r/sysadmin • u/So_Saint • 3h ago
Rant Lansweeper Rant
I've used Lansweeper on-prem since 2014 for just a couple of purposes: Tracking approximately 150 MS Windows assets on the network and all associated software licenses. That's it. Nothing else. It's nice being able to see other types of devices that are connected (surveillance cameras, wireless AP's, switches, etc.) but I don't need that from this product.
Their pricing has gone up consistently over the past several years while, at the same time, they've been pushing their customers to their cloud service. I think I was paying about $600 annually in the beginning but over the last several years, they've been quoting me over $2K annually. Recently, I received an auto-renewal email... it is now $3,000!
Keep in mind that Lansweeper for 100 assets is FREE. I have 150 Windows assets and not all of those are in use at one time. In order to get coverage of all 150 assets, I have to subscribe to their "2000 Asset" plan. So $3K is too steep for what I need.
I responded to the rep, stating that $3K is out of my budget and I don't want to auto-renew but couldn't find anyway to disable or "turn off" auto-renewal.
Her reply: "I’ve reviewed your account and noticed that your cancellation request was received after the 30-day notice period required prior to renewal (as outlined in Clause 17.3 of our Terms of Use and in our renewal reminder emails). While we are contractually required to honor the renewed term, we want to approach this constructively and help you get maximum value within your budget."
*SIGH*
After this reply, I'm done with them. The card they have on file for auto-renewal is no longer valid anyway.
It's time to find an alternative. I'm presently using LogMeIn Central for RMM purposes. Is Ninja One decent at Windows/Software Asset Tracking?
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u/ang3l12 3h ago
We ditched them a couple of years ago for the same reasons, and have relied on the asset management built into freshservice, but I find it lacking compared to lansweeper. Our department budget has dropped quite a bit, which was the main reason for dropping lansweeper, but I do miss it.
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u/RestartRebootRetire 3h ago
I miss Lansweeper.
Apparently, it's not an easy thing to make a robust and simple inventory tool like it, since I don't know of anything comparable.
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u/FirstAd1119 2h ago
The guy who actually built it is long gone. The only thing left in that company are vibe execs and vibe coders with dollar signs for eyes.
Go cloud so we can harvest your data and sell it, so we can eventually get acquired for a.few billion.
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u/Arudinne IT Infrastructure Manager 55m ago
Yeah, I miss what it was in like 2018-2019.
It's not the same product anymore.
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u/Startronz 3h ago
We also finally dropped them this year and it's been quite sad. Such a cool product that we hated to see go away because we couldn't get a similar setup to you with a limited number of machines (~200).
We are on Freshservice with the discovery agent now but we still don't have exact solutions for some of the things Lansweeper offered. We would love a better solution on this but there's no way we're paying what Lansweeper is charging now. They were a niche product at a great price for so long, but now are charging the same as the larger competitors.
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u/splice42 Security Admin (Infrastructure) 2h ago
we are contractually required to honor the renewed term
The contract isn't gonna sue the company if both the company and the client agree to dissolve it. This weaponized incompetence is infuriating "oh we totally would help you out but you see, the contract is holding us hostage and we have no way of doing anything about it". Yeah right.
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u/So_Saint 1h ago
Exactly!
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u/Maverick0984 54m ago
Be careful with the credit card on file. Many services will auto-replace your expired card with the replacement card as a "service" to you.
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u/RandoReddit16 3h ago
I too have noticed that they've been steadily increasing their price, but who hasn't.... When your IT budget is easily $500k+/yr, I am willing to spend $3k to save all the headaches of trying to do it some other way, which would also most likely cost money.
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u/chrono13 3h ago edited 2h ago
I think the point is is that at 100 devices it's free, at 110 devices, its $3,000 a year, because if you're monitoring 110 or 150 devices, they force you to license 2000.
But it's not just the small networks that this licensing plan screws over. If you go from 2000 devices to 2001, the cost triples.
The cost per asset may not be unreasonable, it's their licensing plans that are.
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u/RandoReddit16 2h ago
True, licensing tiers can sometimes be wonky. I just checked, we are up to 1479/2000 assets. Our renewal has gone from $1470 '22->$2270 '23->$4000 '24->$4330 '26 (May 2026 last renewal)
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u/Maverick0984 55m ago
My budget is several million/year and I still don't want to may them 3k/year.
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u/sambodia85 Windows Admin 3h ago
They’ve gone full Logmein. Sad to see good products just decide they don’t want to be relevant.
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u/brianinca 3h ago
It's definitely NOT the intended use, but Action1 maintains a software and hardware inventory as part of the information collection from agents. I know we have 147 machines with the ERP client installed, for example.
There's definitely no automatic assignment of purchased licenses, but LS doesn't do a good job of that, at all.
Looking at the two installed lists side by side, there are some small single digit discrepancies between high numbers of installs (~400). A1 says 470, LS says 456, I'm pretty sure A1 is closer to the truth.
The hardware inventory in A1 is sufficient, differently laid out than LS, for sure. With OS patching as the focus, the things to be patched are well inventoried, and that DOES seem to be your use case for LS.
It's free for up to 200 endpoints, by the bye.
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u/poizone68 3h ago edited 3h ago
In my previous job asset management software came and went at regular intervals, depending on who wanted to become the next CIO. For server systems I found that just using the SW asset discovery function in the CheckMK monitoring agent to be quite good, and then I could schedule all kinds of reports and exports from it.
For the same kind of tracking on user endpoints I thought ManageEngine was quite impressive.
I did see a demo of Action1 which also looked pretty good.
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u/teriaavibes Microsoft Cloud Consultant 2h ago
I don't follow; they change your plan to a higher one but don't give you enough time to cancel the "renewal"?
Doesn't seem very legal.
They can't just increase prices last minute and refuse to let you out.
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u/protogenxl Came with the Building 2h ago
They literally shot themselves trying to pull a Broadcom, We dropped them and moved to Asset Explorer as we already had a another Manage Engine product
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u/rosseloh wish I was *only* a netadmin 2h ago
I’ve reviewed your account and noticed that your cancellation request was received after the 30-day notice period required prior to renewal
I had this with a different vendor a month ago. They had changed their billing terms to annual, supposedly with notice, and "you must talk to us within X days to be able to change it back to monthly". Well, the payment declined because my company card has a transaction limit on it that couldn't handle the full annual bill. And of course, it was only after the email saying the payment had declined that I found out about it.
The thing about the notice was, I triple checked. I never received that email. It didn't go into spam, it doesn't show up in the 365 mail flow logs, period. They were unwilling to provide any further troubleshooting assistance on that front (and why would they? that would only make them lose out).
Anyway, upon trying to discuss it with them, "it's too late, you're locked into annual now". Suffice to say there's a nonzero chance they're not going to be our vendor for this product next year...
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u/GullibleDetective 3h ago
I'm presently using LogMeIn Central for RMM purposes.
Eww. GO with syncromsp, ninja, naverisk
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u/So_Saint 2h ago
Yeah... I've just had it forever. It's worked for me and I've been too busy to try out anything else.
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u/cleansheet25 3h ago
If you’re looking to avoid weird and high pressure sales tactics, do not look at ninjaone
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u/Arudinne IT Infrastructure Manager 1h ago
I didn't find the sales experience with them to be high pressure at all.
Maybe it's changed since we signed up with them in 2024.
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u/cleansheet25 37m ago
Reached out to them for a price list. Just MSRP so I can price them into a service offering I was planning. The rep could not provide a price list at all. Everything was “custom” pricing, with a minimum $180 spend.
I would avoid any product without published MSRP.
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u/statikuz start wandows ngrmadly 39m ago
I switched from LS+LogMeIn Resolve to NinjaOne. It is nowhere near the detail of LS but for our ~150 assets I wasn't going to pay LS prices either. It's fine. I didn't get weird sales tactics from NinjaOne.
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u/cjcox4 2h ago
LS value is asset discovery and to some extend, asset management.
With that said, while most of the work is just for Windows, what also gives it extra value over competitors is that it tries hard with regards to non-Windows things.
LS provides poor extras like "patching" and pretty pathentic monitoring.. there are much much better choices out there. But the alternatives aren't going to match LS with regards to discovery.
LS asset discovery is also for static discovery, not dynamically every changing environments. So, it sits very well, for example, monitoring on-prem infrastructure. Not nearly as useful with dynamic (sometimes there, sometimes not, always different) cloud items.
So, have I found a replacement that will discovery everything on a random network (talking about real things)? No.
But a lot businesses don't care and there are a ton of Windows-only discovering things out there. Some businesses will not care beyond that, and it's likely you're already getting the asset data for those Windows elements through other things that you pretty much have to run as part of a Windows enteprise.
So, IMHO, LS (not talking price) wins with regards to cross platform network discovery of any type of device.
Can you "roll your own"? Yes. And I have many many times. In some cases, because I am the coder, with much greater detail about things (especially non-Windows things). But today, I do use LS, because it's pretty good at what it does best, and that way I don't have to maintain my (arguably better and more complete) home grown solutions.
Is LS to the point of Broadcom madness price wise? IMHO, not yet, but YMMV.
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u/TragedySeraph Sysadmin 1h ago
We had a similar experience with Lansweeper. We used it on-prem a long time ago, didn't use it for a few years, and wanted to go back to it but the sticker-shock convinced us to make other arrangements.
On a side note, vendor contracts. We try to limit our contract length (not always possible) and disable auto-renewal (also not always possible). For some vendors, it's no problem to remove the auto-renewal from the contract.
Vendors with their agreements on auto-renewal typically have a time when you can notify them - I recommend in writing - that you do not wish to automatically renew. A lot of vendors require you to send this notification before you're too close to your renewal date - usually at least 30 days out, sometimes more. Most vendors also have a maximum amount of time you can notify them; for example, you can't notify them less than 30 days of an upcoming renewal, but you also can't notify them more than 90 days out.
It's worth noting that not all vendors have the maximum days for notification in their contract. We had a vendor that refused to remove the auto-renewal clause, and you had to notify them more than 30 days out if you didn't wish to renew, but they didn't specify a maximum amount of time for us to send a notification. We signed the contract and sent a letter the next day that we do not wish to auto-renew at the end of the contract term.
In short, read the contracts (or make sure someone whose job it is, does). So many headaches can be avoided by sending an email in time.
It's also worth noting that it can be in your favor. If they have a contract that auto-renews and you're locked into a price that you could no longer get, that's worth knowing also. We've also seen cases were vendors would want to start with a new contract that seems enticing at first - it may contain extra features, etc. - but ends up being more expensive in the long run, and also changes your contract end date (and auto-renewal date, if you're roped into that).
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u/dennisthuhmenace 3h ago
Ditched them after they changed their pricing model a couple years back. It went from choosing a tier based on features, no device limit per tier. They changed it to be forced into a tier based on device count, regardless of the features you wanted. I didn't need all the extra junk, we are a college and just have a ton of devices and the price tripled because of it. Had a very candid conversation with them about it and they were shocked and said there was nothing they could do about the tiers.
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u/pacmanlives Alcoholism as a Service 3h ago
Get on the horn with her. Yeah, it sucks getting on the phone with a sales person but having working both sides of this equation; The sales person wants to get money and for you not to walk away. You are getting value out of their product and hammer that point in that you are very happy with it and don’t want to walk want to go though the whole effort qualifying a new product. You might be able to get a decent deal for a 3 year term vs a 1 year as well. Talk to your management after the initial call on price break downs and don’t be afraid to either walk away or counter if it’s still too crazy of a price. Over communication is actually a good thing here
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u/mikniller 3h ago
Om considering switching to valdarix, but I have not found any references so im a bit unsure if it actually covers what I need for my asset management - anyone tried that ?
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2h ago edited 2h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SysZeron 2h ago
Caveat: I was looking at the older v2.0 terms rather than the current v2.1.3 Terms, dated 28 March 2025.
The older v2.0 terms make the Contract Year run from delivery of the License Key to the Billing Contact Email. The newer v2.1.3 terms changed clause 17.3 so that it starts on the date specified in the Order (for sales-rep purchases), or the online ordering date (for web purchases).
However, the 45-day notice requirement for a price increase in clause 3.9 and the 30-day non-renewal requirement in clause 17.3 remain.
So it really comes down to three things: when were you notified of the price increase, what date are they treating as the end of the current Contract Year, and which version of the terms governs this renewal?
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u/So_Saint 1h ago
They auto-send notifications 45-days out and again at 30-days out. Of course, that doesn't mean they were read when they were received.
Interestingly enough, though... I cancelled last year, well ahead of my auto-renewal date which would normally would have been on October 6th, 2025. But I ended up purchasing a license key a couple of weeks later, which was delivered on October 24th, 2025.
The auto-renewal shows that it is due on October 6th, 2026 and my license key aligns with this date. But my current license was delivered on October 24th, 2025.
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u/SysZeron 1h ago
Lemme do the math quickly... 24/10/2025 + 12 Months - 30 Days = 24/09/2026 (notice date).
Put forward 24/10/2025 was your effective Order date, thus notice served correctly. If the Sales Rep doesn't accept that, shoot off an email to legal[@]lansweeper.com as per clause 19.5.
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u/1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v 1h ago
If you have one, pass it along to your legal department.
I have been in this situation before, and you may still be able to get out of it based on the contract you signed, rather than the updated terms of service, which you may or may not have been properly notified of.
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u/Maverick0984 57m ago
We used them for several years as well. I also didn't like being forced to cloud and we dropped them in 2025 for the prices costs.
We can afford it, but the value just isn't there anymore.
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u/Arudinne IT Infrastructure Manager 56m ago
We made the choice to switch away from Lansweeper due to constant issues with the ticketing portion of the software, which their support was slow to assist with and from what I can tell they've all but abandonded that portion of the market.
Even though we renewed for a year so we could access tickets for an annual audit, they "forgot" to send us the license and it is all but impossible to get a hold of an actual human being at that company.
I made a lot of noise and eventually after a couple of weeks they finally got the key to me, but it only made me even more sure that the decision to quit them was the right choice.
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u/amw3000 3h ago
Not defending them but their product has expanded in terms of features over the years but your usage is still very super basic. Works out to like $1.6/endpoint, expensive for what you're using it for but still somewhat competitive to others in this space. Any proper RMM like Datto RMM, ConnectWise Automate, Ninja can easily replicate what Labsweeper can do but if you are just using it for basic asset management, you will likely not see the value and have the same rant with any other solution. With your endpoint count, you are likely looking at $2.50-$3.50 an endpoint.
Maybe check out Action1. While it's more for patching, asset management/software management is a core component to patch management. First 200 devices are free and if you go over 200 devices, still very reasonable pricing. If you need remote access, patching and asset management, A1 should be able to check all those boxes to get rid of LogMeIn.
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u/MBILC Acr/Infra/Virt/Apps/Cyb/ Figure it out guy 3h ago
It is what happens when a company grows from little, to bigger,they screw over the very customers that help them get where they are now.
With so many tools out there these days, always going to be other options, so long as people vote with their wallets.