RealVNC is dropping its “Home” being replaced for it's free “Lite” option

[LstpersonalOF]

Summary

RealVNC the company behind the softwares of VNC Viewer and VNC Server is dropping their Free "Home Plan" in substitution with its new "Lite Plan"

 

Quotes

Quote

RealVNC users with Home subscriptions will likely receive an email from the company with the subject line: "Important changes to your Home subscription." The email notes that the firm is "Retiring our Home plan" as of June 17, 2024.

 

After "launching a wider range of tiered plans designed to better cater to more users" and to "maintain a cohesive set of plan options," the email states, Home must be retired.

 

My thoughts

When I realized that I had no way of accessing my computers with my home plan today (19/06/2024) actually missing the deadline and saw the news, I went livid, just like Linus with the TeamViewer software saga almost two years ago. This is interesting news that actually shocks me because, besides it being a great piece of software, I was considering buying a commercial license for it when starting my own business in the near future. However, this just makes me not want to do so and go with another piece of software. I think, in the long term, this is going to set a precedent in the industry. I also hated when Pulseway, a couple of years back, removed the free plan they had. People in the industry will notice and will follow their path.

 

Sources

RealVNC is dropping its “Home” plan and barely noting its free “Lite” option

[Bitter]

Ya'll pay for VNC? There's so so so many free clients and so so so many options out there that aren't not free and are open source. Is this just a case of "I use what I like and I like what I know and I use what I know"?

[Needfuldoer]

RealVNC is irrelevant in a world where TightVNC and mRemoteNG exist.

[LstpersonalOF]

19 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Ya'll pay for VNC? There's so so so many free clients and so so so many options out there that aren't not free and are open source. Is this just a case of "I use what I like and I like what I know and I use what I know"?

I didnt pay for "home plan" it was free allowing to have 5 computers for every team you had, i dont know if they had a team limit but i had 4 two of them being at 5 computers already...

2 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

RealVNC is irrelevant in a world where TightVNC and mRemoteNG exist.

did not know about these until now may check them out...

[LstpersonalOF]

To clear up the air, I started using Chrome Remote Desktop, but I did not like its lack of security (password sign-in when connecting to a computer and 2FA). Additionally, the fact that it was operated by Google and linked to your Google account meant that you had to sign into Chrome and then Chrome Remote Desktop on any computer you wanted to use. No other person could have access with that same software unless they had access to your Google account. I grew tired of these limitations.

 

Then I heard Linus talk in a video about VNC (when they had the transcode server and used it for the editors to remote into it). VNC had all the features that Chrome Remote Desktop lacked, including a team option, which meant I could have someone set it up and give me access so I could provide support to close family relatives, and they could also use it. even as far to allowing multiple users connected at the same time.

[Bitter]

24 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

RealVNC is irrelevant in a world where TightVNC and mRemoteNG exist.

We use TightVNC at work to grab the screen on the office or shop PC to clear tickets that get left open. It's the stupidest use for it but it works. I use it to grab the scan tool screen to the shop PC because touch screen makes doing things that aren't made for touch screen a pain in the ass. It's been great, runs fairly smooth even on shitty hardware and crappy wifi.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

RealVNC is irrelevant in a world where TightVNC and mRemoteNG exist.

I've been using TigerVNC for years.

[porina]

I used to use RealVNC in the distant past, so distant I can't remember why I switched away from it. I also use TightVNC now. Basic VNC protocol is open so there are implementations to choose from. 

[Kilrah]

I self-host a Rustdesk server.

[strajk-]

7 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

RealVNC is irrelevant in a world where TightVNC and mRemoteNG exist.

I also use mRemoteNG but it has such a slow release schedule even in the Nightly builds that it's quite annoying due to certain issues plaguing it, the two I hate the most are the lack of customization if you want to use their integration of WebView2 to access http and https interfaces, if it's not located in root you won't be able to use it since you can't specify the path, neither can you set the ie mode flag, ended up writing my own wpf application that integrates WebView2 that I call through External Tools.

 

Another annoyance is the forced disconnect if you use the dynamic resolution feature, so the moment you resize the tab or window rendering the RDP session, it boots you out in order to connect again and use the new res, rdp 8.1 spec has been out for years and supports res resizing and it's been in the backlog for years...

[Fnord]

On 6/20/2024 at 12:52 AM, Alex Atkin UK said:

I've been using TigerVNC for years.

Generally, my VNC of choice for Windows is UltraVNC. I only recently became aware of TigerVNC while setting up a Raspberry Pi as a remote Steam client at my TV and having issues getting any VNC connection to it to function properly. Read somewhere about TigerVNC being a solution, installed it, and it worked. Now I have RealVNC (company solution), UltraVNC and TigerVNC at my fingertips. Ultra mostly because it's the one I've almost always used.

The only real issue I have with RealVNC is that, after we deployed it, we noticed that machines that dropped out of AD were not dropping out of RealVNC. So we kept running out of available licenses. After contacting RealVNC, it was brought to our attention that in order for us to have stale machines drop out, we'd need to implement their API. For an additional cost, of course. -_-

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, Fnord said:

Generally, my VNC of choice for Windows is UltraVNC. I only recently became aware of TigerVNC while setting up a Raspberry Pi as a remote Steam client at my TV and having issues getting any VNC connection to it to function properly. Read somewhere about TigerVNC being a solution, installed it, and it worked. Now I have RealVNC (company solution), UltraVNC and TigerVNC at my fingertips. Ultra mostly because it's the one I've almost always used.

The only real issue I have with RealVNC is that, after we deployed it, we noticed that machines that dropped out of AD were not dropping out of RealVNC. So we kept running out of available licenses. After contacting RealVNC, it was brought to our attention that in order for us to have stale machines drop out, we'd need to implement their API. For an additional cost, of course. -_-

I use it primarily for headless sessions, rather than wasting RAM running VMs.