Logos Upgrade - No Subscription or online

Update to the latest and greatest free Logos software.  Upgrade per Mick if you want (I advise you to). Start a free trial subscription to see if you can live with or without it. Breathe easy. Wait a year, and the whole thing won't seem complicated at all. Hopefully.

I was an adamant anti-subscriber. Still am. Almost rabid. I made my case, stood my ground, defended my cause, and lost. Well, maybe not lost. I went ahead and subscribed for two long, full years. Apologies to my current dear anti-subscriber friends. I was one of you and still am, but alas, I subscribed! The roof didn't cave in, though I heard great cracking noises. The bank account is still intact. And you know what? I am glad I subscribed.  I like it.

Aaron Hamilton said:

There is a misconception that only big spenders can have their subscription pay for itself. That's simply not true. The subscription savings are the real deal.

Sure, it all depends.  Back when I was building my library, concentrating on discounts was the key.  And it paid off, grandly.

But after 'thinking' about the whole thing, I agree with 1CO (our resident Logosian financial economist) ... the piper has to be paid, at some point. Bob seemed to do a lot of re-investing (arguing the profits were just barely).  But the PE's will get their due.  Just a matter of 'who' pays.

Yesterday, I sidled up to Amazon, saving wildly over Logos. I was 'honestly' surprised.  Why was the Logos price so far out of line?   So I started looking at 'nearby' Logos books as well (not to mention the Logos.com engine that just can't).

Seems to me, the stable has to be re-valued at some point. Offering a series of discounts to some subscribers has to be made up somewhere.  I doubt the subscriber marginal increase is that significant.

DMB said:

I agree with 1CO (our resident Logosian financial economist)

... the piper has to be paid, at some point. Bob seemed to do a lot of re-investing (arguing the profits were just barely).  But the PE's will get their due.  Just a matter of 'who' pays.....Offering a series of discounts to some subscribers has to be made up somewhere.  I doubt the subscriber marginal increase is that significant.

How can I disagree with DMB who agrees with me! People have immense respect for Bob, the founder of Logos. If there was a win-win system, don't we think that he would have implemented it? If we are not in a win-win world, then Private Equity owners are not interested in lining your pockets at their expense.  

In another post, I mentioned that the 2025 Libraries have so much bloat than prior libraries that we are effectively paying more for the resources we are interested within those libraries. In this one, I will show that this 5% additional saving is also a myth using one category of an example: I will show that Logos has increased the prices of the Legacy libraries. 

I got the screenshots of my price for certain legacy libraries I was interested in before subscription (sometime in the week before subscription started). 'Cos I know the playbook of Private Equity based on the research that has been done on private equity, my friends. I know they are going to increase the price. So I also got screenshots of the same library after subscription (sometimes in the first 7 days).

Look for 2 things in the screenshots below: Dynamic Collection Value and Dynamic Price (price before 25% discount) so that we can first do a apples-to-apples comparison. 

The Dynamic Collection Value remains the same in all cases implying the library contents has not changed and the pricing of the individual resources has not changed.

The Dynamic Price has gone up in every instance that I looked. What explains this behavior/behaviour (for our non-US friends)? Other than they have jacked up the price bcos of the 5% peace offering to woo subscribers!

In the following example, the price has gone up from $10.24 to $12.78. (The Dynamic Sale Price has also gone up even after the 5% discount from $8.19 to $9.58)

Logos 8 Lutheran Silver (before subscription)

Logos 8 Luther Silver (after subscription)

In the following example, the price has gone up from $17.39 to $21.72 (The Dynamic Sale Price has also gone up even after the 5% discount from $13.91 to $16.29)

Logos 7 Standard Silver (before subscription)

Logos 7 Standard Silver (after subscription)

Sure, there are also cases where the Dynamic Price has not increased by 5%, so the additional 5% reduces the price compared to earlier.  See below an example like that.

Note the Dynamic Price has increased from $306.12 to $320.99, but the Dynamic Sale Price, which factors in the additional 5% has gone down has gone down from $244.90 to $240.74 (thus favoring customers).

Logos 8 Reformed Platinum (before subscription)

Logos 8 Reformed Platinum (after subscription)

Smart Logosians will point that we get an additional 5% cash back. Yes, in some cases, we will get resources a bit cheaper after the 5% cash back. The point I am making is that prices are going to continue to go up because Private Equity owners are looking for their return on investment. This is not Bob's world anymore. Feel free to cling on to Bob's world if it helps you sleep at night. Alternatively, we should stop being an ostrich and learn from research that people have done on Private Equity. Its your choice.

Prices are going to continue going up and the profitability knob will be turned ever so slightly continuously until they see profitability turn down because they've jacked up their prices too much. Bob's world was not about maximizing profit. Private Equity's world is the opposite.

Aaron Hamilton said:

But it presents neither the only perspective nor the whole picture.

Yes ... it's the old JC Penney problem.  The sale price (from an increased regular price), or just the regular (lower) price.

Over the years, Logos has worked its way into a buy-on-sale (or now 5% off! if you give us more money sale) to where the regular catalog is a question mark.  I hadn't seen 1CO's examples in such stark detail.  If I don't subscribe I'm paying inflated prices!  Maybe just not pay.

But I'd argue, the long-term damper is buy or not (period).  I still think a good Logos library can be had at fairly limited investment. The logic for more-more to feed a search engine .... meh.   

And this leads to the circular point for point argument that is the "elephant in the room" - while it may be a lower up front cost (though Logos had offered payment plans) - is it really a better deal? When I (possibly) paid a little more to OWN the product, if I no longer had the resources to pay a monthly fee or if I just found that I had everything that I needed for my personal use - I OWNED and lost none of my product…

Today's new users own nothing and pay for months or years and if something comes up that leads to the need to cancel, they wind up with a free engine with limited features and limited resources… Yet somehow that is a better deal??? Only for the company and their new "Netflix" minded business attitude (Pay perpetually or go use Tubi or YouTube)

I'm not aware of anything stated that the policy has changed, though we are seeing other long time "policy" like changes… So, who knows…

Just continued reasoning that I have gone from doing presentations of the software, to recommending people look elsewhere... There's no long term benefit for a new user that is not attached to perpetual payments in comparison to the ability to own.

Private equity investors are super smart (on average). If they didn't believe that they could incorporate changes to Logos so to throw out gobs of cash flow for their investors in turn, they wouldn't have bought Logos from the founder, Bob Pritchett.

From what I've read on the Forums, Bob was not a profit maximizer. You can be sure that private equity investors are totally not like Bob. They will squeeze every last drop of profit out of Logos. Which means, everything is going to go up in price.

After two years of paying for a subscription, you'll own all the features you paid for over those two years.

Logos can't give you AI features in perpetuity because it's an ongoing cost for Logos. And of course you don't get to keep features until you pay for them. You're basically paying for them on an installment plan. If you decide not to pay for them, you don't get to keep them. And why would you get a refund? You've been having the benefit of using these features while you've been paying for them.

I didn't realize that if you paid for the entire two years up front that it wasn't refundable. If was thinking about the monthly payment plan.

I agree that if you pay up front for two years and want to cancel after 1 month, you should be able to receive a pro-rated refund.

Do you have a link for info on that? When I search for "perpetual license" on the Logos site I get no hits.

Or maybe the "free" engine?

Be like Bob.