Dear LMI:

First, I'm a fan. I use LMI Free, LMI Rescue, and have been considering a LMI Central subscription for about a month. I recommend LMI Pro to clients requiring solid, easy-to-use remote access to their PCs. In fact, just last week LMI saved the bacon of a General Manager on a business trip to China when the Great Firewall started interfering with his VPN solution.

I think it's safe to say that IT Pros aren't shy about using what works, and when it works, we're also not shy about paying for it. We understand value, even when money is tight.

That said, I think I speak for the majority if the Spiceworks community when I say I'm bitterly disappointed in the recent decision to alter the LMI service and price structure. It's not that these things changed - honestly, I'm fairly surprised LMI Free hadn't gone the way of the dodo a year ago. It's that LMI gave what amounts no warning to its user base. There are reports of corporate (and in some cases personal) credit cards being charged more than twice what was expected for an automatic upgrade to LMI Central's new pricing structure. For LMI Free, you're giving a mere 7 days to upgrade to Pro or Central. For many SMB clients, that's flatly not enough time to secure approval for the increased cost. For others, that "credit card" is probably a debit card and your sudden, unapproved charge may well cause enough hardship to lose those companies as customers.

Speaking as a client, a fan, and as an IT pro, I encourage LMI to reconsider the timelines they've put forth. 30 days seems a reasonable time frame for loyal users to secure funding ... without losing access to critical servers at remote locations. Charging cards "because you can" is bad form and comes across as little more than an unethical money grab.

Do the right thing by your client base: make it easy for us to move to your new services and to continue supporting a product many of us have come to love.