Logos Now and Faithlife Connect: The Why

Bob Pritchett said:

Maybe we could have done this differently; we'll consider that for the next round of changes. But as I pointed out in an earlier reply, with nine months lead time before any negative change, this kinda is the announcement and discussion period, even if we didn't label it that way. On the other hand, labeling it that way wouldn't in this case have changed the things that need to be done.

I'll be blunt; the 140% price increase (don't call it anything else) would not have gone down well no matter how you handled this. Sending the email out first OR plainly saying in the forum thread, "You'll be getting an email with a coupon that will help you transition to a feature set if this is too much for you" would have taken away a lot of the initial heat.

To be blunter still: you lost a lot of trust yesterday, and it's not going to come back.

PetahChristian said:

It's not that they're not valuable. I think you bundled a lot of value into Faithlife Connect (and like LN, it pays for itself due to the benefits).

Just because there's more stuff in it doesn't mean it's valuable for everyone. I, personally, am not the least bit interested in mobile ed unless they start offering post-grad or post-doc level courses, and I've not even glanced at FaithLifeTV (or whatever it's called) even once. The problem is FaithLife is continuously pushing us to go bigger and more expensive in order to just keep up. At some point, people will say, "Enough!", and for many people, this is that point.

Bob, you keep saying that new features wasn't the primary focus. That just didn't sound true to me. So I searched me email archives for "Logos Now" and guess what I discovered. Early on nearly every email from Logos was about the new version features. Then it became Scott half new features and have new book discounts or free books. Lately it was more about books.

The reason we thought it was about new features is you made it about new features at the outset.

Second, you say that you're ok with us not subscribing and just buying at the upgrade. Great. Can you then offer a .5 feature upgrade that I can but before the big new .0 upgrade? So let's say I get 8.0 got $400 in Nov. Then in May you sell a feature upgrade for $79. When 9.0 comes out I'll probably get it. Then if 9.5 comes for that $79 price awesome. I subscribe to Now ONLY for the feature upgrades but won't subscribe for $240. So let me give you a smaller amount more often for a software upgrade. I get what I want. You get more $$ from me that you would not hey with this new model. And everyone's happy. Unless you really are just doing this to push everyone over to subscriptions then in my scenario I'm there only one happy.

I'm a Logos Now subscriber. I own 14K+ resources. Have not seen an email and unsure how this news is "good news" for me.

Who should I email to mention I have not seen an email. And does anyone have any insight how this Faithlife announcement will or can positively impact me as a very loyal customer?

Thanks much. 

Bob Pritchett said:

Which is why Spotify doesn't give me credit for all the CDs I bought years ago... and Netflix doesn't credit me the movie tickets I bought when the films were new releases... and my Microsoft Office 365 subscription isn't cheaper because I've bought 5 copies of the whole Office suite with or for various computers over the years...

I'm sorry, but those are completely different scenarios. It is unfortunate that you view them the same way.

Spotify doesn't sell CDs. Netflix doesn't sell movie tickets. Office 365 is a comparison between software to software, not content to content. FL is an a position where they are selling content and renting the same content. The closest comparison is Amazon Video. 

Bob Pritchett said:

And yet, if I did buy a one-time video-on-demand digital purchase of a single movie via Amazon's video service, it gets added into my video library even if it isn't part of Prime Video. (Though, if it is or becomes part of Prime Video, I don't get any credit or discount.)

This argument makes sense, save two details. Prime Video rotates an increasing library of content and my purchases do not equate to a significant portion of the Prime Video library. I would risk saying that many of us do not see the size of FC library (starter or essentials) as worth it, because we own a significant portion of the content already.

I did a brief comparison of FC Starter and Logos Starter and it looks to be nearly the same content. The fact that the number of books in the FC and Standard libraries match means that they probably are the same content. If they are indeed the same content, then any FC subscriber should never purchase a Standard library! Your subscription model discourages big purchases. Suddenly, the comparison between Prime Video and FC becomes a contrast. At this point, what makes dynamic pricing so difficult, since it appears to be no different than upgrading between libraries?

I truly appreciate the candor that has been expressed on this forum. It gives me a lot of faith in FL as a company. If I am wrong and the libraries are different, would it be possible to get an easy way to see the difference?

Bob Pritchett said:

Richard Villanueva said:

many new users are accustomed to the subscription model

I'm glad to hear you believe this too...

Richard Villanueva said:

This subscription method may make Logos "accessible" to a new community of the "average" church membership since the high spending users (like myself and several other forum users) may be reaching a slowed pace of purchasing power.

That is our hope.

Richard Villanueva said:

I personally feel like the LN switch to FLConnect was abrupt

We are definitely getting that message loud and clear. :-)

Richard Villanueva said:

The challenge is for those that anticipated LN to continue on indefinitely

...what we hope we addressed in the emails directly to the individuals involved. Again, if we haven't satisfied you with that, let us know.

thanks for the response! FWIW, my personal reaction was "woah, that's new! Surprise!"

Then it went "huh, not sure that's what I want... But I still have LN, so, ok. Probably won't renew after, I got most of that stuff already."

And finally, "Oh wait, a credit towards L8?? Sweet!"  I did not expect LN to continue indefinitely. And as far as the abruptness, that feeling went away when I saw that my LN subcription was not in danger, but would complete itself at the end of what I had paid for.  No loss here. Subscriptions have a sense of temporality to me, And so it is ending.

And that's my story... I'm fine because I chose to own my L7 features and LN was about perks and discounts and what not. I've received my money's worth and now in a sense, have gotten it all back with the coupon! So I'm kinda ok with it all.

if I stopped upgrading right now, I'd still have a phenomenal bible study tool for years to come and more pages than I could read in a lifetime. That's what I have paid for. But school and new research and discovery will have me purchasing plenty new books In the future (new required reading list is on its way next week!)

I'm hopeful that by investing time, money and honest input FL will create content that will be useful enough to cause me to support them with more purchases/supscriptions/direct cerebral downloads... Or whatever is next.

Bob Pritchett said:

Really? I feel like EVERY software product is going this way ...

And what a stupid idea it is too.

I can see this is led by corporates who like to spread costs across years, leasing cars, computers,  property, even now software. But for the individual this is downright insane, and poor stewardship of financial resources.

Actually even for corporates the only lasting advantage is flexibility, not cost. And there are few other benefits.

I can understand providing the subs model for those that want it, however. It doesn't make it a good idea or even right.

Having said that I appreciate your attempts to ensure the longevity of the company for your staff and customers. I do understand change is always here and we need to constantly re-evaluate what we do.

I also appreciate your communications - but do take on board the feelings of the loyal herd!

Shalom

Bob Pritchett said:

I hope an upgrade to Logos 8 will seem worthwhile; that's a determination you'll have to make once you see the value.

Bob, do you expect Logos 8 to be released before our Logos Now subscription expires (November 2018)?   Otherwise it would be hard to know whether we should use our credit to buy the Logos 7 Full Feature set or to wait for the features that will come with Logos 8.

Here's my "street cred" for Logos: Since 2004, spent $23K on resources and upgrades.

Here's my take on things: I hate all software subscription models, and prefer owning the software. Aside from not seeing the value in Logos Now, and being highly confused about the benefits, I never subscribed. I have no intention of subscribing to anything new in the future, and since my purchases have ebbed off lately, probably never will.

With that said, Bob, why don't you just sell the software? Its worked for thousands of companies for a very long time. I happily purchase new versions of software if there are compelling reasons to do so. If not, I usually buy every other upgrade.

Is it a change in your 25 year old business model? Yeah, but hey, it beats all these little and annoying disruptive reversals every few years when things don't pan out.

Will people be annoyed? Sure, but so what? One reason why I never jumped onto Logos Now is I had no need for the latest up-to-date feature set.

And I think most people don't ::need:: it either. They want it, sure, but don't need it, and can wait a year or two between releases. We've got a freakin' digital library of quality resources at our finger-tips! That's amazing enough! And after 25 years of innovating, while I'm sure there's still a lot of cool things you can do with the manipulation of book data, isn't it getting to the point where you've already achieved a lot of the "low-hanging fruit" and are having to work harder and harder to develop new and innovative features, most of which are interesting to a smaller and smaller group of people?

What I'm saying is, people can wait 1-2 years for a new feature set, AND pay for it too.

Just my thought on things. I don't know the financial of something like this, of course, just putting to text the sort of system I like and would be happy to purchase if it were to go that way in the future.

Bob Pritchett said:

But until we can get the whole Church purchasing Bible software (we're working on it!) we need to find a sweet spot of the lowest price that covers the costs.

Let's suppose your dream came true and the entire church used FL software: then what? Where will you get the new customers and new revenue streams that you WILL NEED since, your business model requires that you can never stop growing? When is enough ever enough?

Moral of the story: FL must continually grows its customer base or die.

Unfortunately, that is the software business and tells me that subscription only for Logos features is not far away, no matter what they say.

I have no problem with that except for one thing:

Those who have invested a lot in the platform that got it where it is today should be first on your mind, not last. FL should think long and hard about keeping them as strong advocates for Logos, not bitter subscribers.

BTW, this is why I also own and very much appreciate software from one of your competitors. It costs little more than one year of FLC Essentials and, with things like original language/lemma/ queries etc, provides far greater power and functionality than Logos. They know their lane and stick to it. Thus, it is the one piece of BIble software I feel most confident will be around for a long time and maintain ecxcellent functionality.  

Bob thank you for taking the time to explain. 

All that you have said might be well and good, but is there a lesson for you in this about the order of things?

a company that is trusted does not have the panic seen here. 

this Excellent explanation should have come a week, a year, before making the change. 

Greg Masone said:

With that said, Bob, why don't you just sell the software? Its worked for thousands of companies for a very long time. I happily purchase new versions of software if there are compelling reasons to do so. If not, I usually buy every other upgrade.

They can’t do that b cause they spent 15 years saying (or at least strongly implying) that the software was free, you just pay for the books. Many people who’ve invested hundreds or thousands of dollars would be horrified if they had to pay for software upgrades to keep using Logos when the ‘old‘ version becomes incompatible with their new computer, or because they want to buy one book which only works with the latest version. 

Mark Barnes said:

They can’t do that b cause they spent 15 years saying (or at least strongly implying) that the software was free, you just pay for the books. Many people who’ve invested hundreds or thousands of dollars would be horrified if they had to pay for software upgrades to keep using Logos when the ‘old‘ version becomes incompatible with their new computer, or because they want to buy one book which only works with the latest version. 

Yeah, there would be a period of adjustment, but so what? Business models don't stay the same forever. If this can help fund development in a more reliable way than these other schemes do, why not do it? Plus, it would actually be less confusing because most people are used to paying for the latest software release. That's been the norm for decades for the entire industry.

Maintaining current hardware and software is the cost of doing business in the digital age. We all know this. Logos has dealt with funding the software portion by growing their marketshare for books, but obviously that's not paying the bills anymore.

If we could just pay for the software updates and buy books like we've always been doing, and do away with this stupid subscription stuff, I think everyone would be a lot happier.

The whole thing would certainly be a lot simpler.

Bob,

Your willingness to interact here is always greatly appreciated.

The order for a new product seems to be (1) Public sales pitch, (2) Personal email, (3) Business rationale on the forums.  LN had a public sales pitch focused on features but your business rationale here on the forums focussed on the need for a subscription model.  Upset seems to have been caused with the new offerings as (1) came before (2) and (3).

With LN, I read your rationale to exegete the sales pitch, expected LN’s initial excitement to decline, and opted to give you my money through upgrades like L7 not subscription.  I’m ready to part with cash to keep the software updated so I can keep using my resources and the great features.  I prefer to buy because it is clearer what I am getting.

But, I am concerned by the bundling of Faithlife TV and mobile ed etc.  Despite being a big Logos fan, and daily user, I advised a friend not to buy Logos 7 before Christmas but to wait to compare Logos 8 with the competition.  This was because the base packages had too much breadth (like mobile ed) and lacked as many quality commentary series (like NAC) in the more affordable packages as previously – for day-to-day sermon-prep Logos 5/6 seemed to have better bundles.

I’m happy to continue to upgrade, even to subscribe if absolutely necessary – especially if L8 improves speed (the main Logos weakness).  But, should a more costly bundle with TV etc be necessary, I would be forced to consider whether a switch to a more focussed (and faster) Bible  Software product was prudent in the long run.  I hope this won’t be the case.

Bob Pritchett said:

Cable companies want $50/month for 200 channels; they offer lots of configurations and plans yet it seems the total always comes out to $50... why can't I just buy the channels I want for 25 cents each? I just want four, and $1/month is much better than $50...

Bad analogy...cord cutting is decimating the traditional cable/satellite subscription model because they refused exactly this, or to say it differently they refused to listen to what their customers wanted, and tried to force a lot of extra bloat on them at higher prices. There are quite a few "micro" packages of much smaller focused content that people are buying at much faster growth rates that the loss of customers cable companies are experiencing. THIS is the analogy to adding more unwanted bloat to a Logos subscription at double the cost.

Bob Pritchett said:

But if what you're asking for is "more for less", there are going to be some limits in every business, no matter how customer-friendly. We keep trying -- and over the long arc of our business, I think the evidence is there that we have delivered that -- but it has to make sense for survival. 

Instead of looking at the business as "How can we be profitable with the products, services etc. that we want customers to buy", after all this time why not think about "How can we be profitable selling what customers want"? People here want features - ways to do more with what they already have - they need help in using the product better, it is very sophisticated and most would say they use a small percentage of the features yet there is this hope that one day they will use more. They want quality - performance - usability features that get long ignored. And yes they still want books - quality books that are cornerstones of their faith if they can be published in a reasonable timeframe.

It seems there is a lot of potential there that people would pay for, and jettison those ventures that nobody wants...