Pricing aside—a good upgrade

I’m surprised at LogTen’s current low rating, so I felt compelled to post my own take.

Logten Pro X is still, for my money, the best logbook app you’ll find on the Mac OS (probably on any platform). I’ve been a customer since version 1.0, and Coradine did a good job updating the app for Yosemite; it runs well, it looks great, it imported my logbook (3500 hours and counting, from my private all the way through to my current airline job) without any issues, and it synced over to my iPhone with no hiccups. So I’m happy with that. I was slightly less happy about the subscription model, but when I stopped to consider how much I spent upgrading under the old pricing model, the sub seems a little less offensive. I’m not convinced I’d be pulling the trigger at the ‘full price’ of $70/year—but the reduced pricing available right now is tempting.

I’m not quite sure how the pricing works, either. From what I’ve seen so far, the Mac app is completely free…so if you’re only updating your logbook on your computer, it seems that you can upgrade to this new version with very little risk (keep the old version around just in case). If you want to sync back and forth between the iPhone/iPad version and your computer, you have to buy the subscription (currently $35, only accessible through the iOS App Store). I haven’t seen anything quite like it before, but I’ll ride that pony as long as it’s around. I would definitely recommend LogTen Pro X for that price, but I would encourage Coradine to think very carefully about pricing an annual subscription at twice that. I think most reasonable people would concede that subscriptions are far better from a revenue stream point of view—but effectively pricing LogTen at $310 based on your historical once-every-three years major update cycle would be a tough pill to swallow, even for professional pilots.

In conclusion: great software, unpopular pricing model. Keep that in mind if you’re trying to figure out which logbook software best suits you.

ianreilly about LogTen Pilot Log, v7.0