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?
