By John P. Mello Jr. E-Commerce Times 01/23/14 5:00 AM PT
When LogMeIn introduced its free remote access software 10 years ago, it was a bold experiment. Now that experiment is about to end. Times have changed, says the company, and the freemium model no longer makes sense for this particular product. With many people going to the cloud, there just isn't as much demand for remotely accessing PCs anymore, noted LogMeIn's Craig Vercolen.
LogMeIn on Tuesday announced that it will be shutting down its free service and unifying its existing portfolio of paid products in a single offering.
Existing users of LogMeIn Free will be given seven days from the next time they log on to the service to upgrade to the premium service at a discounted price of US$49.
LogMeIn was an early pioneer in what's known in business circles as the "freemium" model: A company offers a free version of its product to attract users in the hope of upselling a premium version and converting them into paying customers.
"You do freemium to disrupt the market, get a product in as many hands as possible, and spread it by word of mouth," said Craig Vercolen, senior director for corporate communications for LogMeIn.
After 10 years, though, market conditions no longer were favorable for a free version of LogMeIn, Vercolen told the E-Commerce Times.
"It's not that it's not bringing us users," he explained. "It still is. We're still getting good conversions. It's just that the market has matured to the point that there's not a lot of room left there."
Ten years ago, everyone lived on their PCs.
"You'd use remote access to get to your stuff," Vercolen continued. "Today, a lot of that stuff lives in the cloud, so remote access isn't just competing with other remote plays, but with cloud plays as well."
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LogMeIn's Free Service Permanently Logs Out