mSecure Support
mSecure 6.x Replacement (Free and More Secure)
Mike - mSecure
@David We have absolutely no problems with our customers leaving mSecure for another product. If something is not to your liking in mSecure, then I'm sure with all of the other password manager apps out there, there's bound to be another one that will meet your expectations. I know you have posted in another one of the larger threads, but that thread has become extremely convoluted with all sorts of questions I'm trying to answer today. I saw this one thread, so I thought I would ask you here instead.
From what I have seen you write in the other thread, though I haven't seen all of it, you dislike the subscription model. We understand that a lot of our customers do not like subscription models, which is why we made the Essentials tier free for our existing V5 customers. We have guaranteed all V5 paid users will have access to Essentials features for 3 years, and we don't actually have plans for changing that policy at this time. We would like it if everything goes as planned, and we will never have to charge V5 users for any type of upgrade in the future. It was either go this route or drop support for mSecure 5 and create a new V6 app which would be a paid upgrade for everyone.
Can you help me understand why this has caused such a problem for you? With the route we have chosen, you get a fully supported app, you don't lose any features (you actually gain features), you don't have to pay for the upgraded app for at least 3 years (but hopefully and probably longer), and you don't have to sign up for subscription unless you want or need some of the Premium features.
Why doesn't this seem fair to you?
Well, I have already transitioned into another password manager but since your asked.
Rolling over to a new version is a huge mistake. I felt that you forced v6 when I was perfectly happy with v5. You did not give me the option to stay on v5 because you pushed an update that auto-installed v6 and removed v5 from my computer.
In a normal world, you should have asked if the user would like to upgrade...
"A new version of mSecure is available would you like to upgrade?"
Something like this above would have been nice... Maybe a warning stating that I would not be able to downgrade.. Since we upgraded we were not able to use the password manager because of the bugs... I honestly would have waited until the dust cleared and probably paid for an upgrade to a new version. Instead, you overwrote a stable version with an unknown version in my book. You did not allow the brave people to update on their own, who live on the cutting edge, instead, you dumped everyone into the boiling pot of mSecure v6 with no options.
I would not have had so much trouble with things not working and being without. I would have looked at the reviews and if people were not having issues I would have eventually upgraded. If it was a pay per major version, like v4 to v5 payment. I dislike a monthly or yearly model and probably would not stuck around anyway. The way you have this current model, if I don't pay, I would be cut off if I did not pay the monthly fee for data that I place in your care. I like being in control of my finances and I don't want /or can't seem to keep track of monthly or yearly payments effectively, because they always seem to pop up at the worst possible unplanned time.
I would have rather paid for upgrades and keep what I have until I could afford it at a time of my choosing to upgrade.
You broke my trust by upgrading to v6 when I would have been more cautious about updating new major versions as I did from 3.x to 4.x and to 5.x
Problems that I had.
1. All my groups were gone...
2. Some of my passwords crashed the mSecure v6..it would hang and crash the program.
3. My wife's version would not allow her to log in, it loaded an older backup on her desktop... we discovered the v6 loaded an older version of her database... we only noticed because the password hint was from an older password that we long forgotten. It was not until the iPhone IOS version rolled out on the 26th of March were we able to export any data. I had almost 9 days to be pissed off about the upgrade.
4. The kids did not have any issues, because they don't have many passwords yet.
All this happened because all I did was log in to my system and click the mSecure Icon as I did for the past 4+ years because I was a daily user.
You said in many other posts that you automatically upgraded everyone so it would be easier on you, citing how hard it was between 4.x to 5.x etc... Then you need to write a wizard that handles the upgrade that anyone could use. The real reason why you upgraded everyone is that your trying to run a business and were forecasting when everyone's Essentials plan would expire.
If you had a few holdouts on v5 until bugs were fixed, this would have delayed that timeline.
I feel betrayed and hurt that you don't think more of your members than to force new software with new payment rules without my consent to upgrade.
Then you gave me a trial to show off the new junk with a promise of a free subscription. What if I used the new stuff within those 30 days... it would be blocked after the trial?
You say you were not in control and can't force upgrades.... but you are to blame because you submitted the updates as if they were the same version. You don't comprehend that people are scared of major versions. You say that upgrades from v5 to v6 is the natural evolution of software..
I paid for a v5 license, it was mine to use, I trusted it, I trusted your company, I did not have to worry about it... but then you took it away... with a promise of v6.
If you don't want older copies of the software as you had with 4.x for a very long time, place a sunset time on it, As Microsoft does... for example.. Don't sunset and upgrade on the same day.
You are welcome to do what you want it's your problem I was just a loyal member until the values of your company did not align with my own.
And for the love of God, when you import into your software, update the Icons for the websites.... yours never did this... when I moved into another password manager I noticed that all my icons updated... it's so nice.... wished your software did this 2 years ago.
@mike
> We have guaranteed all V5 paid users will have access to Essentials features for 3 years, and we don't actually have plans for changing that policy at this time.
This is exactly why I despise subscription model. I bought a perpetual license of mSecure 5 and then now there's an expiration to the Essentials account?
On top of that "you don't have plans for changing that policy at this time" means to me that you can't even guarantee it.
Please just give me my v5 back. I bought v5 for it's perpetual license and I don't think you can take it from me. Otherwise, why bother calling it "perpetual"?
@mike
> Can you help me understand why this has caused such a problem for you? With the route we have chosen, you get a fully supported app, you don't lose any features (you actually gain features), you don't have to pay for the upgraded app for at least 3 years (but hopefully and probably longer), and you don't have to sign up for subscription unless you want or need some of the Premium features.
> Why doesn't this seem fair to you?
1. Thank you but I don't want any new features. I will pay the features if I think it's worth it.
2. It is unfair because I bought a perpetual license of v5 but due to your "forced" upgrade (and not communicating with me properly beforehand) I can't run v5 anymore, effectively taking my perpetual license.
3. You can't even guarantee the 3 years. See my response above.
Mike - mSecure
@Galuh There is no way to go back to mSecure 5, as mSecure 6 is the natural update to the app. However, if v5 was going to be unsupported anyhow, I don't understand what the difference is here. At some point in time, v5 would start to break because it is no longer supported. That could 2 years or it could 10 years, no one knows. The iOS version of mSecure 4 started breaking 4 years in to the mSecure 5 release. If v6 were to have been created as a new app, we would immediately drop support for v5. Now you have access to all of the features you had (and more), and the app is fully supported.
Also, I don't believe we said mSecure 5 had a "perpetual" license. If you see that somewhere, please do let me know, because it shouldn't say that. We advertised mSecure 5 as a one-time fee, which it always was. Now mSecure 5 has been updated to mSecure 6 and the V5 license gives you access to the Essentials features. To be clear, I'm not trying to play word games here. We never said that mSecure 5 would exist and have support forever. That version of the app was either going to lose support, or it would be upgraded to mSecure 6. Either way, it would have always ended. I think I understand you to be saying that a perpetual license means you would get to use mSecure forever without cost if you purchased an mSecure 5 license. If that's the case, we have never said that was how the licensing works in v5. If that's not what you're saying, please do explain further, so I can provide further clarification, or answer any other questions you might have.
@Mike
OK, my bad. I guess I was under the impression that "one-time" is the same as "perpetual".
> However, if v5 was going to be unsupported anyhow, I don't understand what the difference is here. At some point in time, v5 would start to break because it is no longer supported. That could 2 years or it could 10 years, no one knows. ... If v6 were to have been created as a new app, we would immediately drop support for v5.
So be
it. I'm fine being v5 not supported anymore. It's common to see older
software/hardware not supported anymore after a period of time. After
all, you have to discontinue your product either way since you can't
support every single version out there. I'm fine as long as you
communicate when you would stop supporting it.
The difference is that I will have my choices when it breaks; I have the choice when and how to replace it; and this is what I paid for.
@Galuh
Just so you know how bad it is to just upgrade on someone, I am also looking into a new password software myself. Your upgrade didn't give me any new features, it locked me out of my passwords altogether on my PC. I paid for the upgrade and everything is still grey'd out. The only advice I could find is to go get a backup which I thought you were doing since I had all my data saved in the msecure cloud. Nobody has contacted me in over a day on this issue. So if you wonder why a lot of people just don't pay or disappear next upgrade this would be it. I'm just praying I can get an answer from anybody on your team so I can unlock my passwords (it says All Items 652 but they are grey'd out and I can't access any of them by search or any means).
I'm done with msecure.
Mike - mSecure
@Galuh I understand what you are saying, but we only have two choices: we can either create brand new apps each time we do a major update, or we can provide a direct upgrade path. It's the only options the app stores give us. You may have seen my explanations in other threads, but we tried the new app route in v5, and it was not a good experience for many, many of our customers. We did that to give our customers the choice of moving over to mSecure 5, because it was a paid upgrade. Instead of doing that, we decided to go the direct upgrade path and give our v5 paid users free access to the Essentials features. That way they wouldn't lose any features, they wouldn't have to pay for the upgrade, and they would have a fully supported app. All of those things happened with the v5 update except that users didn't get to continue using a fully supported app, and they didn't get any upgrades.
At the end of the day, we understand each choice we have would be liked and disliked by different groups of our customers. We received scathing emails and posts when we released mSecure 5, much like now with mSecure 6. Nothing we do will make all our customers happy, but no matter what we do, we try to take care of our customers in the best way we can.
@Mike the only thing I can tell you why even though the experience for people to move from one version to another is hard is better than just upgrading is that at least when you upgrade yourself you have a chance to backup and be ready for something to go wrong. I woke up on a day I need to work and bang into my password manager all day long only to find out it doesn't work at all. So if you guys need to do this again ever I'd suggest going with the new app or whatever else might work. In that case at least you don't screw people completely until they get it fixed.
Mike - mSecure
@Bob I thank you for your perspective on this, and I do understand where you're coming from. The problem is that with the v5 update, people were angry that they had to do anything at all after the app was updated. They wanted it to be seamless, and it wasn't. Even though it was a very simple process for most of our users, the ones that ran into problems didn't like it at all, and they complained very, very loudly. Just like what is happening now in the Play Store, they 1-starred the app and complained about the company far more than what is happening now. For us, we're trying to the thing that makes the best experience for as many of our users as possible, and after trying the other option, we chose this one instead.
There are always things we can do better, and believe me, we're learning with each update we make. For the v5 update, we learned two very important lessons: creating a brand new app creates a ton of friction for users, and we have communicate more with our customers. I've addressed the first lesson already and am having to address that with others in the forum and email. Since we now have an account system, and we have our user's email addresses (we didn't have those before v5), we have been doing everything we can to keep in communication with the customers who allow us to via email. I'm sure it hasn't been perfect, and we will learn even more about how to improve our communication as we continue development. But I know we have done a pretty good job letting our customers know well in advance what was coming, as well as continuing to send out some emails as needed afterwards. If you have not received those communications from us, then it's either because you have been unsubscribed from our MailChimp audience, MailChimp was not able to send the messages to your email, or those messages are in a spam folder. If either of those things are the case, I'm very sorry you were not able to see what we sent out and that this update came as a surprise.
The lesson we have learned so far after v6 is that we have to be incredibly meticulous with the in-app messaging. I think we relied too much on the pre-ship emails and the information on our site being enough to help our users understand the update, and in doing so, while still being very intentional with our language in the app, there were a few messages that should have been updated before the release. The most confusing message, I think, is that when you clicked/tapped "Learn More" in the banner at the bottom of the left column or mobile menu, the Essentials features were showing up under the Premium features. It looked like you had to purchase a Premium license to have access to the features all Essentials accounts already have, so it sounded like we were talking out of both sides of our mouth after telling everyone with v5 Pro license they would not lose any features. There's nothing we can do about these things now accept for take our lumps, make sure they're fixed (which we did very quickly after the release), and move forward without making the same mistake again.
There are other lessons to be learned, both internally and from our customer's feedback, and we are and will continue to go over the release to get as much information as possible to make wise decisions in the future.
Mike,
I'm having a problem regarding contacting you. Maybe it's my not being familiar with this forum. I resent my email address to you via email. If you didn't receive it this time, I can send you a phone number, and we can get the communication route figured out.
Thank you.
Mike - mSecure
@Gary I checked for emails in our support system, but the newest one I found was from about 2 years ago. Did you send in another email to us, and if so, was it sent with a different email address than the one you are using here in the forum? You can go ahead and tell me here what's going wrong if would like, and I will help in any way I can.
I sent one that I apparently used in the Microsoft store at one time. That email address is shipmstr@outlook.com. I used it last night and was able to locate the Msecure app. I was tempted to download it, but that might have made the situation worse, and it might have tried to make me pay for it again. Their records show that I purchased Msecure Pro from mSeven on October 19, 2021.
Is there a way for me to delete it from my computer, not lose it on my cell phone, and then port the date from my cell to my computer?
Would it possible to have you call me so we can get this line of communication straight? I'm not sure that you're getting my emails.
The problem I'm having is like so many others are having. Msecure 6 works great on my cell phone. But on my computer? Thumbs down. I just sits there with the "lock" screen showing and eventually goes away. I can't do anything to make it go away except hit the "X" in the upper right corner.
Mike - mSecure
@Gary The issue you are having on your PC is a known bug that we're working to get fixed now. It's actually our highest priority. After getting logging from other customers, we think we narrowed down on what's causing it to happen, but we're still not sure why it only affect a small percentage of our users.
When you ask if it's possible to delete the app from your computer, then port the data from your cell to your computer, I'm not sure what you mean. However, if you delete mSecure from your computer, that won't have any effect on mSecure on your phone. The problem is, if you reinstall the app on your computer, you are likely to run in to the same problem you are running into now.
We do have a new non-production build that will become available soon, and it has what we hope to be the fix for the issue you're experiencing. Would you like to get access to that build to see if it fixes it?
David
I used to love mSecure 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x password manager but do the recent direction of the subscription service model I started looking for other solutions.
You have a free copy of mSecure 6.x, use the time to deal with the most recent version or use the time to find a different solution. (most see to already be at the subscription model)
I have Successfully ported my data from mSecure 6.x to a Password Manager called Bitwarden (Self Hosted)
I manually exported my data from mSecure 6.x to the format for LastPass using excel then imported it into Bitwarden. Over 900 passwords would have been taken forever manually. Don't use the mSecure import from Bitwarden, it's for the 5.x version at the time of this posting..
Bitwarden is not free, it's a bit more expensive than Mike's mSecure, but they have an option where you can host your own server and use all the pro features for free! It does take some technical tinkering, but if you like to tinker as much as I do, it's well worth it.
If you are not comfortable with tinkering with Linux on a Raspberry PI or other small footprint home servers then I suggest you stick with mSecure 6. x or another product.
I started tinkering with Raspberry Pi with a project called PI-Hole - https://pi-hole.net/
I use this to block ads from my network. I would suggest if you are feeling frisky, dust off your old Raspberry PI 3 Model B+ or better.
If you don't already have one, you can buy it from your favorite provider for about $20-200 bucks (depending on how fancy you want to get) I have the $55 version and $12 case. (Google it)
Here is the video that got me started with Raspberry Pi and PI-Hole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXTnrD_Zs4
Pi-Hole is not required to run Bitwarden (Self Hosted) but it gives you a good understanding and practice with Raspberry and it's super at blocking ads, I watch Youtube videos and it blocks 95% of the ads. I run Pi-Hole and Bitwarden from the same Raspberry Pi that's powered by my Linksys Router.
To Install Bitwarden watch this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJA1F72izc
The entire idea behind this version of Bitwarden (Self-hosted) is that you don't have your passwords leaving your network on to a third-party server. But still able to use Windows/Mac/Linux/IOS/Android desktop and mobile apps for free.
Look in the comments for "David E...." on comments from the Youtube video and you will see the comments that make this work correctly.
Now, this bears repeating, if you are not a techie or don't have time to learn by watching some cool videos, I recommend you stick with the done-for-you solution of mSecure 6.X or another Password manager.
Disclaimer: I did not make any of these videos, I am a customer just like you and I am not selling anything.