Official: You Can Now Get Early Access to the Next Version of Logos
Comments
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:DAL said:
As long as the ability to purchase features is still available, I guess we’ll be fine. I understand the AI subscription, but other features don’t need AI or cloud to work.
Frank Sauer said:So, is the subscription model the only way to access new features going forward? New features will no longer be released as part of new packages and or upgrades?
The last part of my post says:
Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Does this mean Logos will be subscription-only? Will I be able to buy Logos in the future?
Logos subscriptions aren’t new. More than ten thousand people have been subscribing to Logos for nearly a decade. But we’re now embracing subscription for our software because doing so has five distinct advantages.
- New users can have much lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment.
- It allows us to continuously release new features and improvements as soon as they are built, rather than holding them back for a major release every two years. That’s especially important at a time of rapid technological change.
- It allows us to include features like AI, which we can’t offer permanent licenses to because of the significant ongoing costs.
- It’s a sustainable way of ensuring we can keep delivering improvements for decades to come.
- Releasing early and often significantly shortens the feedback loop, enabling us to continually tweak our improvements to ensure they’re really solving the most important things for all our customers.
With books, it’s different. The content of books isn’t continually improved—once they’re published, they’re done. And while we bear small ongoing costs to allow you to download and interact with your books, those costs are orders of magnitude lower than that of AI and similar services. Therefore, you will still be able to buy permanent access to Logos libraries and any other books from our catalog. In the future, we may add rental options for those who want it, but we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
Does that answer your questions?
Honestly, that last comment is so vague and open to the unknown that it is what stood out for my question..... Thinking through is not an actual answer, nor is just asking for feedback. Whether the option to continue purchasing upgrades as we always have been able to since the Libronix to L4 days is an essential for some. If that some is a minority that Logos is now going to look past, we need to know that now and it should have been investigated and input sought prior to a subscription based model plan being set in stone. Why? Some may be purchasing resources and upgrades that they otherwise may not if the future is subscription based features only.
Also.... Are new packages going to be released for new users and for upgrades or will the only option for resources outside of subscriptions be in single resource or set purchases, thus losing the ability to get the better bang for the buck that comes with an upgrade or new package purchase?
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Frank Sauer said:
Also, not sure that the only way to release new features without waiting two years is only possible via subsciption.... That sounds like a business model decision, not a definitive fact that new features could not be released whether as app updates or purchasable add-ons....
That's true. We could release some new features without a subscription at any pace we want (not including AI features, of course). But it's very hard to add a new feature and then deliver multiple improvements to it over several months without a subscription model. Without a subscription model, we'd need to:
- Wait until all the improvements are added before we sell the feature. (But if users aren't using it, we won't know which features are most beneficial. And waiting is what we're trying to avoid.)
- Or we could price in all the possible future improvements when we launch the feature and deliver the improvements to everyone who bought the feature. (But then what are users actually buying—a feature or a promise of a better feature? And what if there isn't any need for improvements? Or what if there need to be more improvements than we priced in?)
- Or we sell the feature for $10, and then the next release adds improvements and raises the price to $15. (But that punishes early adopters and makes our code incredibly complex. We've also got to make sure that any related features work with the $10, $15, and $20 versions, which makes testing much more expensive.)
It's that ability to add new features and then iterate and improve on them that subscription gains us. And we've had LOTS of feedback from users along the lines of, "I don't want any more features; I just want you to improve the ones I already have." Subscription will help us to do that.
Personally, though the Sermon file addin failure aside - I'd prefer to pay for each new feature if I wanted it and then own it for good without subscription, but again if that is the new business decision,,,, It is what it is...
In relation to your last sentence here..... If we already paid for a feature and it gets improvements - will the updated feature only be available to those who subscribe? If so, doesn't that punish early adopters as you mentioned???
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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I guess I'd like to see more in-depth explanations of what is going to change for people who don't want to subscribe. Will what we have be updated to run on operating systems as they upgrade? Or will we eventually be forced into subscriptions if we want to continue using our resources?
Also, will there be a Verbum tailored version as a Logos counterpart? Or will we all be squeezed together?
WIN 11 i7 9750H, RTX 2060, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD | iPad Air 3
Verbum Max0 -
1Cor10 31 said:
I'm sorry, Mark, I don't get the logic. Could you please elaborate? What is it that you cannot accomplish without including books in the package? Well, we know that the more books you add, the more the pricing. You can bring the price down by eliminating all the books in the package.
I don't need to be paying a monthly rental for resources I already own. This is pure double-dipping into my pocket.
One of the advantages of subscription is that new users can have lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment. But it's very hard to say to a new user – "Hey, you can try Logos for a month or two, but only if you spend $500 on a library, because the features are fairly useless without any books". So we wanted to include enough books in Logos Pro in order to make sure that someone testing it out – without a library – would get a good experience.
Now, none of that applies to you. You're not a new user. You already have a good-sized library, I presume.
So, we could offer a different version of this subscription, and remove the books, and charge you $5/month less. But, we're going to have four subscription tiers, in both Logos and Verbum, in several different languages. So that's a lot of new book-free subscriptions we need to create. And then we need to change the buying experience to give everyone the choice of buying the books-included version or the book-free version. That adds development time, and it makes the checkout experience slightly more complicated for everyone.
Or we could have one type of subscription, with the books included, and charge you $5/month less anyway. Existing users wouldn't benefit as much as new users, but they might appreciate getting a few extra books nonetheless.
That's what we chose to do. As an L10 Full Feature Set owner, you're getting a healthy discount on the full price. We know you already own most of the features, and we assume you probably own most of the books. The discount takes that into consideration. It's not intended to be double-dipping.
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Nathan Parker said:
However, completely eliminating a direct-purchase route to own the features in Logos is not a great move. I've "virtually chatted" with a lot of Bible software users in general over the past year, and the biggest thing I've heard is they don't want to go subscription-only for features. They like the option to direct purchase and own their software (so do I).
The end of my post includes the following:
Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Does this mean Logos will be subscription-only? Will I be able to buy Logos in the future?
Logos subscriptions aren’t new. More than ten thousand people have been subscribing to Logos for nearly a decade. But we’re now embracing subscription for our software because doing so has five distinct advantages.
- New users can have much lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment.
- It allows us to continuously release new features and improvements as soon as they are built, rather than holding them back for a major release every two years. That’s especially important at a time of rapid technological change.
- It allows us to include features like AI, which we can’t offer permanent licenses to because of the significant ongoing costs.
- It’s a sustainable way of ensuring we can keep delivering improvements for decades to come.
- Releasing early and often significantly shortens the feedback loop, enabling us to continually tweak our improvements to ensure they’re really solving the most important things for all our customers.
With books, it’s different. The content of books isn’t continually improved—once they’re published, they’re done. And while we bear small ongoing costs to allow you to download and interact with your books, those costs are orders of magnitude lower than that of AI and similar services. Therefore, you will still be able to buy permanent access to Logos libraries and any other books from our catalog. In the future, we may add rental options for those who want it, but we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
The last paragraph is especially important, and I appreciate your feedback on that question.
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I would like to know if subscriptions similar to Logos Pro will have something like dynamic pricing? Because I was examining the books in the subscription, and many I already own, as I currently have almost 7,000 books.
(1) Has Faithlife considered this issue of books that the subscriber already owns in the subscription?
(2) Will there be a subscription only for the resources and tools without adding extra books?"
____________
"... And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (Ne 8.10)
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Frank Sauer said:
Thinking through is not an actual answer, nor is just asking for feedback. Whether the option to continue purchasing upgrades as we always have been able to since the Libronix to L4 days is an essential for some. If that some is a minority that Logos is now going to look past, we need to know that now and it should have been investigated and input sought prior to a subscription based model plan being set in stone. Why? Some may be purchasing resources and upgrades that they otherwise may not if the future is subscription based features only.
I'm a bit confused by this. One of the main purposes of this announcement is to "investigate and seek input" prior to making any decisions that will impact whether you'll be able to buy a feature set in the future or only subscribe to one. We're trying to be open and transparent while also listening to feedback. The downside of that is that some decisions won't be made until we've heard that feedback. I understand the desire for clarity, but I think it's the right thing to listen to our customers before we make big decisions.
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Why is it hard to get a straight answer? So let me rephrase the question:
Will we be able to purchase features or are features going to be subscription only?Thank you!
DAL
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Frank Sauer said:
If we already paid for a feature and it gets improvements - will the updated feature only be available to those who subscribe? If so, doesn't that punish early adopters as you mentioned???
If we update an L8 feature (for example), those improvements are likely to be available only to people who subscribe (or who purchase an upgrade, if we offer that), especially if those improvements significantly enhance the feature. There will be exceptions to that, but that will be the general rule. I don't think that harms early adopters who will have had at least four years of great value out of the feature, and may well have many more.
I think it would punish early adopters if we sold a new feature, and then six or twelve weeks later offered a better version.
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David Wanat said:
Or will we eventually be forced into subscriptions if we want to continue using our resources?
From my original post:
Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Will I be forced to subscribe to Logos in the future? What about all the books I’ve already bought?
No one will be forced to subscribe to Logos to retain access to their existing content. You will always be able to access all the books you’ve purchased without further payment. Your books are your books. Subscriptions are for those who want access to the latest improvements, which aim to help you uncover deeper insights in less time.
So yes, we will continue to update our software, for free, to run on future operating systems, so that you can continue to enjoy the books you have bought.
David Wanat said:Also, will there be a Verbum tailored version as a Logos counterpart? Or will we all be squeezed together?
The Verbum team is working on an equivalent Verbum subscription. Listen out for more details in the future!
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Frank Sauer said:
Thinking through is not an actual answer, nor is just asking for feedback. Whether the option to continue purchasing upgrades as we always have been able to since the Libronix to L4 days is an essential for some. If that some is a minority that Logos is now going to look past, we need to know that now and it should have been investigated and input sought prior to a subscription based model plan being set in stone. Why? Some may be purchasing resources and upgrades that they otherwise may not if the future is subscription based features only.
I'm a bit confused by this. One of the main purposes of this announcement is to "investigate and seek input" prior to making any decisions that will impact whether you'll be able to buy a feature set in the future or only subscribe to one. We're trying to be open and transparent while also listening to feedback. The downside of that is that some decisions won't be made until we've heard that feedback. I understand the desire for clarity, but I think it's the right thing to listen to our customers before we make big decisions.
Maybe your initial post is a bit confusing, as the intial paragraphs seem to hint towards the next release of Logos being a subscription based platform and speaks of those not opting for a subscription still having their resources, but not the new and improved features.... That sounds like a decision made to move away from the traditional option and yes, you left a vague last paragraph possibly leaving the door open.... But as others have said, Logos has had some bad choices in the past that were corrected to some level or ignored on some levels pertaining to business model changes.... So, historically, I'm not sold on Logos not dropping the traditional and then possibly "making it right" if enough owners complain. Thus, my statement that some sort of customer survey should have been accessed prior to what sounds like an already decided path forward (based on those first paragraphs)
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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Anderson JF Abreu said:
I would like to know if subscriptions similar to Logos Pro will have something like dynamic pricing? Because I was examining the books in the subscription, and many I already own, as I currently have almost 7,000 books.
(1) Has Faithlife considered this issue of books that the subscriber already owns in the subscription?
(2) Will there be a subscription only for the resources and tools without adding extra books?"
This post probably answers those questions best. The short answer is that this $9.99/month offer is discounted on the assumption that if you own the full feature set, you probably already own many of the books. So, if you don't already own most of the books, you're getting a bargain. But if you do, you're not paying extra for them.
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Frank Sauer said:
Maybe your initial post is a bit confusing, as the intial paragraphs seem to hint towards the next release of Logos being a subscription based platform and speaks of those not opting for a subscription still having their resources, but not the new and improved features.... That sounds like a decision made to move away from the traditional option and yes, you left a vague last paragraph possibly leaving the door open.... But as others have said, Logos has had some bad choices in the past that were corrected to some level or ignored on some levels pertaining to business model changes.... So, historically, I'm not sold on Logos not dropping the traditional and then possibly "making it right" if enough owners complain. Thus, my statement that some sort of customer survey should have been accessed prior to what sounds like an already decided path forward (based on those first paragraphs)
Thanks for the feedback.
The original post intended to say, "In the next version of Logos, we're going to be leaning heavily into subscription for these five reasons, but we don't yet know whether we're going to lean into subscription exclusively."
And I completely understand your points about the past. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason why I'm saying, "We're listening before we decide what to do." I don't want to announce a major change without consultation and then have to come back a week later saying, "We got it wrong." I'd much rather say, "This is the roughly the direction we're heading in. But of the things that might change, which are especially important to you?"
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Frank Sauer said:
If we already paid for a feature and it gets improvements - will the updated feature only be available to those who subscribe? If so, doesn't that punish early adopters as you mentioned???
If we update an L8 feature (for example), those improvements are likely to be available only to people who subscribe (or who purchase an upgrade, if we offer that), especially if those improvements significantly enhance the feature. There will be exceptions to that, but that will be the general rule. I don't think that harms early adopters who will have had at least four years of great value out of the feature, and may well have many more.
I think it would punish early adopters if we sold a new feature, and then six or twelve weeks later offered a better version.
L8 was a while back, what about updates to the L10 Feature Sets? These are the questions that exist that there are no defined answers for, that are concerning to some of us.... If there is doubt that L10 Feature sets will not be upgraded for free in this process with the coming release, it should be made clear now, so people that haven't bought it yet or are considering buying it, know in advance. The unknown and undeclared are the issues here....
This sounds like a poorly planned massive business model change that is being handled on the fly, with things like these questions not being given the energy of predefined answers for everyone to know what is going on.... Answers that are unknown and possibly based on user response sounds nice, until those on the "wrong" side of user input related decisions feel cast aside and neglected as customers from new to long term if they don't fall in line with the outcome.
Whether features that have been purchased with L10 will be upgraded for free or not, whether the traditional option of purchase will be available or not - these are questions that should have some level of solid stance to coincide with this major announcement,
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Frank Sauer said:
If we already paid for a feature and it gets improvements - will the updated feature only be available to those who subscribe? If so, doesn't that punish early adopters as you mentioned???
If we update an L8 feature (for example), those improvements are likely to be available only to people who subscribe (or who purchase an upgrade, if we offer that), especially if those improvements significantly enhance the feature. There will be exceptions to that, but that will be the general rule. I don't think that harms early adopters who will have had at least four years of great value out of the feature, and may well have many more.
I think it would punish early adopters if we sold a new feature, and then six or twelve weeks later offered a better version.
L8 was a while back, what about updates to the L10 Feature Sets? These are the questions that exist that there are no defined answers for, that are concerning to some of us.... If there is doubt that L10 Feature sets will not be upgraded for free in this process with the coming release, it should be made clear now, so people that haven't bought it yet or are considering buying it, know in advance. The unknown and undeclared are the issues here....
This sounds like a poorly planned massive business model change that is being handled on the fly, with things like these questions not being given the energy of predefined answers for eveyone to know what is going on.... Answers that are unknown and possibly based on user response sounds nice, until those on the "wrong" side of user input related decisions feel cast aside and neglected as customers from new to long term if they don't fall in line with the outcome.
Whether features that have been purchased with L10 will be upgrade for free or not, whether the traditional oprtion of purchase will be available or not - these are questions that should have some level of solid stance to coincide with this major announcement,
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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No wonder Vik jumped ship before this announcement was made 😂😂😂
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
The original post intended to say, "In the next version of Logos, we're going to be leaning heavily into subscription for these five reasons, but we don't yet know whether we're going to lean into subscription exclusively."
And I completely understand your points about the past. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason why I'm saying, "We're listening before we decide what to do." I don't want to announce a major change without consultation and then have to come back a week later saying, "We got it wrong." I'd much rather say, "This is the roughly the direction we're heading in. But of the things that might change, which are especially important to you?"
That would have been a lot better and helped with some of the issues related to this announcement, but as in my other response, the lack of answers in relation to whether those who just bought the L10 Features with its release or later and whether or not we can continue to have access to traditional, non subscription based upgrade options is a major issue. Being in the middle of the March Madness promo season.... Without answers to these questions, would I want to invest any further into my library without answers to these questions? Yes, we may keep the resources that we purchase, but the answers to those questions may impact one's thoughts on further investing in a library.
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
1Cor10 31">
I'm sorry, Mark, I don't get the logic. Could you please elaborate? What is it that you cannot accomplish without including books in the package? Well, we know that the more books you add, the more the pricing. You can bring the price down by eliminating all the books in the package.
I don't need to be paying a monthly rental for resources I already own. This is pure double-dipping into my pocket.
One of the advantages of subscription is that new users can have lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment. But it's very hard to say to a new user – "Hey, you can try Logos for a month or two, but only if you spend $500 on a library, because the features are fairly useless without any books". So we wanted to include enough books in Logos Pro in order to make sure that someone testing it out – without a library – would get a good experience.
Now, none of that applies to you. You're not a new user. You already have a good-sized library, I presume.
Mark: This is pure socialism. The people who own resources, the "rich" ones, get to pay the same amount as the "poor" ones who don't own the resources. That's the objective of packaging books along with the features. It was so easy to see for a financial economist. I just wanted to get it out from you officially.
We already have our government doing socialism. You'd probably agree that I don't think we need organizations doing socialism.
I want to give my money to charities that I value, like a private Christian school that educates poor kids for free thus breaking the cycle of poverty. I am not interested in subsidizing "poor" Logos customers.
I hope feature sets are available for subscription or outright purchase without being attached to a bunch of resources (if you want to do a combo deal, please offer dynamic pricing.)
I believe in a Win-Win-Win God.
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Another thing I hope logos considers, is finishing projects that are still out there that people have paid for such as the Lexham context commentary. I’m sure there are others, but logos should really focus on finishing what people have ready paid for before jumping to models need significant resources.
My $0.02
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
The last paragraph is especially important, and I appreciate your feedback on that question.
I would definitely continue to offer an option to purchase feature sets of Logos. There are many of us who prefer to own instead of rent most of our features, even at the expense of "missing out" on AI or cloud-backed features.
I liken it to Microsoft Office perpetual vs Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 gives you "early access" and "continued access" to new features as they become available, plus a lot of "cloud-backed" features that make sense that are subscription-based. For those who don't want to get on the "cloud" or "rolling feature" train, they can purchase perpetual versions of Microsoft Office and decide if the next major version is worth purchasing.
For my personal Bible study, I don't need "early access" to new features or a lot of "cloud AI stuff". I just want my Bible study to work, and I want to be in the driver's seat when I decide to upgrade to new features.
Thanks for listening.
Dr. Nathan Parker
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Frank Sauer said:
what about updates to the L10 Feature Sets? These are the questions that exist that there are no defined answers for, that are concerning to some of us.... If there is doubt that L10 Feature sets will not be upgraded for free in this process with the coming release, it should be made clear now, so people that haven't bought it yet or are considering buying it, know in advance. The unknown and undeclared are the issues here....
If you're asking, "Will I get a free upgrade to improved versions of Print Library Catalog or Auto Translate or Popular Quotations or Timeline which I purchased with Logos 10," then the answer is "no." Upgrades have always been a paid feature.
If you mean, "Can I continue to use the features I bought with Logos 10 even after the subscription is launched?" then the answer is, "Yes, absolutely. And, yes, you'll also be able to keep downloading software updates for free to ensure the software is compatible with future versions of MacOS and Windows."
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:Anderson JF Abreu said:
I would like to know if subscriptions similar to Logos Pro will have something like dynamic pricing? Because I was examining the books in the subscription, and many I already own, as I currently have almost 7,000 books.
(1) Has Faithlife considered this issue of books that the subscriber already owns in the subscription?
(2) Will there be a subscription only for the resources and tools without adding extra books?"
This post probably answers those questions best. The short answer is that this $9.99/month offer is discounted on the assumption that if you own the full feature set, you probably already own many of the books. So, if you don't already own most of the books, you're getting a bargain. But if you do, you're not paying extra for them.
Mark: You are too smart to not realize that this is BS, right?
Let's convert what you say in equation form, so it is easy to see the BS.
Let F be the cost of Feature set.
Let R be the cost of Resources.
F + R = $9.99 ---> Equation (1)
For those who don't own both: F + R = 9.99 ---> Equation (2)
For those who own all the Resources: F + R = 9.99 still, but R is worth 0 since you own all the Resources.
This implies F = 9.99.
Substitute F = 9.99 in Equation (2)
We get R = 0 for those who don't own the Resources.
So effectively people who own the Resources are subsidizing the people who don't own the Resources when you offer a fixed price for the bundle of Features & Resources.
PS: I did the Math just for fun even though the above statement was easy to derive based on common sense!
I believe in a Win-Win-Win God.
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Wow, how did I miss this thread earlier in the day?
Nathan Parker said:For my personal Bible study, I don't need "early access" to new features or a lot of "cloud AI stuff". I just want my Bible study to work, and I want to be in the driver's seat when I decide to upgrade to new features.
I would echo 95% of what Nathan has already expressed so well in this thread. I'm still burned from my experience with Logos Now. It was great to begin with, and then it got abruptly switched to an inferior product and arrangement. I used the generous coupon that was given then, which I am thankful for, to buy all feature sets I was behind on. I will be very reluctant to try a Logos subscription again.
I can appreciate that AI-integration is going to have significant on-going costs. However, I am largely uninterested in it. I want my Bible software to stay up to date, and I don't want to have to pay an arm and leg to keep it that way. I don't want to subscribe for $10 a month and then a few years later be informed that some features are being dropped and I'll have to pay more to keep them or shell out a ton to have permanent access.
I will wait to see how this shakes out before making a final judgment. Knowing Logos, however, I'm sure it will be messy.
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err ah --- let P be the full price and let D be the discount
F + R = P for those not owning the resources [assumed by Mark to be a null set]
F + R = P - D for those owning the resources where P-D=9.99 and F,R,P,D are indeterminable because we lack sufficient information to create the requisite equations. I did the equations above solely for the fun of including a critical element missing in your equation 9.99 does not = P but rather P-D
BTW socialism refers to the ownership of the means of production
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Sean said:
Wow, how did I miss this thread earlier in the day?
Nathan Parker said:For my personal Bible study, I don't need "early access" to new features or a lot of "cloud AI stuff". I just want my Bible study to work, and I want to be in the driver's seat when I decide to upgrade to new features.
I would echo 95% of what Nathan has already expressed so well in this thread. I'm still burned from my experience with Logos Now. It was great to begin with, and then it got abruptly switched to an inferior product and arrangement. I used the generous coupon that was given then, which I am thankful for, to buy all feature sets I was behind on. I will be very reluctant to try a Logos subscription again.
I can appreciate that AI-integration is going to have significant on-going costs. However, I am largely uninterested in it. I want my Bible software to stay up to date, and I don't want to have to pay an arm and leg to keep it that way. I don't want to subscribe for $10 a month and then a few years later be informed that some features are being dropped and I'll have to pay more to keep them or shell out a ton to have permanent access.
I will wait to see how this shakes out before making a final judgment. Knowing Logos, however, I'm sure it will be messy.
Indeed. While I've been playing around with AI sites, and I see a use for AI, in general, I'm not that "wowed" by it. I could see where AI could potentially improve my Bible study in a limited sense, but at the moment, I wouldn't pay a monthly or annual fee to have it.
For those who want AI and want to pay a monthly fee for it, they can go for it.
I'd rather give up access to it and simply pay for other new features when I want them on my terms and know my Bible study is going to work when I want it to and not be dependent upon a subscription to ensure my Bible study "just works".
To have other features lumped in with the AI stuff on a subscription is very disappointing.
Dr. Nathan Parker
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Welll.... like I've said... I never was the smartest kid on the block. So I bought into Logos Pro.
I love the Summarizing feature already.
From my short tests.... I like the new Search. I haven't put it fully thru it's tests, but I plan too. If you have Logos Pro.... do this in Search "what does Romans 2:14-15 mean" [:D]
Tomorrow I will venture into the Sermon Assistant feature...
Is Logos Pro worth it? To answer that I'll say... I'm not a nay sayer.... I have complained mostly about the Search in Logos 9 and in Logos 10. And I must say Mark Barnes has tried to answer that. But so far with Logos Pro... I'd say "Yes, it's worth it for now for me."
See I think of it this way.... The cost of updating Logos 10 (when the next version comes) will probably cost more than Logos Pro and in Logos Pro I will have it all. (Ok, I only got to Transcendental Equations in college.... )
Now we'll see if my theory is correct.... or if I paid more... "gulp!" [8-|]
xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".
Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!
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Here’s my experience.
in 10 years of use and purchases, I have never lost any functionality or resource that I have paid for. In fact it is all much better than it ever was when I bought it.
Logos has stayed in business while 2 competitors have gone out of business.the forums around these announcements often feel quite ungracious.
thank you to the team for what you have built. I use it every day, and it helps me teach God’s word better.
i Will pray for you as you steward the awesome program you have created0 -
I have friends who I have referred to Logos
to them, a subscription model makes a lot of sense. It’s how everything else works.
to spend hundreds of dollars up front doesn’t make sense to them.i think these decisions will make Logos simpler for people to understand, easier to get involved in, and therefore hopefully get more people getting more out of God’s word.
if that also helps the bottom line and means more money for development and more longevity as a company, win win win.
i personally don’t support AI in bible study but I can see that is where the future is going, and I would rather people use AI to summarise John Calvin than ask ChatGPT trained on the lowest common denominator on reddit. So I wish this venture the best of success. if people are going to use AI in sermon prep and bible study, at least let it be like this. Summarising thoughtful pastors and scholars Is at least a good starting place.
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Attn Mark Barnes:
Sean said:I'm still burned from my experience with Logos Now. It was great to begin with, and then it got abruptly switched to an inferior product and arrangement. I used the generous coupon that was given then, which I am thankful for, to buy all feature sets I was behind on. I will be very reluctant to try a Logos subscription again.
Part of the fiasco of the change from Logos Now to Faithlife Connect was the gutting of the program was announced first, then sometime later the compensation to be given to existing subscribers. If the latter had been announced at the same time as the former, it would have prevented a good amount of the ill-will the change produced. This experience should be kept in mind as your roll this change out.
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
The full launch of these subscriptions won’t happen until later in the year, but if you own the Logos 10 Full Feature Set or subscribe to Faithlife Connect (excluding Starter and Mobile), you can get early access to Logos Pro today at a very special price.
Hi Mark.
Can you expand a little on this? I am an existing connect member. It sounds like there are a few features/datasets I currently have that are not in Pro. I would prefer to wait and learn more about the plans before switching but want to know what is meant by special price. If I wait will I be losing out on a special early-access price that will continue into the future or will I have similar pricing options when the final plans are announced?Thanks!
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I see the same here like I saw in other software companies. They told us "we need to go to a subscription model to have money for improvements and for bug fixes". I can tell you they all have lied? Non of them had fulfill their promises. All are still full of bugs.
And that is what I want to tell you: Fix your bugs. I have reported many and they are still there. I really don't beliefe you will fix them more than since.
I understand to go to a subscription model, for features you also have to pay monthly. But for all other features. NOT. Also I have no understanding to kill features.
Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς δόξης·
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Soooooo.... We used to have "Logos Now" subscription which had NEW FEATURES every few months, then that was changed to "Logos Connect" which had the NEW FEATURES removed. Now we have "Logos Pro" which has NEW FEATURES reintroduced every few months again, except with higher price?
May I add suggestions:
- Please add Mobile Ed library. Why? We havent had anything new or added in Logos Connect in forever. I think this would be the right thing after the lack of anything new for the past few years. People pay $100-140/year but there wasn't really good values in it anymore.
- Please add Pro Media Library. Why? You guys says that you guys wants to help Pastors. This feature would help Pastors better prepare their sermon presentation. Very practical.
- Please consider adding "Mark Barnes" collections as the default official collections.Or maybe adding even more into the collection would be a HUGGGGEEE feature! I'm still surprised that this is not official yet.
- Logos Now/Logos Connect has been dead for few years now. So if you guys trying to revive it, please don't just increase the price without making it exciting for us. Add some "real values" to us.
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Question:
What is the source code program of this new AI feature? Is it build from the ground up by inhouse Logos' production? Is it borrowing from Gemini? Is it borrowing from ChatGPT?
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Yeah, about Logos Now…Didn’t you guys ditch it because it wasn’t realistic getting ahead of yourselves producing new features so we could have them without having to wait? What changed “Now”? (No pun intended). I guess just the name changed from Logos Now to Logos Pro. Please don’t drive the company to the ground! I get it, Bob already had his slice of the cake, Vik too, but I’m not sure there will be any cake left if you guys get greedy with an old business idea that didn’t work in the past and now you think it might work. Just saying!
DAL
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danwdoo said:
Can you expand a little on this? I am an existing connect member. It sounds like there are a few features/datasets I currently have that are not in Pro. I would prefer to wait and learn more about the plans before switching but want to know what is meant by special price. If I wait will I be losing out on a special early-access price that will continue into the future or will I have similar pricing options when the final plans are announced?
That's a great question. We'll make sure that customers who follow our advice and wait until they hear more about our plans for Connect subscribers aren't disadvantaged.
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Fabian said:
And that is what I want to tell you: Fix your bugs. I have reported many and they are still there. I really don't beliefe you will fix them more than since.
Logos has been around for 32 years, and that's one of the reasons why it's so powerful and comprehensive. But that also contributes to Logos having more bugs than we – and you – would like.
We're committed to fixing historic bugs.
- v31 included 37 bug fixes
- v30 included 40 bug fixes
That rate was slightly reduced in v32 with all the new features we released. But even then we fixed 16 older bugs. We also fixed many new ones during the beta, but we don't include those in our release notes.
So over those three releases, we've averaged fixing five older bugs per week. The work is spread out across the team, but we allocate the equivalent of four full-time developers to bug fixes on desktop alone (not including bug fixes in new code).
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mike said:
What is the source code program of this new AI feature? Is it build from the ground up by inhouse Logos' production? Is it borrowing from Gemini? Is it borrowing from ChatGPT?
We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks. We monitor the effectiveness of these models and have the ability to quickly switch to better-performing or more reliable models if we discover frequent bias or other adverse issues.
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DAL said:
Yeah, about Logos Now…Didn’t you guys ditch it because it wasn’t realistic getting ahead of yourselves producing new features so we could have them without having to wait? What changed “Now”?
In many ways, Logos Now was a great subscription. Thousands have stuck with its successor, even after the original was canceled. Nonetheless, there are a few things we're doing differently this time.
Logos Now promised a new feature every six weeks. Today, Logos has probably twice as many features as it did then. Some people would say it has too many features! With Logos Pro and the other subscription tiers, we're taking a different approach. Rather than delivering five new but fairly small features over a 30-week period, we might invest in (let's say) one substantial new feature and several small but significant improvements to existing features. In other words, this time our promise to you is about quality, not quantity.
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
So over those three releases, we've averaged fixing five older bugs per week. The work is spread out across the team, but we allocate the equivalent of four full-time developers to historic bug fixes on desktop alone.
Another suggestion adjacent to bug fixing: as you are going all-in for AI, consider using it to create resource links for the thousands (millions?) of references in works in your catalogue that presently lack them. That would satisfy me, as a customer, more than just about any new feature I could imagine.
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Sean said:
Another suggestion adjacent to bug fixing: as you are going all-in for AI, consider using it to create resource links for the thousands (millions?) of references in works in your catalogue that presently lack them. That would satisfy me, as a customer, more than just about any new feature I could imagine.
For the past year or two, we've had a whole team working on improving our automated tagging and formatting, which has led to very significant improvements to the quality of our eBooks and Logos Reader editions. We're not yet at a stage where we can automatically add links between resources, but we know that would be something of great value, and it's something we'd love to find a solution to.
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As we are called to give feedback:
I like using and testing new AI Features but at the same time I always want a fallback and I want to own my software and assets/resources. So in my view it is absolutely essential to still have Feature Sets every one or two years (or even four years if its to much work otherwise) that update all/most new features except AI / cloud dependant of course (noting that in Logos 10 you added the translation AI Feature to the Feature Set).
I see no impediment doing it that way. Currently my monthly expenses for Logos resources far exceed the $ 9.99 (or whatever) so for me it is not that much of a big deal having some resources in there that I already own. But I can see where people on a small budget are struggling here.
Basically it is a trend that most big software companies force its customers to go in the cloud and/or SaaS (think of Microsoft,Adobe,SAP,Shopware,etc..) and in most cases against the will and to the detriment of the customers. I plead to the Logos team that you would extend grace to us and still offer base software and resource packages to buy and own and for the basic parts and functions or datasets be able to use offline.
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So and do you plan on offering Logos Base Packages (e.g. Logos 11,12,...) just without features then? Or still with features? Or no new base packages? Or is this also still up to debate?
(Remember you can't do big launch events without them [;)] )
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
The last paragraph is especially important, and I appreciate your feedback on that question.
I would like the option to continue purchasing feature sets. I prefer to own my software and not rent it. I am absolutely not a fan of subscriptions. I no longer use Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop because they followed the subscription model and have found other programs that work for me. I understand that I will miss out on the online features, such as AI. That's fine with me. I rarely connect to the Internet when using Logos and do most of my work offline anyway.
If Logos ever goes the route of subscription only or online only, I will be forced to stop purchasing books or upgrading and use what I have.
I understand that Logos must adapt to stay in business and I wholeheartedly support that. I just hope they don't forget the needs and preferences of those who helped keep them in business for 30 years.
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Let's do weird simple Math..
$9.99 for a borrowed AI features from another source code that wasnt built by Logos & charging us $9.99, while you guys pay wholesale price to them?
And this is on top of the price of a abandoned dead service called Logos Connect that we've been paying for $100-200 per year.
So instead of fixing the broken/dead service of Logos Connect, you guys just add another service on top of the old one with the same price with LESS FEATURES?
So.. Logos Connect $150 + Logos Pro $120 = $270 per year.
Is this where this company is going?
...
As a Logos Connect subscriber, I haven't been happy with the service for awhile, what guarantee that this service won't be like Logos Now & Logos Connect again, being abandoned and dead?
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mike said:
As a Logos Connect subscriber, I haven't been happy with the service for awhile, what guarantee that this service won't be like Logos Now & Logos Connect again, being abandoned and dead?
This is a good question. It seems over time a service gets abandoned although we are still paying for it. Logos Connect only might be worthwile due to discounts received when a new version comes out.
I hope Faithlife is not about to repeat the L3 to L4 catastrophe. I understand technology changes and drastic changes need to occur. But when a person has invested a lot in a company (and you know some of us have invested a lot), we get concerned.
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Manuel R. said:
I plead to the Logos team that you would extend grace to us and still offer base software and resource packages to buy and own and for the basic parts and functions or datasets be able to use offline.
Thanks for the feedback, Manuel.
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Manuel R. said:
So and do you plan on offering Logos Base Packages (e.g. Logos 11,12,...) just without features then? Or still with features? Or no new base packages? Or is this also still up to debate?
(Remember you can't do big launch events without them
)Do these paragraphs from my original post help?
Mark Barnes (Logos) said:you will still be able to buy permanent access to Logos libraries and any other books from our catalog. In the future, we may add rental options for those who want it, but we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
So, a definite "yes" to future purchasable libraries and a "maybe" to future purchasable feature sets.
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
a "maybe" to future purchasable feature sets.
Would prefer to purchase, Mark.
Thanks for answering questions / concerns, here.
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mike said:
So instead of fixing the broken/dead service of Logos Connect, you guys just add another service on top of the old one with the same price with LESS FEATURES?
So.. Logos Connect $150 + Logos Pro $120 = $270 per year.
Is this where this company is going?
No, that's not where we're going.
The subscription that will launch later in the year will replace Faithlife Connect and Preaching Suite. So the future state is not Faithlife Connect + Logos Pro. Faithlife Connect will be going away. The future state is just Logos Pro or one of the other subscription tiers.
Right now, we're not ready with that subscription, so we can't migrate people from Connect to Logos Pro. But later in the year, once we've built out more features and have a migration plan in place, we will be moving customers from Connect to Logos Pro or one of the other tiers. So, right now, you can choose to stay with Connect or get both Connect and Pro. (Theoretically, you could get Pro and then cancel Connect, but we don't recommend it because you'd lose your perks and some features and books.)
But Connect+Pro is a temporary situation, only during the early access period.
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