Why Sshly costs money once, not monthly

An SSH client is a tool, like a hammer. You don’t rent a hammer.

Somewhere along the way, developer tools decided otherwise. The going model: a free tier engineered to frustrate, a subscription for the features you actually need, and a price that quietly grows every year. It works — for the vendor.

The incentive problem

A subscription business is paid for retention, so that’s what gets built: accounts, cloud sync you didn’t ask for, teams features for the enterprise deal — and dark patterns around cancellation. The tool itself becomes the vehicle for the recurring charge.

A one-time purchase flips the incentive. We only earn from people who look at the product and say: this is worth it, today. The only growth strategy that works under that model is making the product better.

What that means concretely

• Free tier without a clock. Up to 3 connections, forever. Not a 14-day trial.
• One purchase, lifetime updates. Buy it once, own it. Updates included.
• No account. Your license key works offline; your data never leaves your Mac.
• Sustainable, not extractive. If we build something big and genuinely optional someday, it might cost extra — but the tool you bought stays yours.

This is the unfashionable model. It built a generation of great Mac software — Panic, Rogue Amoeba, the apps you still remember fondly. We think it still works.

See what Sshly costs → — spoiler: less than a year of the alternative.