Our Best Log Viewer is now Free

In New Loupe Desktop Features in Loupe 3.5 we covered many of the improvements in Loupe Desktop 3.5 but left out one big point:

Loupe Desktop is now Free

Not free for non-commercial use, Free.

Not a cut down “Lite” edition, the full freight, smokey-bacon-goodness Ultimate-Pro-Gold Edition.  Free.

Not “you have to reinstall it every six months because it expires”. Free and runs forever.

Not “free for now”. Free forever.

Why Free, Why Now?

Well, a few good reasons..

Everyone Needs some Logging

As a company we’re focused on fixing the general problem that everything’s broken and no one knows. All those little technical glitches are chipping away at the simple joy of technology in our lives. We plan on making a lasting difference in the overall quality of software and we think this is the best step we can make in that direction. We want to wipe out the biggest barrier we’ve seen in the past five years between developers and that first step is having application diagnostics. By making Loupe Desktop free a developer on any team can integrate logging & diagnostics in their software without having to ask permission to spend a dime. Get going, solve real world problems, and create better software. We believe that many folks will get going with Loupe Desktop and then some day down the road will discover they want to add on Loupe Server, and that transition will be effortless for them. In essence, we’re betting the product on the idea that Loupe Server’s team capabilities will be a must have for enough companies that we can afford to give away Loupe Desktop to everyone.

It Forces us to Be a Team Player

We love having a great log viewer but we’ve always viewed that as a step on the path to the real prize: fast, clear understanding of quality and usage trends across all the places your software runs. To achieve this goal we need everyone on the team to have access to the information, not just one specialist. Our existing customers have told us many times that the unique thing they get from Loupe is the combination of high-level data analysis (identifying each distinct problem for example) with the drill down into the details. With Loupe 3.5 we’ve dramatically evolved that capability with the new Loupe Server user interface and that makes it easy for us to draw a clear distinction between folks doing basic logging and the runtime intelligence goals teams have. We believe that most folks will want to incorporate our server capabilities in their systems, and the first step is to get basic logging integrated. With this change, that first step is free and you can choose whether it makes enough sense for your situation to add the server later or not.

Making it Better for the Small Shop

What got us thinking about this step in the first place was a scenario we’ve seen played out several times. We have a number of independent consultants that like to use Loupe and will incorporate it in their applications, then after delivery their customers will decide whether they want to get their own copy to dig into the data or not. These independent consultants are often working under quite tight cost constraints and were never in a position to really exploit the long term advantage of Loupe Server on their own. By making Loupe Desktop free these same folks can now spend nothing to integrate Loupe into their applications. And even better, their customers needn’t spend anything either if they don’t need the aggregation and analysis capabilities the Loupe Server provides. They can now defer any decision to spend money well down the road. Everyone wins.

So, What Am I Buying?

We’ve always sold Loupe on a per-user basis. The difference was in the past you had to have a named user license for each user of Loupe Desktop whereas now you only need that for each user of Loupe Server. Loupe Server adds a lot:

• Log Aggregation From Everywhere: It’s trivial to have all of your log information sent back to the server to be aggregated and made available to your whole team.
• **Thoughtful Error Management: **The server provides great, scalable tooling for dealing with the health of your software from real time production support to software release quality tracking.
• Built for Teams: Everyone works together on the server to identify important issues, document workarounds, provide support to customers, and view the real world usage metrics of your software.
• Easy access from Anywhere: Whether you’re on an iPad or the biggest workstation you can get immediate access to your application health information.

In fact, it’s practical to use just the Loupe Agent and Loupe Server, you don’t need to install the Desktop client unless you need to drill into the details for particularly tricky problems identified by the Loupe Server. We believe most developers will want to install Loupe Desktop as an aide to local application development, but it’s now optional and not required.

Seriously, We’re Cool if you Never Talk To Us

We’re out to make a difference in the relationship people have with software - we want everyone’s apps to work. We’re confident you can make a real difference to your customers by downloading Loupe Desktop today, so we’re offering a no excuses path for you:

Just Click Here to Download Loupe

We’re not even asking for your email address making you register or anything.

Use it, give a copy to your friends, whatever you want.

It’s free and it’s going to stay free.