Hi,
I can't find this information on the website.
If I were to buy the Bible Study LE edition of Logos - what would the upgrade cost be for Scholar's Library, or Scholar's Silver?
Thanks,
-Rob
I don't know how to get that information either. You may wish to call the 800 number on the Logos web site (near the upper right corner) and talk to a sales rep, one of them may be able to answer your question.
However, if you are wondering whether this would be a path to save some money, I doubt that you would. In fact, you'd probably be best off going straight to Scholar's Silver, if you could afford it, or could make the payments on the payment plan. At least, it would be my expectation that this would be the most cost effective way to go -- I could be wrong, which is why I suggested talking with a sales rep.
That information has never been published, as far as I am aware. Of course, the minimum would be the differences in price when you purchase one of them, but I imagine it is more than that, just how much I don't know. Others have done this who post on the forum so may have a ballpark figure thay can give you.
Right now packages are 20% off. That is special pricing that won't last much longer. You will do you best money-wise to buy up now as it will cost more to upgrade after the discount expires.
Can you tell us what you anticipate using Logos for and why you have selected the libraries you mentioned?
I'm sure you're right that it'd be cheaper overall to get the more expensive version originally. What I'm trying to work out though is whether there is much lost (in terms of money) by getting the cheaper version to start with and upgrading later.
My wife is asking me what I would like for Christmas, so I'm considering getting the more basic version - but if the upgrade cost is similar to the cost of the scholar's version then it might not be worth bothering.
I don't live in the US, so I wouldn't want to call the 800 number - but even if I did it seems pretty shady to me to not publish that sort of information freely (I'm assuming it's some oversight that it's not available publicly).
it seems pretty shady to me to not publish that sort of information freely (I'm assuming it's some oversight that it's not available publicly).
In Logos' defense, upgrade pricing can get complicated. Sometimes we own items included in an upgraded library and Logos gives some credit toward that.
However, you can email sales@logos.com put Upgrade Pricing in the subject line, ask the question you asked here and you'll get a reply back sometime next week (after Logos reopens on Monday).
Oh - I understand that it can be complicated in those sorts of situations, but it must be pretty easy in this situation, and surely this is a common sort of question.
Do Logos read the forums or do I need to email them separately?
Rob, I went from the Bible Study to the Scholar's. It cost a little over $300, but it depends on your library. The upgrade costs are different for each person.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Randy
Thank you for all your comments everyone btw
One issue is that for me even the basic version is a quite a lot of money - without there being a demo it's hard to know what to do (I know you can return it within 30 days though...)
Some Logos employees read the forums.
But sales rep's are often too busy to do so. I'd recommend what Mark did and email sales@logos.com They try to respond within 24hrs, but it's already Saturday afternoon in this time zone, so you may not get a response until Monday. On the other hand, the sales rep's are very diligent and I wouldn't be surprised at all that you get a response yet today.
So yes, email them immediately. You may be pleasantly surprised.
but if the upgrade cost is similar to the cost of the scholar's version then it might not be worth bothering.
Suppose you pay just the difference in base price for the two packages. If you buy Bible Study LE today at $212 and then wait to upgrade until after the 20% sale is gone, Scholar's Library will then be $630 and Bible study Library would be $265. The difference between the packages at that point would be $365. You'd have a total of $577 invested. If you went direct to Scholar's today your cost is $504, so it will cost you an extra $73 to wait until after the sale to upgrade (assuming no extra fees for the upgrade beyond the differences in base packages).
Scholar's Silver is another issue altogether. It is $800 today but will be $1000 after the sale. Going from Bible Study today to Scholar's Silver after the sale will cost you $735 (package-to-package cost). You will then have $947 invested. This is very little savings off the base price. In fact the eventual 'upgrade' cost is just $65 less than what it would cost today with the sale on.
I believe you will find that there are some additional costs beyond a simple package-to-package base price difference, so your actual costs to upgrade would be somewhat higher.
Logos does not give you full credit for your package when you upgrade. The difference in price between levels is less than the upgrade price between packages when you upgrade.
In my opinion this pricing model says to me that:
"Logos loves new customers more than loyal repeat ones"
and it is one area that I feel that Logos should change so that if you upgrade now or later you pay the current difference between the packages.
Regards,
Clinton
I agree that the pricing model for upgrades is kind of nutty. I bought OL a few years ago. To go to Scholars is approx $300 upgrade. The delta on OL and Scholars is buy is approx $150. In the meantime I've purchased some extras, so that none of the upgrades make any sense now. If I got credit for my current resources, the upgrade would be negative (Logos pays me!!). But maybe that's why Logos has Black Friday sales, prepubs, 12 Days of Christmas etc - it's the only promotional path possible to keep a repetitive revenue flow following package purchases.
In my opinion this pricing model says to me that: "Logos loves new customers more than loyal repeat ones"
HMM. Or perhaps they are trying to incentivize us to buy the biggest package we can afford right out of the box. I do hear what you are saying and think the numbers ought to be closer.
One thing that some people have done is take advantage of Logos' 12 month same as cash offer, which will cost $60.00 in monthly service charges. I think for a big package like Scholar's Silver at the current $800 price that is an option some might take. The payments including the service charge would be just under $72.00 a month at today's price. I generally don't encourage indebtedness, so that isn't a recommendation, just an observation.
Or perhaps they are trying to incentivize us to buy the biggest package we can afford right out of the box.
I think this would encourage people to spend more than they could afford in order not to be penalized later, which in my opinion is not something I would encourage my customers to do if I was in charge. So many companies will offer you full price when you upgrade. I really wish Logos would too. In fact an argument for a marketing strategy could be structured around this...
"We're so sure you will love our software that we will give you full price as credit for future upgrades to higher level when you buy any package."
One thing that some people have done is take advantage of Logos' 12 month same as cash offer
Don't get me started on this. Same as cash? No way! There is a $5.00 per month service charge. While this is to cover costs, it results are the same as an EXTREMELY high interest rate when used for smaller purchases and people should be aware of what this means.
On a $500 purchase this is the same as a loan at an interest rate of 21.7%.You would be better to get a credit card at 19.5% interest and do the purchase on it.It only gets worse for smaller purchases.A $250 purchase over twelve months is the same as a 41% interest rate. Ouch!
So in most cases, unless you are spending thousands, the Logos 12 month payment plan is equivalent to a very high interest rate and should not be used by anyone unless there is no other way
That is,
you need the resource now and you do not have the money and you cannot get credit some other way,
or
your book allowance from your employer would be lost if not structured this way.
Prepubs and sales would of course affect the equivalent interest rate, but in general using the purchase plan is not a wise use of (funds in my opinion.)
One point to make about the payment plan is for example if you put 1000.00 on the plan they add the additional 5.00 per month on to the total for all 12 months. That means if you take the full 12 months to pay you end up paying only 6% on the total, but if you pay it off in 10 months they give you 10.00 back!
Another point to be made is if you put 1000.00 on the plan and pay it for 2 months and then want to put another 1000.00 on the plan and want to pay for it over 12 months they redo your payment plan and you pay more per month but the additional 1000.00 only has to pay 5.00 a month for the two months to extend your total back out to 12 months. In this case over the course of the program you would have paid out a total of 2070.00 over 14 months. Which is only 3.5% of the total.
One last point is for smaller amounts on one time plans you are much better off to spread the plan over much smaller periods of time.
A person needs to really design their buying habits around how to get the most out of this plan.
If you use this plan there are good ways to use it and there are bad ways to use it.
I am allowed about 100.00 a month for books, I could never take advantage of the package pricing and the huge discounts if I did not use this plan, but since I use the plan, it allows me to get a lot more for my money, I have bought things worth over 2400.00 in the last two years and it cost me less than 6% and my discounts where a lot bigger than that.
In Christ,
Jim VanSchoonhoven
Clinton, I believe your figures are off. If I put 500.00 on the plan they would charge me 60.00 over the 12 months which is only 12% not 21.7%.
But I do agree we must watch how you use the plan. And for smaller amounts you can always pay it off early and get a refund for the months you did not use. For example pay that 500.00 in 6 months and it only cost you 30.00, becuse they give you 30.00 back for those months you did not use.
Except of course you don't need to choose 12 months. You could choose 5 months and pay $105/month.
While upgrade costs can be somewhat nebulous, in my opinion (especially if money is tight) you are better off buying a cheaper base package for two reasons:
1. You can always upgrade to something else and the upgrade price is going to be roughly similar to paying the difference. If you pay somewhat more or less then what you would have had you bought the package outright; you have still, in the short run saved cash and stayed within your monetary means.
2. The more you use Logos the more you can figure out exactly what YOU want, which may or may not make a higher base package worthwhile. Perhaps you will find that you would rather spend your hard earned money on a commentary series that is not in a higher (affordable) base package (as opposed to the Portfolio option which is nice, but let's face it, takes a lottery winner to afford). Or you really want a specific author (Piper or Lucado) rather than a more expensive base package that does not have those authors. Time and experience with Logos 4 will allow you to spend your money in a much more focused way that benefits you personally.
I believe your figures are off. If I put 500.00 on the plan they would charge me 60.00 over the 12 months which is only 12% not 21.7%.
Hi Jim,
Sorry, you are incorrect, my figures are right (within rounding) and further, your response helps prove my point that people do not understand the effective interest rate they are paying. Thanks for helping me out with this. Let me explain a bit further.
If you borrow $500.00 for one year, you don't owe the whole $500 for the whole year, your average balance is about 1/2 of it. Thus for $500, at first you owe $500, then $450 (approx)... then $50, then $0, on average you owe, about $250 and $60/$250 is 24%.
Why then is my equivalent interest rate not 24% you ask? It is because when you pay interest, the interest charges are more at the start and almost nothing at the end but your paymens are fixed. So the amount of interest and principle changes with each payment. The amount of interest declines, the amount of principle increases. However this makes the average balance higher than 1/2 of the original loan amount. When the interest rate is 0, the average balance is exactly 1/2. As the interest rate increases so does the average balance.
And for smaller amounts you can always pay it off early
In your and Mark Barne's responses about paying it off early, the same result applies to a loan. If you pay it off early, you do not pay the interest so that in itself is not a valid argument for one over the other. It is valid if the interest you would be paying on a loan is the same as the effective interest on the Logos payment plan. In that case, the Logos plan is better, but given the numbers, Logos' effective interest rate is pretty large and my point is valid.
For most "wants" in life, borrowing money to pay for them is not a wise use of our resources.
Clinton, let me ask you this, if for example today there is a sale on a package for 1000.00 but the price goes up to 1200.00 at the end of the week. I do not have 1000 dollars right now, so I decide to put this package on the 12 month plan. So at the end of the 12 months I have paid 1060 dollars for the package instead of paying 1200 dollars for the package.
Now I ask you what is the % of increase from 1000 dollars up to 1200 dollars? And what is the % of increase between 1000 dollars up to 1060 dollars. These are examples from real cases that have happened in the past. And I know I came out ahead by using the plan, but I want to know from you what were the % of increase in each case.
I look forward to your answer.
Clinton, let me ask you this, if for example today there is a sale on a package for 1000.00 but the price goes up to 1200.00 at the end of the week.....
Hi Jim
I addressed this question in my original post when I said "Prepubs and sales would of course affect the equivalent interest rate, but in general..." Sales do not affect the equation in the way you are asking.
At the end of 12 months you have paid $1060 for $1000 worth of resources. This is equivalent to approximately an 11% interest rate. So if you can get other financing at less than 11% you are better off doing that. If this is a "want" purchase, then cash remains the best financing answer. Again, it comes down to an effective rate and does not change my point of being aware of the real cost of the financing.
Now I ask you what is the % of increase from 1000 dollars up to 1200 dollars? And what is the % of increase between 1000 dollars up to 1060 dollars.
These questions again show that you have missed the point. So to these specific questions, I would say, figure out them yourself if you want to know, they do not address the issue I raised.
The way you have worded your question assumes that if you do not use the Logos purchase plan then you are not allowed to buy the sale priced item and will be forced to pay the higher price. I doubt this is true.
The point remains that when you use the purchase plan you are paying an effective interest rate that is very high and you should be aware of what it is so that you can be wise with your resources.
I agree with that, and as a rule don't borrow money (the only money we have borrowed as a family are our mortgage, a state-subsidised student loan, and some interest free loans which we fund by putting the capital in a special account at the time of purchase). But I think we're making the issue with Logos Payment Plans rather black and white. Sometimes payment plans are very useful, and (I believe) a wise use of my resources.
My last payment plan purchase was for a major commentary set, which cost just over $1,800. I took out a 6 month plan, which cost me $30. This works out an an APR (Annual Percentage Rate, which is what I think you were calculating) of less than 6%. That's certainly better than I could get from any other form of non-mortgage borrowing.
Anyway, the bottom line is that by using the payment plan, I could have access to the resources six months earlier than I otherwise could. That meant I could use a couple of the volumes in sermons that I was currently preaching through. The alternative would have been to buy two or three print volumes to use whilst I waited to save up for the whole set - but would have cost me more than the $30.
So for me, I had three options (a) Don't use the resources during these sermon series, (b) Pay more than $30 getting them now and still not having access to the several dozen other commentaries, or (c) Use a payment plan. As it was worth more than $30 to me to have access the commentaries now, it was a simple decision to make.
Clinton, I am glad, you are warning folks about the possible abuse in the program, but in all fairness, you do not seem to understand how the program is helpful to others and can save them money. It has done that for me.
Comparing apples to apples if a certain sale price goes from 1000.00 to 1200.00 the increase looks like 20% to me. If you do not have the 1000.00 until after the special sale price goes off and decide to use the 12 month plan to get in on the sales price and you have to pay 1060.00, it appears that you have only a 6% increase in price. Now you may not want to figure it this way but I actually saved 140.00 by using the 12 month plan while the sale was on. If I would have had to wait until I had the cash I would have had to pay 1200.00.
These resources are very valuable to me and I was thankful that logos allowed me to use this plan on sale items. There is hardly an item on my program that was not bought on a huge sale in order to take advantage of the sale. This has been the way I have bought community pricing items and Pre-pub items and I have saved tons of money by using the program.
I use the resources for my personal studies, for work on my DTH studies and as a teaching elder at our local fellowship. I feel much better about using this program for these resources than I do about using credit to buy either a house or car, but at the same time I am still carefull about how I use the plan.
If you do not have the 1000.00 until after the special sale price goes off and decide to use the 12 month plan to get in on the sales price and you have to pay 1060.00, it appears that you have only a 6% increase in price
You do have a 6% increase in price, but if you were looking to compare the cost of a Logos Payment Plan with a short term loan, then you would need to calculate the figure differently to compare the Payment Plan with the Loan. The payment plan would be equivalent to an interest rate of 10.9% in this example.
As you rightly point out, in this scenario it saved you $140. But if you had found a loan at an interest rate of (for example 8.9%), then you could have saved yourself a little more. Although it's so little (about $12), it's almost certainly not worth the hassle of applications etc.
PS - If you're interested and have excel, the formula for calculating the equivalent annual interest is:
RATE(num_months, monthly_payment, resources_cost)*12
monthly_payment should include the administration fee, resources_cost should exclude the administration fee.
This equivalent "interest rate" should only be used to compare with the interest rates charged by other companies, it doesn't have much value beyond that.
(on the original topic...)
I have discovered the upgrade costs. On the academic pricing page they list the academic price as well as the retail price for upgrading from one base package to another: http://www.logos.com/academic/discount/program/products/4
Oddly they don't have Bible Study -> Scholar's, but they have the others:
Scholar's -> Scholar's Silver $370
Scholar's Silver -> Scholar's Gold $380
Scholar's Gold -> Scholar's Platinum $310
Scholar's Platinum -> Portfolio $2,600
If you look at the difference between the different base packages at retail price you find that the numbers are exactly the same, so if these upgrade costs are correct then the cost to upgrade from one base package to another is just the cost difference between the two.
but in all fairness, you do not seem to understand how the program is helpful to others and can save them money. It has done that for me.
I completely understand that the plan is helpful in cases and I am both glad that it has been beneficial to you and I am sure that it has been to others.
My original post was the objection to the statement that the plan is same as cash. Administration fees while they may be necessary from the lenders point of view, first, are in reality exactly the same as interest, second, that rate can be obsenely high not used with care and third should be approached with caution. (As should any transaction where you borrow money)
I used the term "don't get me started" because in the marketing material that has been presented, this fact has not been stated and I think it should be made obvious.
Thanks for your feedback
Something else to remember when comparing this to other loans many of those loans show you a certain rate, but they also have an application fee or an adminsitration fee which is added to the last payment. These fees can be 30.00 or more which effectively raises your rate on the overall loan, this has the biggest impact on the smallest loans. The result is that most of these loans have a rate much higher when you figure these fees in, and this is really true the smaller the loan, just like it is on this plan, that is why you should pay off small amounts on this program as quickly as possible.
I think Clinton's point is valid this program is the same as a loan and should be looked at as such, not as the same as cash.
All things need to be considered and you must understand when to use this program and when not to use it. In my case I use it all of the time to take advantage of sale discounts, and to help level out payments, since I am only allowed about 100.00 a month for books. It has saved me alot of money and allowed me to get the large sale discounts, I am very thankful for it!
But the same as cash??? No!
The way I see this or any loan it is not the % of the loan that matters as much as the total cost you will actually pay. You have to add in the % rate along with all of the fees and in this day and age they are charging more fees in order to make their % rates look better, but in the end a lower rate plus fees can cost you more. The Logos program is no different it is an extremely low rate of interest, but the cost can be very high on low amounts spread over 12 months because of the fees!
For myself, I look at the processing fee as the equivalent of rental costs on the resources until I can save up the funds to purchase the resources as a lump sum. This means that I consider buying on payments only things that I want to use right now. Then I decide how much "right now" is worth to me and make my decision accordingly.
I looked at the wrong prices. I was mistaken in when I said they do not give you full credit for UG. This is clearly wrong.
They do not give the same discount on upgrades as they do on the packages. Since the prices have been on an almost continuous sale since time began, I used the wrong prices.
Sorry Logos.
MJ Smith, I had never thought about that idea before, I always use it just to take advantage of sales on things I will use alot.
I can see how it could be worth using for your reason.
The base packages are currently on 20% off sale. Is the level of sale ever / usually more than this?
Similar but related question - apart from the academic discount, is there a way to get more than 20% off at the moment?
SBL members get a 25% discount. But membership costs at least $60, so you'd have to be spending more than $1,200 to make it worth joining just for the additional 5% discount.
When L4 was first launched the discount was 25% I believe. That is the best I've seen for L4 upgrades. The current one, timed with the release of the Mac version is less. I would not expect to see this discount last much longer and don't know if there will be another discount offered again until version 5 comes out in the distant future. If you are sitting on the fence and have the money, buy now. It may never be less expensive.
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