Logos recently made a huge change from buying the software to a monthly subscription service. Lots of people were skeptical. Some people have decided to not go the monthly recurring route on principle or because they think it will be more expensive and don’t like that idea. I am going to address that concern and talk about the new setup in Logos.
Addressing the subscription model and pricing
The old approach, which we were all used to, was every couple of years Logos would release a new version and you had to pay quite a bit of money to upgrade and get the new features. In the new system most people are paying $10-$20/mo to stay current with all features and all new features as they are added. This means you don’t have to wait a few years for new features and at the end of the day you are almost certainly going to spend less to get them ($120-$240/year rather than $600-900+ every other year or so).
In addition to that, once you have owned the upgrades for 2 years you keep that level of functionality. You can stop at any point and use everything you have for as long as you want at no monthly charge. So this is a win on pricing and increased functionality.
What You Can Expect from the New Software
Here are a few of the positives from the new Logos software:
- It is faster than previous versions. The software is faster and more responsive. This is true even as my library has grown over the last few years.
- Subscription tiers come with books/resources. The higher of the 3 tiers you go, the more books are included with the subscription.
- AI tools that actually work well (More on that below)
- Better dashboard and help section than in the past. The AI has made getting help in the software much easier.
- More intuitive search without having to know special syntax like in the past.
- Extra savings: 5% off all purchases. 30% off your first Logos 2025 library (think new version of legacy libraries). New free book of the month for subscribers.
New AI Features
I was a little cautious on this because a lot of times AI isn’t incorporated very well. I went through all the AI functionality that I could find and tested it and I am impressed by what I found. Here are a few of the AI features and how they help:
- Search synopsis – When you do a search you can get a synopsis of the search results at the top. There is even a COPY button to put that info into your clipboard to paste it other places. This can even pull from resources you don’t own. This is especially helpful if you have a small library with less data for it to pull from/be trained on.
- Summarize tool – If you go to a book/resource and say you go to chapter 1 – you can click Summarize and it will summarize that chapter for you! This is outstanding. You can scroll to another chapter and click to have a new summary and it will do another chapter. Love it.
- Insights sidebar – Open your Bible and go to a passage…as you scroll through the verses you can have a sidebar on the right with insights that follow along with you. Let’s say you are in Acts 16 – interesting things about Philippi will pop up with references to go read more. This is hit or miss to me. It can be great but not always great.
- Sermon assistant – this can take a scripture and work up summary points, application, etc to give you a head start on sermon prep. This is not something I would personally use in actual prep because I don’t want to short circuit or jump too far ahead of my own study of the text. I can see it being useful for once you have done all your own prep to run this and see if anything jumps out that is useful.
- Help – the Help section has been beefed up with AI and is far more intuitive than in the past. So you can get better help within the platform itself. Thank you Logos!
The AI tools can help you find information faster by blending together various sources to help you synthesize the info you need from your library. Overall, I give this an A-. If the insights sidebar stunned me more consistently I would go A+.
I suspect the AI features will continue to improve over time as this is still so new.
One Needed Feature
There is one feature I don’t think exists that I would love to see Logos develop – a cloud based sermon/class prep area so that teams can create things together, make and track edits, etc.
Summary
Logos move to a subscription model has reduced the overall price of the software while giving us faster updates, better tools, new AI features and more. The tools perform better than I expected and can save a lot of time if used correctly. Just make sure to not use them as a crutch that might hinder your study/growth.
Logos opened up 12 months of subscription for me in exchange for this review. That doesn’t in any way influence me to be overly positive about anything.
If you want to look getting Logos, you can get a 30 day free trial – Get 30 Days of Free Logos. Let me know if you have any questions!
