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We just moved a whole org over to Bitwarden anyway because of the way they threatened to hold free accounts hostage ("Pay us or you will not be able to access y

We just moved a whole org over to Bitwarden anyway because of the way they threatened to hold free accounts hostage ("Pay us or you will not be able to access your password from mobile (or desktop) anymore"). We had previously actually planned to switch to a paid plan with them by July anyway (to nobody's surprise, management can be extremely slow to approve these things) - but their deadline was March and they way they forced our hand got management to act surprisingly quickly in transitioning us to Bitwarden. I wonder which, excuse me, brain-dead executive honestly thought waving a pistol in users' faces like an amateur highwayman to force them to pay was by any stretch of the imagination an acceptable way to improve user confidence, especially in such a sensitive area where they store (access to) your most personal and private secrets. The same holds true for these trackers. I mean, I see all these weird decisions and just ask myself, who are these people in positions of significant power of larger companies who make such obvious, crazy bad management decisions? Whenever I meet them, they all seem so normal and well-dressed ;-) Boggles my mind every time. I must say, for years now I've had the impression all the amazing products that LogMeIn (who own LastPass) touches, get toxic for the end-user quickly. Hamachi was so great in the olden days. GoToMeeting couldn't be rescued even by Covid. They had, at one point, one of the greatest remote desktop solutions around (which you could even completely self-host) but they were basically killed by TeamViewer because of their boneheaded licensing decisions. Of course, TeamViewer has been going down the same drain and has significantly killed mass appeal since their IPO, which leads me to believe that this is just the "circle of liiiive"...

danpalmer 6y ago
LogMeIn was bought a few years ago by a private equity company. The standard PE playbook is to buy things that are popular and stable but maybe not growing like this and then milk them for all they can, particularly in things that are hard to move away from (see Travis CI).
- troymc 6y ago
  I knew that LogMeIn had acquired LastPass, but I didn't know that private equity had gobbled up LogMeIn (which used to be publicly traded on the stock market). Apparently the private equity deal was only finalized in August of last year, see: [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/francisco-partners-and-evergreen-coast-capital-complete-acquisition-of-logmein-2020 https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/francisco-partners-and-...
juancampa 6y ago
I'm sorry you feel like someone waved a gun at you or held your accounts hostage but damn this comment is entitled. You are talking about a _free_ service that runs on physical and expensive servers. It even offers an easy way to export your entire account in a csv. They are not doing anything wrong here other than trying to stop burning cash.
- Proziam 6y ago
  > this comment is entitled One who set an expectation ought not be shocked when one's users have that expectation. I don't think they are evil, but I do think they handled this transition poorly and with messaging that clearly didn't win their users over to their side. Also, tracking is bad. I wouldn't do business with them on that basis.
  - imagine99 6y ago
    In principle I agree. I certainly don't think they used to be evil, they set out do create a product and brand that stood for safety and security and trust. I think they've lost focus of that now, their incentives have shifted (maximum cash extraction) and they're also tone-deaf. You just can't add 7 trackers to such a product without losing credibility. Look, nowadays, some telemetry feedback (aka. trackers) is extremely valuable to iterate quickly and improve your software, also to the benefit of the end-user. What you certainly don't need is seven (7) trackers or to make them compulsory instead of opt-in or at least opt-out. I mean, the amount of "non-evil" stuff you could learn with a tracker in a password manager is certainly so limited that it doesn't justify 7 trackers. Anything above one self-hosted, non-third-party, non-adware telemetry server does seem slightly... evil in this context. ;-) And if you add 7 trackers AND try to trick me with bait & switch tactics, well then, indeed, you're gonna lose a lot of business. Hope the bit of extra cash they got from people who panicked and didn't have time to set up alternatives was worth it...
- bayindirh 6y ago
  There are ways to monetize a free service further and some are better than others. Trello is currently evolving into a full-fledged project management tool and they fuel growth by adding new features to business class only. While that's not leaving the best taste either, I can understand. When they tried to limit Trello Gold further, we retaliated so hard so, they relaxed their policies a bit. I don't need their new features since it's not well organized for individuals but, they neither change the price of Trello Gold, nor remove features from it. It's a good compromise.
Debug_Overload 6y ago
I was actually using their free tier for awhile (the Pro version didn't have any extra feature that I personally needed anyway). But when they pulled this bullshit counting on how useless the free tier will be and basically forcing the upgrade, I replaced them in like 5 minutes.
- imagine99 6y ago
  Yep, exactly. I have no problem with gentle reminders to check out pro features. Or maybe a recommendation engine ("Refer 10 of your friends to us and we'll give it to you for free"). Or making it clear to new users that the service tiers are now different and grandfathering-in the legacy free tier (like Gsuite used to do). There's any of a dozen possibilities that allows you to monetize your service without antagonizing long-time users (if you believe LastPass really had an unsustainable ratio of free to paying customers, which I actually don't, I think they're just trying to milk it). Adding spyware/trackers to a privacy-centric app and forcing customers to "pay up or leave" at a moment's notice, nah, there is no good excuse for that.
stewx 6y ago
It's not "holding your accounts hostage" when they merely cut back on what free users can do with their service. You can access your data at any time and export it to a file.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Which is also a requirement under European GDPR laws.
sagivo 6y ago
I also moved to Bitwarden as a result of the new policy. The UI is equily bad but I feel more secure using an open source tool that will not change their policy whenever their execs want more $$$
- eitland 6y ago
  Also the LastPass desktop client was beyond slow. Not laggy rather than waiting time in the multiple seconds range. (Some will probably think this was because of encryption but ok the same machine the Girefox extension was snappy.)
Mandatum 6y ago
AnyDesk is the spiritual successor for TV! Highly recommended.

danpalmer 6y ago

LogMeIn was bought a few years ago by a private equity company. The standard PE playbook is to buy things that are popular and stable but maybe not growing like this and then milk them for all they can, particularly in things that are hard to move away from (see Travis CI).

troymc 6y ago
I knew that LogMeIn had acquired LastPass, but I didn't know that private equity had gobbled up LogMeIn (which used to be publicly traded on the stock market). Apparently the private equity deal was only finalized in August of last year, see: [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/francisco-partners-and-evergreen-coast-capital-complete-acquisition-of-logmein-2020 https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/francisco-partners-and-...

juancampa 6y ago

I'm sorry you feel like someone waved a gun at you or held your accounts hostage but damn this comment is entitled. You are talking about a _free_ service that runs on physical and expensive servers. It even offers an easy way to export your entire account in a csv. They are not doing anything wrong here other than trying to stop burning cash.

Proziam 6y ago
> this comment is entitled One who set an expectation ought not be shocked when one's users have that expectation. I don't think they are evil, but I do think they handled this transition poorly and with messaging that clearly didn't win their users over to their side. Also, tracking is bad. I wouldn't do business with them on that basis.
- imagine99 6y ago
  In principle I agree. I certainly don't think they used to be evil, they set out do create a product and brand that stood for safety and security and trust. I think they've lost focus of that now, their incentives have shifted (maximum cash extraction) and they're also tone-deaf. You just can't add 7 trackers to such a product without losing credibility. Look, nowadays, some telemetry feedback (aka. trackers) is extremely valuable to iterate quickly and improve your software, also to the benefit of the end-user. What you certainly don't need is seven (7) trackers or to make them compulsory instead of opt-in or at least opt-out. I mean, the amount of "non-evil" stuff you could learn with a tracker in a password manager is certainly so limited that it doesn't justify 7 trackers. Anything above one self-hosted, non-third-party, non-adware telemetry server does seem slightly... evil in this context. ;-) And if you add 7 trackers AND try to trick me with bait & switch tactics, well then, indeed, you're gonna lose a lot of business. Hope the bit of extra cash they got from people who panicked and didn't have time to set up alternatives was worth it...
bayindirh 6y ago
There are ways to monetize a free service further and some are better than others. Trello is currently evolving into a full-fledged project management tool and they fuel growth by adding new features to business class only. While that's not leaving the best taste either, I can understand. When they tried to limit Trello Gold further, we retaliated so hard so, they relaxed their policies a bit. I don't need their new features since it's not well organized for individuals but, they neither change the price of Trello Gold, nor remove features from it. It's a good compromise.

Debug_Overload 6y ago

I was actually using their free tier for awhile (the Pro version didn't have any extra feature that I personally needed anyway). But when they pulled this bullshit counting on how useless the free tier will be and basically forcing the upgrade, I replaced them in like 5 minutes.

imagine99 6y ago
Yep, exactly. I have no problem with gentle reminders to check out pro features. Or maybe a recommendation engine ("Refer 10 of your friends to us and we'll give it to you for free"). Or making it clear to new users that the service tiers are now different and grandfathering-in the legacy free tier (like Gsuite used to do). There's any of a dozen possibilities that allows you to monetize your service without antagonizing long-time users (if you believe LastPass really had an unsustainable ratio of free to paying customers, which I actually don't, I think they're just trying to milk it). Adding spyware/trackers to a privacy-centric app and forcing customers to "pay up or leave" at a moment's notice, nah, there is no good excuse for that.

stewx 6y ago

It's not "holding your accounts hostage" when they merely cut back on what free users can do with their service. You can access your data at any time and export it to a file.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Which is also a requirement under European GDPR laws.

sagivo 6y ago

I also moved to Bitwarden as a result of the new policy. The UI is equily bad but I feel more secure using an open source tool that will not change their policy whenever their execs want more $$$

eitland 6y ago
Also the LastPass desktop client was beyond slow. Not laggy rather than waiting time in the multiple seconds range. (Some will probably think this was because of encryption but ok the same machine the Girefox extension was snappy.)

Mandatum 6y ago

AnyDesk is the spiritual successor for TV! Highly recommended.