When Jessica Couto, the vice president of global channel and alliances at LastPass, was hired in January 2024, she had a mandate: To make the identity, authentication, and password management company channel-first. Now, just a little over a year later, LastPass has revamped its partner program to provide improved benefits and services to MSPs and channel partners after the company was spun off from its former owner GoTo last May.
The updated partner program includes an improved MSP administration experience to provide streamlined invoices, prorated billing, executive summary reports, and more, while also adding a centralized partner portal that provides easier access to resources for training, support, marketing, case management, benefit tracking, and other services.
As part of the revamp, LastPass also optimized its partner program membership pillars to provide clear and enforceable benefits for MSPs and channel partners, including standardized discounts when deals are registered and broad integration with the new partner portal to ensure a consistent and transparent experience for partners to across all tiers.
The 'channel first' goal came from LastPass executives after the company transitioned away from its former owners GoTo (formerly known as LogMeIn) in May of 2024. LastPass now operates as an independent company under a shareholder holding company called LMI Parent, L.P., with private equity sponsors Francisco Partners and Elliott Management.
Redesigning the Partner Program
“LastPass is really a security tool,” said Couto. “So, we knew spinning off that we would have to look at our partners [to figure out] who is trying to sell LastPass. And we knew by crowdsourcing some information and feedback from the existing partners that the [previous partner] program was complex. It was probably even overwhelming for our sales organization to help and promote being a partner.”
The new partner program and portal help solve many of those difficulties for LastPass MSPs and channel partners, she said. That includes better access to content and training in a portal that is more adaptable to their needs, compared to the previous partner portal where they logged in and then hunted and pecked to find the information they were looking for, said Couto.
“With the new investment of this portal, they now have content catered to their business type, so if they are an MSP, they see all MSP content, and they get access to the ticketing system,” she said. “We make ticketing support and access to that a lot easier and more accessible. That was based on a lot of feedback from the MSPs, and they wanted more margin and to make money. And we know MSPs are very lean right there. So that was another thing we worked on, was our pricing to give them more margin.”
All of this is aimed at refocusing LastPass and its business model as a security company that gives its partners the tools they need to sell their products and create sustained revenue growth, said Couto.
LastPass Regrouped After 2022 Data Breach
LastPass encountered some rough times after experiencing a significant security breach in its password management application in 2022. The incident began when hackers stole source code in August of 2022 and later gained access to customer information, including a copy of a backup of customer password vaults and encryption keys for some of them, according to reports by The Verge. The LastPass spin-off followed the incident and transformed it into a new operation with broad leadership changes and a new direction.
Couto said that LastPass has continued its growth since the incident, which occurred before her arrival.
“Over the past two to three years, the LastPass MSP business has increased exponentially, growing 200%,” she said.
Partner Program Revamps Are Good for MSPs and Channel Partners: Analysts
Reworking channel partner programs is an excellent strategy for any company, Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, told ChannelE2E.
"This effort appears to be targeting past friction in dealing with LastPass, making it far easier to do business with the company,” he said, “Lowering aggravation is always appreciated by partners, and this should help prevent losing them. It even may make LastPass products more attractive.”
Enderle said that he believes the company’s 2022 security breach potentially hurt some partners, and the updated program might be trying to heal them.
“That is certainly possible, because a breach generally causes partners to reconsider their relationship with the breached company,” said Enderle. “The centralized portal for partner services, including training, is a really good idea, and partners will likely appreciate what appears to be a clear focus on their needs.”
Another analyst, Shelly Kramer, principal analyst with Kramer&Co., said it is no surprise that LastPass updated its partner program because vendors must review such updates constantly to better serve their partners.
“Channel partners augment vendors' existing sales operations and drive, or can drive significant business,” she said. “This is about a vendor's need to sell more things to more people and empower the partner ecosystem to do that, which is a win all the way around. Just like customers, MSPs have a choice of vendors with whom they want to work. Programs that make working with certain vendors more attractive is what attract a more robust channel partner community.”
