I always come here and ask questions in the lounge, since I know there are only smart people here.

 

Anyway, Logmein has changed their policy and now have discarded all their free services. I'm sure someone has been affected by this here. I'm not looking for "free" anything, but their prices are a lot for someone that just needs to connect to a computer once in a while to help a family member out. I've also used Teamviewer (which is free for personal use) right now, but I'm sure in due time they will change their policy as well and force you to pay for their service. What would anyone recommend here? Logmein Central wants $300 for up to 100 computers, and that's just for remote connection only. Their PRO service is a lot more money then that. I even posted this question on their help forum area and everyone is so confused right now. They may have been bought by another company or maybe trying to save the company by starting to charge everyone, who knows.

 

 

I am interested in this as well. I have switched to TeamViewer for now. I know there is a lot of discussion of VPN here but I have not taken the time to figure it all out. If we implement something like OpenVPN do we still need a service provider like Private Internet Access, or do we just need something like DynamicDNS set up and what are the options and costs?

I used to use Logmein as well, not for unRaid access but to support family members PC's.

 

As for remote access for unRaid, I use VPN. I run OpenVPN on my router and connect to the router when I need remote access to my network. You do not need something like Private Internet Access as a VPN service like theirs only allows you to tunnel to their servers, not your own.  The only other thing you need, as you mentioned, would be a DDNS service of some sort so you can access your network by name as most people do not have static IPs. DDNS services are cheap, DynDNS (one of the biggest out there) is only $25/year. There are also free ones you can find but they are a pain and typically require you to revalidate the service every 30 days by logging into the website and clicking a button.

I have switched to TeamViewer.  It works almost the same as LogMeIn.

 

<rant>  I hope LogMeIn goes down in flames for the BS they pulled over the Free edition! </rant>

I switched to TeamViewer too! I sent Logmein a thank you note for having forced me to explore options. Not only did I find an equal product but I found one that supports OS that Logmein didn't. I thanked them for pushing me to a better product. I've not yet looked at the TeamViewer licensing but I might be convinced to pay if its reasonable. I seldom need this functionality but TeamViewer appears to have something superior so far!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I switched to TeamViewer too! I sent Logmein a thank you note for having forced me to explore options. Not only did I find an equal product but I found one that supports OS that Logmein didn't. I thanked them for pushing me to a better product. I've not yet looked at the TeamViewer licensing but I might be convinced to pay if its reasonable. I seldom need this functionality but TeamViewer appears to have something superior so far!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I understand Logmein wanting to get paid. I think these companies have free versions as promotions to get the big corporate accounts.

 

Last I looked at TeamViewer licensing, there is free for personal and very big bucks for commercial and nothing in between.

I use the VPN built into my Asus RT-66AC router.  The most recent firmware for this has just added support for OpenVPN, so now it is more secure (was just PPTP previously).  One benefit is that I have no need to have any other machine running, nor any other virtual machine.  I can access my server shares and web based UI from anywhere.

I have a VPN as well via a ClearOS firewall. However I want to be able to access desktops on both my main machine and VMs on my ESXi server. UnRAID pretty much needs no attention ever lol. The VPN has also been VERY handy when a hotel's firewall blocked Plex from streaming - I simply VPN'd in and then ran Plex as if it were local :-)

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've moved from Logmein to TeamViewer as well.

 

Strange move by logmein if you ask me.  They could have limited the amount of PCs from any single account with the ability to add more clients at a nominal fee.  That would have kept a fair chunk of their now deserting userbase

Last I looked at TeamViewer licensing, there is free for personal and very big bucks for commercial and nothing in between.

 

Wow!  You're dead on with that synopsis.  Free for personal use;  min of $719 - $2839 to buy PLUS a significant per-workstation additional cost !!

 

I've heard from a LOT of folks who are very upset about the demise of LogMeIn Free.

 

I can't believe they did that with NO notice and with NO offer to buy a low-end "personal" version.

 

Their pricing works out to about $50/year/computer now ... certainly a bit steep for something I (and I suspect many others) use 2-3 times per year on quite a few computers for friends and family (I have it set up on about 15 family member computers and probably another 20 or so friends who call me occasionally for support).    Clearly NONE of those will turn in to paid licenses ... but I'd have gladly paid a small fee to continue access (as I'm sure many others would as well).

 

A real shame to see it gone.  I'll try TeamViewer ... but looking at their pricing structure, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them also abandon the free users now that LogMeIn isn't available.    Maybe they'll add a "personal use" license with a one-time fee ... I suspect they could get a lot of revenue from that (as LogMeIn could have).

 

I use the VPN built into my Asus RT-66AC router.  The most recent firmware for this has just added support for OpenVPN, so now it is more secure (was just PPTP previously).  One benefit is that I have no need to have any other machine running, nor any other virtual machine.  I can access my server shares and web based UI from anywhere.

 

I do the same, but with the Asus RT-N66U.  I've been using the Merlin custom firmware on it since I acquired it, so have had OpenVPN functionality since day one. One other small benefit to using an Asus router (besides the fact that IMHO they are one of the best consumer routers out there) is that Asus has its own DDNS service which is free to use with Asus routers, so no paying for a DDNS service.

A router-based solution works nicely for remote access to your own system(s) ... but doesn't help at all for those of us whose primary LogMeIn usage has been to help friends and family.

 

I think I'll switch routers so I can set up easy remote access for us when we travel; but not sure what I'll do for the friends/family issue.    Definitely "ticked" at the LogMeIn folks !!

 

A router-based solution works nicely for remote access to your own system(s) ... but doesn't help at all for those of us whose primary LogMeIn usage has been to help friends and family.

 

I think I'll switch routers so I can set up easy remote access for us when we travel; but not sure what I'll do for the friends/family issue.    Definitely "ticked" at the LogMeIn folks !!

 

Very true, but the VPN comments were directed at trurl's questions regarding VPN. I'm of the impression he was using Logmein in the past for remote access to a PC on his home network, from which he could administer unRaid.

 

But as you state it doesn't resolve the friends/family troubleshooting issue.  Give TeamViewer a try for that.

A router-based solution works nicely for remote access to your own system(s) ... but doesn't help at all for those of us whose primary LogMeIn usage has been to help friends and family.

If you are ok installing a vpn client on the remote machine and allowing them access to your network, you can use VNC just like you used logmein. You can get fancy and put all incoming VPN traffic on a separate vlan if you are concerned about letting them on your home network.

For Windows PC's, I use Splashtop to access. I've been able to use it to remote into my PC's behind my router using either my iPad or my cell phone and from there VNC into my Mac Server and reboot it.

 

They tote that you can play WoW at 30 FPS over the connection.

Oddly enough Logmein said I can still use my "Central" service (with my 10 computers) for free. I think since I haven't used that account to connect to any servers or anything they flagged it as personal use only and still let me keep it. Strange.

 

This quote is from a LOGMEIN support person on their forum.

 

"On January 21st we announced the elimination of LogMeIn Free.  As a Central customer you are NOT impacted by this change. You can continue to deploy free hosts and purchase host-level subscriptions of LogMeIn Pro.  Access to computers in your account will not be interrupted for your secondary users.

Sean Keough

Product Specialist, LogMeIn Support"