Ads on Cyberduck.io

[Levi Muniz]

Just food for thought...

I understand that you would like to monetize the hard work you've put into creating Cyberduck. I respect your hard work and have purchased a license for Cyberduck myself especially since I use it almost daily for my DevOps job.

However, I visited your site for the first time without an ad blocker today, and was very surprised by the amount and deceptive nature of the ads on the homepage. The most prominently displayed ad at the time of my visit was a large "Start Now" button to download a Chrome extension that was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the website that many users may mistake for a download button for Cyberduck.

My only suggestion is to dial back the size of the ads and/or better mark them as such. Maybe instead allow companies who make a sizable donation to have their logo featured on your site? My biggest grievance is that you also push pretty hard for users to buy a license. The combination of the two just seems a bit - for lack of a better word - greedy.

I hope you don't take offense to my comments. I know open source is notoriously difficult to monetize, but there's plenty of options outside of ads to consider. Hell, I'd personally be fine with a $5-10/yr subscription.

Thank you for the great product! I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

[John Navas]

Are you sure you're on the correct website?

Because I'm not seeing any ads on the Cyberduck home page:

https://archive.ph/qkl4r

[Levi Muniz]

[John Navas]

Touché. I didn't see the ad because I use Microsoft Edge with ad blocking, which works even in InPrivate windows. archive.today likewise blocks ads. Why don't you block ads? Do you also criticize other websites with ads? Because to me this ad doesn't seem terribly bad as compared to so many other websites.

[Levi Muniz]

I usually block ads but I was on my work computer. I tried to send the link to a coworker and I was visiting the page to make sure it copied correctly. The first thing I saw was a big green "download" button that was a really well disguised ad. My coworker wouldn't have been able to identify it as an ad.

I agree that the ads could be much worse and since posting I've taken notice to quite a few sites with almost the exact same layout for ads as the Cyberduck homepage. I think the difference is that most of those websites are blogs or tutorial sites that make their money from advertising, which is pretty standard. What irks me about the Cyberduck homepage is that Cyberduck requires payment on the App Store and Microsoft Store, the free version nags you to buy a license, and the ads shown on the homepage are not very reputable.

This is definitely not a huge deal to me, but I doubt I'll ever send a friends/coworkers the link to this homepage knowing that they might accidentally download something unintentionally. There are plenty of software shops which use alternate methods to drive revenue, such as limiting features available in the free version after 30 days (see BBEdit).

Again, I can't fault people for wanting to monetize their work. I just think there's better alternatives to make money than sketchy ads. IMO the ads on the homepage seem like a quick attempt to make a few more bucks. If nothing changes, so be it, I won't complain beyond this thread. That being said, I probably won't recommend Cyberduck to anyone unless there's a change purely due to the risk of downloading something unintentional.

Nothing against the developers or Cyberduck, I love the product!

[John Navas]

• Ads provide revenue to support the website. I think that's a reasonable purpose.
• Why not suggest?
• Using a smaller ad.
  
• Using a better ad source than Google.
• Clearly identifying the ad block as an ad, per FTC Native Advertising Guidelines.