Logos 7 Buyers' Guide, Part 1: Introduction

In considering a Logos purchase, there are three things to think about:

1. What level do you need (and can you afford!)?
2. Do you want to pay everything upfront and keep it forever, or would you prefer a lower initial cost and then ongoing rental of the advanced features?
3. What denominational flavour suits you best?

Let's briefly look at the three questions.

What level do you need?

Logos 7 comes in many levels. Within each family, all the larger packages include everything in the cheaper packages (so Baptist Gold contains everything in Baptist Silver). Assuming your budget can handle it, the descriptions below should point you in the right direction:

• Starter ($294.99 or $145+membership)  — an entry-level package, without original languages
• Bronze ($629.99 or $180+membership) — students and preachers who need a little help in the original languages, but not many books
• Silver ($999.99 or $550+membership) — students and pastors wanting to dig deeper
• Gold ($1,549.99 or $1,100+membership) — pastors and post-grads looking to do detailed exegesis or explore historical theology
• Platinum ($2,149.99 or $1,700+membership) — pastors wanting to do in-depth Greek exegesis
• Diamond ($3,449.99 or $3,000+membership) — pastors who want a wide range of resources from the last three centuries, and are involved in ministry and more academic work
• Portfolio ($4,979.99 or $4,540+membership) — pastor-theologians, particularly those with a strong interest in Bible background.
• Collector's Edition ($10,799.99 or $10,350+membership) — seminary professors (or possibly PhD students) who major in OT or NT studies, and who want a varied library that crosses disciplines or are involved in church leadership.

If your budget can't handle what you know you need, there are two options. You can either spread the cost using a payment plan, or you can buy a smaller package now and upgrade it later when you can afford to do so. You'll only pay the difference between the two packages (give or take a few dollars).

Do you prefer outright purchase, or part-rental?

In Logos 7, base packages come in to sections: the library (which is all the books), and the feature set (which is all the datasets and features). You have to buy the books, but you can get the features in two ways: either as an outright purchase for $449.99, or as an annual rental through Logos Now which costs $99.95/yr (currently discounted to $89.95).

Logos Now gets you all of the Logos 7 features, plus all the future features as they're developed. So long as you keep paying your membership fee, you'll get free upgrades to all the features of Logos 8 and Logos 9. You don't even have to wait until a major release as Faithlife tend to offer small feature/dataset upgrades every six weeks.

For most new customers, Logos Now will probably look like the better option. I'd only recommend the outright purchase if (a) you want to make sure you can always access the Logos 7 features without paying any more, and (b) you're confident you won't want the new features from future versions of Logos.

Don't forget: if you go for the Logos Now option and then later cancel your membership, you'll lose access to most of Logos' best features. You'll still be able to search and read your books, though.

What denominational flavour suits you best?

As well as the standard base packages, Logos also has base packages aimed at Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Charismatics/Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox Christians (coming soon), Seventh-Day Adventists and those from the Reformed tradition.

The guide is aimed particular at those I know best — students, preachers and academics within the evangelical tradition, so bear that in mind as I assess the value of the various packages. I don't know Catholicism, SDA or Orthodoxy well enough to comment on them (although these comments from Devin Roza may help Catholics).

Over the next few days, I'll be posting more parts of this guide which will examine each package/library, and I'll link them below when they're done.

• Starter
• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Platinum
• Diamond
• Portfolio
• Collector's Edition