Developer Panic has announced it will soon remove its Transmit file manager app for iOS from the App Store. The company says that revenue from the app isn’t enough to finance its development.
Quick summary:
- We are suspending the sale of Transmit iOS very soon
- Revenue was not enough to cover development — we won’t sell something we can’t actively develop
- This does not affect Transmit 5 for Mac. It’s doing extremely well
- This also does not affect Coda iOS and Prompt iOS, both of which are still going strong
- We really hope to bring it back someday in some form
The company announced in a blog that it is “suspending sale of the file manager for FTP/SFTP/Amazon S3 servers “very soon.” While the company says the app was “much-loved” by those that used it, there just weren’t enough users to keep maintaining the app.
Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app. And the app needs full-time work — we’d love to be adding all of the new protocols we added in Transmit 5, as well as some dream features, but the low revenue would render that effort a guaranteed money-loser. Also, paid upgrades are still a matter of great debate and discomfort in the iOS universe, so the normally logical idea of a paid “Transmit 2 for iOS” would be unlikely to help.
The company also said the iOS 10 Files app “overlaps” much of Transmit’s file management functionality.
Finally, the new Files app in iOS 10 overlaps a lot of file-management functionality Transmit provides, and feels like a more natural place for that functionality. It all leads to one hecka murky situation.
Panic says everyone that already has the app installed can continue to use it for “foreseeable future.” And they hope that “as iOS matures” there might someday be enough interest for the app to make a comeback.
What Next?
- We will soon remove Transmit iOS from sale. This is your last chance to purchase it — if you think it’ll be useful for you. It does a lot of useful things, even if it won’t be updated in the foreseeable future.
- Everyone that has Transmit iOS installed can use it on their devices in the foreseeable future. Plus, it should be easily re-downloadable from your App Store “Purchased” zone — at least until a hopefully-far-future iOS update breaks compatibility with it.
- We’ve posted Transmit iOS 1.3.9 which adds full iPhone X support! If you use Transmit iOS, make sure to grab that final update as quickly as possible, since auto-updates will stop when the app is removed from sale.
- We’ll keep Panic Sync working for Transmit iOS. There’s no reason for us to turn it off as long as the app continues to run!
- Finally, any customers who purchased Transmit iOS in the last 60 days or so should contact us — because that sucks. While Apple doesn’t provide us with the ability to provide you with a refund, we’ll do everything we can to help.
If you’d like to grab a copy of Transmit for iOS before it is removed from the App Store, it can be purchased here for $9.99.
(Via 9to5Mac)
