OK, so I just plunked down $250 for the Pro version of this software and I'm poking around the forums when I stumble upon some threads about a "Live Plan" subscription thing. Did I read correctly that this software that I purchased will cease to function in 6 months unless I continue to pay more money? If so I will have to request a refund. Please tell me I'm mistaken or reading this wrong.

You will learn most from reading the purchase page of our product:

http://www.link-assistant.com/buy.html#first

&

http://www.link-assistant.com/live-plan.html

Yes, Live! Plan subscription is needed to stay updated to search engines' algorithm shifts to keep gathering relevant data.

So if I don't keep paying for Live plans, will the software simply gather irrelevant data? What happens?

Yes, webatomic, you're right. You're the latest target of their bait and switch. You were baited. You took the bait...

Now the bad news. Your software will brick precisely 6 months from your purchase. And support? They'll laugh in your face. And they're located overseas, so there's nothing to do.

SCAM.

I just put all four of my keys in to check the prices of the next six months of the live plan. $19.95 I'm OK with that. $39.90 a year the keep the whole power suite up to date.

Then they must have recently changed their pricing significantly. I noticed they don't even show you the pricing anymore unless you enter a license key. You might want to confirm those numbers, sounds fishy to me.

webatomic, you know we do not use any fishy or shady techniques - you can find ALL the info on our website. Maybe not all the info is on the very first page of the website, but we cannot put it all on one page, right?

And yes, we have reduced the prices for Live! Plans significantly. And again, you're wrong saying that we "don't even show you the pricing anymore unless you enter a license key" - you can find all the prices on our website - for example, here's for Rank Tracker and here's the info for SEO SpyGlass (you can also find info for all our other product on our website.)

And if you decide to get Live! Plans for more than just one product, you can go to this page and specify the number of products and a period - we just need this info because we provide BIG DISCOUNTS for those who uses many of the products - UP TO 77%, seriously.

I hope I was clear enough, and this will help you to get all the necessary info on our products. If you've got more questions, please post'em right here, or feel free to contact our support team. And BIG THANKS once again for indicating our tiniest errors and helping us to become even better.

I dont think its fair that the software stops working once your subscription ends. What they should do is let it continue to work, eventually the results will become inaccurate when search engine algorithims change and other factors. The customer will be wanting to renew their subscription for this same reason, once they do so they will be happy again, the customer will not be getting ripped off and the company wont recieve bad comments about this. Everyone would be happy.

Diamond, please read the forum carefully This is exactly what we might do in the future.

Earlier we thought that we'd better protect our users and prevent them from getting incorrect results (otherwise one day you might find your site penalized or banned by Google), but it seems that too many people what to take this risk, so... we always listen to our users, and we'll do exactly as you (and some other people) suggest.

Thanks for your suggestion anyway - we truly appreciate your help.

I purchased the Enterprise edition of all four applications 6 months ago. I did not use them as much as I had hoped and, as such, decided not to renew the Live Plan just yet. I figured that if I start using them, or make money with them, then I will renew in order to keep up to date with the algorithms.

Imagine my consternation when this morning I launched Rank Tracker. It automatically updated to the latest version as usual. But when I tried to check the rankings on one of my project keywords, a message popped informing me that unless I pay to renew the Live Plan, I was out of luck and that it would no longer query the search engines. I launched each of the other programs only to get the same result.

Now this sounds a bit fishy to me and discourages me from ever wanting to spend additional money with this company. I'm sure that the FREE versions of their software are kept up to date with the search engine algorithms. Why is it that the PAID versions stop working unless we give in to extortion and pay the renewal fees? After all, the MAJOR reason for upgrading to the Enterprise addition is simply to acquire the ability to generate and print/save reports. It has nothing to do with keeping search engine algorithms up-to-date.

Sorry, Link-Assistant, but this policy of yours is ill-conceived and poorly executed.

Jim