LastPass sent me an email announcing updates to the service LastPass Free.
What's changing in LastPass Free?
Beginning March 16, 2021, LastPass Free will include access on one device type of your choice. The first device you login with on or after March 16 will set your active device type.If you choose computer as your device type, LastPass Free will work on all computers in your life:
If you choose mobile as your device type, LastPass Free will work on all mobile devices in your life:
Switching costs and recurring revenue from subscriptions are powerful and so is the psychology of pricing. This is a win for Apple services including Keychain and iCloud Keychain. A free service bundled into the ecosystem with an upsell for more storage that is only loosely attributed to the functionality of the product.
Seeing this pricing change anchors me back to using Safari, which will save your passwords, even if you generate and save them with LastPass. In this way you have a local copy from a brand with a pricing strategy built to include high-quality services as no extra cost. That traffic takes away from Brave, which I’ve written about and their innovative Basic Attention Token.
The browser is a powerful part of consumer computers and I’m excited to see competition driving innovation — I noticed Firefox recently start offering a VPN option for $4.99/month. Getting users to try features will increasingly need to balance ease-of-onboarding with brand and reputation to convince users of the longevity of the terms they agree to when they initially sign up. Small start-ups filling product gaps stay competitive as long as larger firms de-prioritize those features and with the pace of development none of that is guaranteed.