SmartFTP Client No Longer Free – Clever Move
So August 2008 SmartFTP decided to charge for their FTP client software. I purchased the 1-yr license thinking it will be a one-time payment - I can careless if I don't get upgrades to their software after one-year because their software is already solid.
But, just yesterday when I tried to open SmartFTP, I got hit with this message:
I guess I was mistaken! SmartFTP is going to make me pay for their "maintenance plan" - sorry, but that just annoys me. What if I don't want to be on your maintenance plan???!!!
It's like saying, "Hey, you have been driving your car for 3 months now, and you have past your warranty - you are going to have to pay an extended warranty plan in order to drive your car again."
@#$@#(*(@_#%** Okay, I'm over it, now going over to their renewal page to get a 3-yr plan for $35.95. For that amount of money it sure saves me a lot of trouble of having to establish my "favorites" again on another free FTP program.
Speaking of free FTP client software that's out there, I have evaluated FileZilla, FireFTP, and CoreFTP - none of them can be compared to SmartFTP for its native Windows-Explorer like interface, the easy of drag and drop uploading, and simply a smart FTP program.
December 28th, 2009 at 1:03 am
In 3 years time try Filezilla. It’s open source so it can never change to charging you. I’ve always found it’s interface pretty good, although the frequent updates can be a little annoying when you are just trying to get stuff done.
February 26th, 2010 at 3:55 am
Yeah, I got the same.
However it clearly states on their website in article 2543:
“If you decide not to renew your maintenance after the maintenance expiration date SmartFTP will keep running and no additional costs apply”
The annoying thing is, they dont give you any option to *not* renew your maintanance license. I emailed them about this and surprise surprise, no answer.
I’m now going to send them another, ruder, email.
February 28th, 2010 at 12:06 am
@Spencer: Yeah, there isn’t a perfect software, I guess.
The biggest annoyance (don’t know if you or anyone else has the same issue) is if you add a file to the queue it will fail immediate and you’ll have to wait 30 seconds to retry. So I end up stopping and starting the queue again to get the file transfer going.
I just live with that at this point.
Hey, let me know if they ever get back to you