How you set up your Host Groups and User Groups on day one will either save you hundreds of hours — or haunt you for years. If you manage a handful of machines, you can probably get away with ad-hoc access assignments and a loose grouping strategy. But once you cross the 100-host threshold, everything changes.
LogMeIn Central gives you two powerful levers for managing access at scale: Host (Computer) Groups and User Groups. When they work together, permissions flow cleanly across your entire estate. When they're set up poorly, you end up managing access one computer and one user at a time.
Once your account exceeds 100 computer groups, the "Show All Groups" filter becomes unavailable. Instead, you'll need to search for groups by name. This makes your naming convention a first-class concern — not an afterthought.
Planning a new account or greenfield deployment
Design your Host Groups around the way you grant access, not just the way you see your estate. It's tempting to build computer groups that mirror your org chart or office floor plan. That's fine for visualization, but your groups should primarily reflect your access control boundaries. Ask yourself: which sets of computers should be accessible by the same set of people? Those belong together in a group.
✓ Good grouping dimensions
By function (Servers, Workstations, Kiosks), by security tier (Production, Development, Test), by geographic region, by OS type (Windows, Mac), or by team ownership (Finance, Engineering, Support).
✗ Grouping anti-patterns
Adding everything to the Default Group, grouping solely by physical location with no access logic, creating groups that mirror every individual user's access (defeats the purpose of groups entirely).
The Default Group Trap
By default, every new computer lands in the [Default Group] unless you explicitly assign it elsewhere. In large deployments, this means new hosts accumulate in the Default Group and inherit whatever permissions are attached to it — often broader than intended. Always assign new devices to the correct group at installation time. Cleaning this up after the fact is painful.
Design your User Groups around roles, not individuals
The power of User Groups is that permissions granted to the group flow to every member automatically. The goal is that adding a new technician or admin should be a matter of placing them in the right group — not a 30-minute permission assignment exercise.
Pro Tip: Mirror Your User Groups and Computer Groups
When you create a User Group, Central gives you the option to simultaneously create a Computer Group and/or Subscription Group by the same name. Use this. Role-named groups on both sides (e.g., "Level 1 Support" as both a user group and a computer group) make the access matrix intuitive and auditable.
