This is a product review by an actual customer for SmartFTP. I have created this page as a real form of customer feedback.  SmartFtp does not honor their own licnese agreement.

After purchasing a copy of SmartFTP over 2 years ago, I am unable to continue to use the program because they expect customers to purchase a "maintenance" contract for an additonal $17 per year in order to continue using their software. On the purchasing page (shown below) , they state that the license is prepetual, meaning that you can continue to use the program forever,  This is NOT TRUE.

I have never had a problem with the software itself, never needed any tech support or maintenance, but they are insisting that I pay more money for this service, in order to continue using the product. 

This may be considered a "bait and switch" as they are not allowing me to use the product I actually paid for.  

After my first attempt to contact customer sercive regarding this issue, I received no response.  

My second attempt was met with this reply that that basically said that since my maintanance contract has expired, I am "promoted to renue it."

"promoted to renue it" is a complete misnomer.  I am being FORCED to renew thie service, which is completely the opposit of what their licnese info states on smartFTP sales page. 

License and Pricing  (from smartFTP's own sales page)

License

SmartFTP is available for a free 30-day evaluation. During this trial period, SmartFTP will operate as SmartFTP Professional Edition with no limitations. If you would like to continue using SmartFTP after your evaluation, a license for SmartFTP must be purchased. The term of the license is perpetual. It means you can forever use the version of SmartFTP you have bought a license for. For further details please read the License Agreement.

Once SmartFTP decided to honor their license, this page will be removed from the web.

Here is another review from someone who found my page, and wanted to share thier story.

I started using SmartFTP back around 2007. I found SmartFTP easy to use, the interface is good, and it had some cool features too. My problems with SmartFTP only started once I decided to upgrade in March 2011. The reason that I decided to upgrade my SmartFTP was that the new version featured something called smart compare. Smart compare is a feature whereby SmartFTP compares the size and date/time of local and remote files and colour codes files that don't match. We were shifting to a new server and so this feature of SmartFTP 4.0 was going to be very useful so I bought it via their site.

To start with we had 2 little issues with SmartFTP 4.0. The first was to do with the date and time of uploaded files not being updated on our old server. I posted a thread on the SmartFTP premium support forum about this, and the other issue. This turned out to be down to the server's features, or lack of them as it didn't support the date/time feature which SmartFTP 4.0 used. No massive problem as we were moving to the new server anyway - we could live with that.

By the way, I do realise that often problems with computers can be down to the the user but its not like I am a newby: I used to run a software and database company back in the 90's (our biggest client at the time was Lloyds bank), and the other IT chap we have at our company here now came to us with a 1st degree in computer science.

The second issue we had with SmartFTP 4.0 was that when you uploaded a file it appeared as a 0kb file on the remote window of SmartFTP. You had to manually click refresh after uploading to get the SmartFTP window to display the files with their correct sizes. The files were being uploaded by SmartFTP 4.0, it was just that the auto refresh of the screen wasn't happening. SmartFTP said in the end that this was a known issue with XP (which is what I run on my computer at the moment, not wanting to move to Vista which was a load of rubbish, and not having the heart yet to upgrade to 7). Apparently SmartFTP sends XP 2 commands very close to each other and XP ignores the second command (to refresh the screen) because apparently it does that if it gets two commands very close to each other. One would of course think that it was a rather easy task to program something like this in to SmartFTP so that if SmartFTP notices that the screen has a load of files which read as 0kb just after an upload that it then sends a second delayed refresh command. Anyhow software development is not my field but that seems to make common sense.

The problem with this of course is that it means that the smart compare feature of SmartFTP 4.0 (the reason I had upgraded in the first place), would show the files as being different until I manually refreshed the remote screen of SmartFTP. So after each upload I would have to right click and 'refresh', which doesn't really cut it when you are uploading hundreds of different files in different folders - that would just add to my workload.

I did not have these issues with my original SmartFTP so this must also have been down to SmartFTP 4.0 using different methods and protocols. Now here is where I was stupid: when I downloaded SmartFTP 4.0 I killed my older copy of SmartFTP from 2007. So I then asked on the SmartFTP forum for:

1. I asked if SmartFTP could send me an older version of SmartFTP .
2. I said that ideally I would like a refund for my copy of SmartFTP 4.0 as it wouldn't work for me on XP.
3. Having already asked if SmartFTP thought this was an issue just for me or everyone on XP and not receiving a reply, I suggested that they update their site to tell people about this issue with XP.

All fairly reasonable I thought.

The admin on the SmartFTP premium support forum said I should contact SmartFTP support via email which I did. They replied back (after while) to my requests with a one liner; "This is a known issue with XP", which didn't really answer either of my requests, nor address my request.

At this point it is worth pointing out that the interval between the replies from SmartFTP that I was getting went from a few hours (which is good) to many days as we progressed through this process. I also remained polite throughtout - I'll put a link to the whole forum thread later on if you can really be bothered to read it! From my own experience in retail as 'problem' customers go I am a really good one.

SmartFTP then just stopped communicating as if that would make me go away. I didn't even have a 'sorry we do not have an old version of SmartFTP to send you' they must though surely? 'and we won't give you a refund read our terms and conditions, blah, blah' type of reply. To be honest this left me a bit perplexed as I had not expected this type of non response from a company like SmartFTP which must surely be of a certain size and must surely have standard procedures to deal with issues like these, one would have thought.

The next thing that happened astounded me: our IT chap and I went to the SmartFTP Premium support forum to see if they had replied back yet. The forum thread was not visible as it had been before - they had set it to 'private' so that we could only view if when we logged in. Presumably SmartFTP did this so that other potential customers could not see what was going on! I checked the terms of use on the forum and as far as I could see I was not violating any of them, it was just that the thread was not going in the direction that SmartFTP liked. I guess they did not want other potential SmartFTP customers to see how their support fizzled out.

In the age of the internet and the vast freedom of speech that this allows us this sort of thing really goes against the grain for me, not just because SmartFTP are not providing me with decent customer service, but also because this basically amounts to censorship - we expect our forums to be relatively free do we not? I can swallow threads being removed if people are being unreasonable, rude, posting porn, whatever, but not when a company like SmartFTP does not want the public to see its methods of operation.

In the end I did get an email from their support saying sorry, offering to send me the older version, but declining to refund me for my second purchase. By this time, having had my forum topic hidden even though I had remained reasonable, and having moved over to FileZilla, which is pretty good, I was not inclined to accept. I replied:

"Somewhere along the line it seems that your company may have veered off the path of good business ethics. I have found in the past that this can be due to a top down effect which then permeates a company, making the employees think that their ongoing practices are normal and reasonable.
It is not just bad business practice; censoring forum threads in this manner actually goes against the whole grain of the internet.

I do hope that you use this experience constructively and, rather than thinking that I am just 'another idiot user' that you look to improving your customer service. Its all a bit of a shame - I honestly used to really like SmartFTP. "

Incidentally FileZilla has the same file compare feature as SmartFTP 4.0 does/was meant to have, and seems to work just fine for me. I think I'll just carry on using that.