A bit of Negative about Logos

I came from WS and initially suffered from "sticker shock" as well, not to mention a resistance to change.
 However, Word search will continue to function until Operating Systems update past its current capabilities, even after that there will probably be some techo-workarounds on the net. Once those stop working then WS will be officially dead and we would have had nothing, but Faithlife Logos took us on free of charge and is fully unlocking our libraries. The base engine for Logos is free so we will always have access to our books. That is a win for us. I can recall software in the past, especially in games, that go out of business and you're left with nothing, thats why you agree to a EULA on installation.

 I understand budgets well, but, if you never spend another penny you will still have your library and the features you were given.

Now, there are 2 options that may be useful to you
1. Faithlife Connect- Has 3 packages that vary in library and features

2. Payment Plans- One option I used with Logos that I never used with Wordearch is payment plans, and they are reasonable.

But, if they're out of your budget, you still have everything you had before the transition, and more.

Just a quick add: I don't know if you can look up old comments, but I assure you my early comments weren't the nicest even though I tried to be nice.

Two things changed my outlook. The wonderful community here that is always available to help and learning the power of what I had been given. (For me that began with the Quickstart guides and Morris Proctor's free webinar series)

xnman said:

if Logos is all about money and doesn't have a heart

There is a difference between "all about" and "strategically profitable". I have a stack of discs from software that did not remain profitable. Logos has many different levels of resources and features. I don't resent those who are able to purchase more than I am able. I don't want to "shame" Logos into giving away what THEY HAVE PAID to produce. If they move into "negative profits" I would be forced to add my DVDs of Logos resources to the stack of unsupported and defunct programs. As Bob has written, there are many free alternatives (with lesser features) if you find 

xnman said:

I find the pricing outrageous

Feel free to use one of those alternatives, but please don't accuse Faith life of being "all about the money". Some of us find value in investing in a sustainable company.

xnman said:

Hope I don't get banned for writing this. 

You have to really troll-ify to get banned. Usually, after the Logosians have had their supper.

Most of what you're observing is true; assigning motives (money, no heart), then no. But I wouldn't get excited at the packages ... they seem to try to get you just enough hooked to pull the buy-trigger. But at a certain price-point (hefty), they ARE bargains. The key is to get enough resources, for the dynamic price to come down.

Getting resources cheaper in Logos largely involves patience ... waiting for this and that sale ... a publisher blowout, and the specialty packages (not so much bloat).  I don't think I've ever bought an upgrade package. I have just what I want (5,000 books over about 15 years). And works great.

xnman said:

He could have priced it at $400 or more. He owned the market back then. Instead he priced it at $49. He said he'd get more money by getting more people on windows (great marketing ploy because it worked).

It was a model that worked for his business but FL has to pay royalties to book publishers - they are not going to accept Logos selling a packge of their books for $49.

xnman said:

But then, if Logos is all about money and doesn't have a heart and not trying to help people get into God's Word... well that appearance does not set well with anyone.

FL is not all about money but it does enable the company to have be there for us all next week, next month, next year and into following decades of our life (depending upon the milage we have already done).

xnman said:

Hope I don't get banned for writing this. 

While I will defend FL on this point, there is much I have said about their approach to other things and I have been open and honest and said much more than you have and I'm still here posting. FL are not a greedy company, there are simply trying to ensure they are looking after their employees and are here for the long term.

I  hope we see more posts from you xnman.

xnman said:

A bit of a negative. I like Logos and I understand that Logos needs to make money and sells everything in "Packages" and puts some things in the "higher cost packages" to get people to buy them. I came from WS and no matter how many books I owned... I was arbitrarily stuck in "Basic" for whatever reason. I did choose to upgrade to Starter mainly because of the 50% discount given to WS owners. 

So, here I am in Starter package... and poorer than most folks on here and never could afford higher priced packages...  so here I am with Sermon Builder and not Sermon Manager...  In fact there are many such things in Logos. While I understand making money.... I find the pricing outrageous.  I remember when Bill Gates came out with Windows 3.0. He could have priced it at $400 or more. He owned the market back then. Instead he priced it at $49. He said he'd get more money by getting more people on windows (great marketing ploy because it worked). And he did. I think this would be a good lesson for Logos to consider doing. People like me, who can't afford thousands of dollars to upgrade, might consider upgrading for a cheaper and fairer price. And I would think there would be a lot of people in my category.  But then, if Logos is all about money and doesn't have a heart and not trying to help people get into God's Word... well that appearance does not set well with anyone. Just my 2 cents....  but I'm like Paul.... my friends may go to hell, but at least I've told them about Jesus Christ.  Hope I don't get banned for writing this. 

I understand the frustration for people new to Logos and not understand their pricing strategies. I think over time you'll make more peace with it.

I just want to point out something minimal to frame the picture correctly.

In Logos, your "OS", "Windows", is the Logos engine. It actually is free. (It is better than the free Windows 10 because the manufacturer has paid and transferred that cost to you.) They didn't advertise it but after a few months people can obtain the Logos 9 engine for free.

Now, here's the tricky part in Logos: some features might require extensive "tagging", sold in the form of a "dataset". Making an analogy of physical book sale, this is no different from selling you a printed concordance. You may say, "all those bible words are already in my bible, your concordance is just a feature that reshuffle things, why are you charging me for content I own?" That might sound ridiculous, but essentially is what happening to datasets. It is a labour intensive, creative (as in you created something of value) process, that cannot be done without $$ and obviously they need to make it profitable to stay in business (or not deliver that feature at all if it would have been free.)

So, a feature in Logos is more like a software running in Windows. Logos is your "OS", but on top of it you might want to expand its functionality and add "Word", "Excel", etc. that is produced by the same company but they charge you extra if you need that.

So in this perspective, if you find the pricing outrageous (which is not a surprise from someone coming from WORDSearch), then just don't buy it. It means the extra convenient gained does not worth your money. Speaking in the economical sense, the potential time saved via this feature does not worth that much.

And in a certain sense it is true that you don't need that. Without Sermon Manager you thrive all these years. Why bother you can't get it now it is available but not affordable? As in many new toys in the market, you really don't need it. In some cases, owning it is a trade off between time and money. In many more cases, it is just a waste of time and money.

xnman said:

Already, Logos is my "goto" Bible program and tool.  It's just that the pricing in Logos was a bit of "sticker shock

Probably more people feel the same than the reply here may suggests. I understand rationally why, but I still feel like that, especially after buying Logos 8 (I have a few Logos 8 packages and its full feature set already), the full feature set for 9 alone still cost me ~$192 (even with academic pricing.)

May be Logos is trying to make us feel poor so that we can "enter the kingdom"

There is definitely the potential to spend a lot of money getting the resources you want.  As others have already stated, building a library can take some time.  However, you can get 3 free books every month (Logos, Verbum and faithlife ebooks).  In addition, there are usually several add ons that are heavily discounted.  Logos also offers a number of sales throughout the year. 

I would recommend visiting the forums regularly as that is how I usually find about them.

I used Wordsearch for over 20 years because of the simplicity of use and the low cost of the resources. I was able to add books from other STEP publishers, Galaxie, Doxa, Quickverse, Bible Explorer and Bible Navigator.

But the low cost model had some disadvantages. Often, the books didn't link properly or had random errors. The program crashed occasionally and the indexing of large libraries was incomplete. The mobile app was disappointing. The lack of continuity between some MyWSB.com purchases and the desktop program was confusing. Wordsearch 12 was released mid 2018 and last updated in late 2019. In 2018 Wordsearch started working on a 64-bit upgrade for Mac Catalina but never released a stable version.

When Bibleworks was discontinued in 2018 I was concerned Wordsearch might eventually follow the same path and my investment would someday become obsolete. When Lifeway closed their stores in 2019 I wondered if Wordsearch was far behind. Fortunately, Wordsearch transitioned to Logos instead of just shutting down. My books were transferred for free to a software that will be around for a long time.

At first I was confused about all the amazing features that people talked about. Faithlife had provided us with equivalent features to what we had in Wordsearch. For free, I could continue with that level. But if I wanted to move beyond what I had in Wordsearch and get the full benefit of Logos, I would need to invest in an upgrade. It took me a while to figure that out and I'm thankful the 50% discount was extended and was still around.

Wordsearch still works for those who want to stick with it or users can rebuild libraries with one of the other Bible software companies. Logos has a different pricing model than Wordsearch and it will take some time to learn the best deal strategies. But I am grateful for the transition to Logos when I consider what might have happened.

Hi, 

I understand your pain. Logos packages and books are expensive. It would be nice if Logos gave away their packages for much less like you say Gates did with his software. However, here's where that analogy breaks down. What typically costs so much with Logos is not the software. In fact, Logos gives that away, at least a basic version. What's expensive with Logos is the books. And Logos can't give the books away for free because they don't get the books for free. They pay for each and every license that they sell. Had Microsoft Windows came with a hundreds of newly released books and older copyrighted books, then it would have cost much more than $49. I hope that makes sense. 

xnman said:

But then, if Logos is all about money and doesn't have a heart and not trying to help people get into God's Word... well that appearance does not set well with anyone. Just my 2 cents....

Just my 2 cents, but I don't understand why people (not just the OP) have the idea that if something is "Christian" it should be free, as though those involved in producing it should donate their time, or are just greedy if they ask more than someone wants to pay.

There are reasons that so many Bible programs have gone the way of the dodo while Logos remains. One of those reasons is that Logos has a reasonable – yes, reasonable – pricing structure. They are able to pay for licensing resources AND pay employees AND provide the company's owner a fair return on his investment.

Logos IS too expensive for some, unfortunately. But pastoral ministry is not a cheap profession. Before moving to Logos I had a print library of about 400 books, and close to $25,000 invested. I think I paid close to $1,000 for Kittel alone. I spent close to $15,000 by the time I graduated from Talbot School of Theology in 1993. I remember paying close to $100 for a Greek New Testament. Theological books are expensive (I assume that all academic materials are expensive but I have no experience with other disciplines). 

And you know something? Not one of those books was cross-referenced with the others, or tagged, or could be found in a search that took seconds. It took me hours to do a fraction of the research I can do now in minutes. Forget trying to find a lemma in commentary or compare ten translations. 

Edit: I now have many thousands in invested in Logos, but I have over 10,000 resources, and magnitudes-easier use of them. 

Thanks for listening. 

I want to add my thoughts about this, and I am only speaking for myself.  Electronic books are expensive, but so are paper books.  I have found having my theological books in Logos format to be far more useful to me than having them in paper, and generally they are more economical.  You also never have to worry about them wearing out or getting lost.

Over the 48 years I have been a pastor, I have never been rich.  My first church paid me the enormous salary of $325 per month. My wife and I raised four children, and God always provided.  My churches were generous when they could afford to be. 

About 30 years ago, I first bought Logos Bible Software. I had bought a CD-ROM Bible program called CDWORD, and it went out of business.  But Logos bought the rights to the CDWORD resources and offered CDWORD customers an upgrade deal.  I am so thankful that they did.   

I didn't have a lot of money to spend, but over the next 30 years I consistently made most of my library investments in Logos Books.  I generally used payment plans to do this.  Over that time, I built a Logos library that has blessed my preaching / teaching ministry.  I would never have built a library with some best language tools and commentaries available anywhere without Logos Bible Software.  It was always the library that drew me to Logos.

I do not consider Logos overpriced.  I consider it a bargain.  Build your library with patience and persistence.  Logos gives us free books every month.  And some of them are high quality books.  They also have excellent and frequent sales.  Take advantage of those.

Also, I highly recommend learning to make personal books.  There are thousands of wonderful Christian resources available for free on the internet, which are not under copyright.  You can make these books part of your Logos library for free.

(Opps.  I didn't notice the original post was a few years old either.  Must be my old age.)

iTS A RIP OFF

MJ does Logos have a tool, or program for phrasing the Greek NT alongside an Englisdh Bible?