into this minimum license increase and this is the response our rep received from Lansweeper:

“The end user may be remembering when Lansweeper was offering Legacy license pricing.
Lansweeper moved to $1 per asset price structure a couple years ago in preparation for the launch of our new Cloud platform.
They may have been on a legacy price plan. Lansweeper had been transitioning the legacy accounts to the $1 per asset pricing with gradual increases from 2019, 2020 and 2021.
The new Lansweeper plan provides access to their new Cloud platform and all the enhanced features that they have added to Lansweeper software.
[My company] concern has been the same for the majority of Lansweeper customers.
At the 1.00 msrp per asset, they are still the lowest option in the marketplace. The minimum order quantity is 500 assets, they scale in increments of 500 up to 3000 ,then scale in increments
Of 1000 assets.”

We began using Lansweeper after the change to $1.00 per asset, and have never used the legacy licensing pricing (something Lansweeper should be able to look up and see for themselves). I'm verifying with our vendor rep, but according to this response, Lansweeper will still sell at a minimum of 500 assets. Going back to my earlier post, I don't know why I had to verify this through my vendor contacting their sales team when it would be very easy for Lansweeper to publicly state that existing customers are grandfathered in at the 500 asset minimum. Unless whoever responded to my rep was incorrect. Would someone from Lansweeper please confirm the response that I received above?

I'm also confused about the cloud platform because as mentioned, we've always had the newer $1.00 per asset license structure and have never been on the legacy licensing model. To my knowledge, I've never been told how to access the cloud platform or (if it's not been released yet) received any information about an upcoming cloud platform. I know Lansweeper recently purchased Cloudockit, but the press release makes this sound like something that will assist in scanning cloud based assets. Besides that press release, I see nothing on Lansweeper's website about a cloud platform. I had to do a Google search to find this website talking about Lansweeper's cloud platform and how to use it. For Lansweeper to point out that their license model provides access to their cloud platform as a benefit, they don't seem to be promoting or making it easy to access the cloud platform.

[FrankSc]

Jonathan Conn wrote:
I asked our vendor to check into this minimum license increase and this is the response our rep received from Lansweeper:

“The end user may be remembering when Lansweeper was offering Legacy license pricing.
Lansweeper moved to $1 per asset price structure a couple years ago in preparation for the launch of our new Cloud platform.
They may have been on a legacy price plan. Lansweeper had been transitioning the legacy accounts to the $1 per asset pricing with gradual increases from 2019, 2020 and 2021.
The new Lansweeper plan provides access to their new Cloud platform and all the enhanced features that they have added to Lansweeper software.
[My company] concern has been the same for the majority of Lansweeper customers.
At the 1.00 msrp per asset, they are still the lowest option in the marketplace. The minimum order quantity is 500 assets, they scale in increments of 500 up to 3000 ,then scale in increments
Of 1000 assets.”

We began using Lansweeper after the change to $1.00 per asset, and have never used the legacy licensing pricing (something Lansweeper should be able to look up and see for themselves). I'm verifying with our vendor rep, but according to this response, Lansweeper will still sell at a minimum of 500 assets. Going back to my earlier post, I don't know why I had to verify this through my vendor contacting their sales team when it would be very easy for Lansweeper to publicly state that existing customers are grandfathered in at the 500 asset minimum. Unless whoever responded to my rep was incorrect. Would someone from Lansweeper please confirm the response that I received above?

I'm also confused about the cloud platform because as mentioned, we've always had the newer $1.00 per asset license structure and have never been on the legacy licensing model. To my knowledge, I've never been told how to access the cloud platform or (if it's not been released yet) received any information about an upcoming cloud platform. I know Lansweeper recently purchased Cloudockit, but the press release makes this sound like something that will assist in scanning cloud based assets. Besides that press release, I see nothing on Lansweeper's website about a cloud platform. I had to do a Google search to find this website talking about Lansweeper's cloud platform and how to use it. For Lansweeper to point out that their license model provides access to their cloud platform as a benefit, they don't seem to be promoting or making it easy to access the cloud platform.

For the Cloud Platform, we have been only introducing this very recently. More information can be found in our spring release announcement:

• https://www.lansweeper.com/2022-spring-release/

[CyberCitizen]

Your main marketing model was great for a small to medium business, your price increases are ridiculous now.

I was one that would normally go to bat for Lansweeper. You have a great product, not without some issues and your rollout/fix plans are interesting, to say the least.

When you have a wish list of features/bugs that are still not implemented after years.

We have around 445 assets. We already limit stuff we do not need to report on, so we are only capturing the needed assets and it's mostly used for software deployment as we already have an asset system we use for tracking financials, depreciation etc. Lansweeper lacks the full asset management system features, but what it did lack it made up for in the computer information features and software deployments.

I have spent the last 4 years configuring custom reports, getting useful information, automated deployments, promoting Lansweeper etc. But as of our renewal period, if the asset limit is still set at 2000 assets, we will not be renewing again. Forcing a small to medium business to license at a minimum of 2000 assets is ridiculous.

That has taken our renewal cost from $695.00 AUD to $2,970.68.

How do you think I can justify an increase of $2275.68 to management with no major changes to the product or how we use it.

Time to look at SCCM (we were already licensed but preferred Lansweeper) BatchPatch, PDQ etc for software deployments. This move will shoot Lansweeper in the foot.

[Todd]

We have just under 500 assets as well. Are you telling me the price is going to increase by 4x? I know they were going to start counting monitors but I was just going to exclude those and assumed nothing would change. I hate to stop using this, but I can't afford price to increase that much either.

[rader]

If this price increase affects our renewal, then I will have just spent the past three years customizing Lansweeper for naught. We're on the 500 plan model and I can't justify a quadruple increase just to keep this running.

Lansweeper Cxx's, why are you trying to lose customers? We're completely happy with the product. Please don't make us leave.