snappy
Hey folks,
I'm very sad about the new licensing model of SmartFTP. It has been a very useful tool for many years, with no cost, but reporting bugs and discussing new features with the authors.
Now, without any warning, there is a cost of approx. 25,- EUR per year.
I undertand, that it's not easy to give support to millions of people for free. Good software, like SmartFTP is one, needs maintenance, not only in free time of a programmer. It seems to be a ful time job for many coders.
At first glance, if I see a price of 25,- EUR/year for a software like SmartFTP, I'd continue to look for a free tool, becaus this software seems to be too big (too many features) for my needs. If I'm looking for a nice and relaible FTP-Tool, 25,-EUR-class seemst to be professional, not for home use.
I'm sure, with a price of about 5,- EUR per year, you can hold many of your customers and make 5.000.000 EUR a year, if you have only one million customers. That should be enough to pay many programmers to build good software and to offer a premium version for 20,- EUR/license with more functions, which are not necessary for home users.
With 25,- EUR a year, I guess that the popularity of SmartFTP will rapidly fall, with a limit of some thousands of users, which is not, what I would call the standard FTP client, what SmartFTP is in my opinion today.
In hope of getting more information about the new lincensing model,
snappy
I'm very sad about the new licensing model of SmartFTP. It has been a very useful tool for many years, with no cost, but reporting bugs and discussing new features with the authors.
Now, without any warning, there is a cost of approx. 25,- EUR per year.
I undertand, that it's not easy to give support to millions of people for free. Good software, like SmartFTP is one, needs maintenance, not only in free time of a programmer. It seems to be a ful time job for many coders.
At first glance, if I see a price of 25,- EUR/year for a software like SmartFTP, I'd continue to look for a free tool, becaus this software seems to be too big (too many features) for my needs. If I'm looking for a nice and relaible FTP-Tool, 25,-EUR-class seemst to be professional, not for home use.
I'm sure, with a price of about 5,- EUR per year, you can hold many of your customers and make 5.000.000 EUR a year, if you have only one million customers. That should be enough to pay many programmers to build good software and to offer a premium version for 20,- EUR/license with more functions, which are not necessary for home users.
With 25,- EUR a year, I guess that the popularity of SmartFTP will rapidly fall, with a limit of some thousands of users, which is not, what I would call the standard FTP client, what SmartFTP is in my opinion today.
In hope of getting more information about the new lincensing model,
snappy