FileZilla Pro? Have I been duped?

[mgutt]

Now there is a Pro version available, ok. But why is there no news on the website or in the forums? I mean you have change logs, version information, the project page and the news sub forum and nowhere are informations published regarding the new Pro version?!

I found a separate website as well:
https://filezillapro.com

But it seems not to be published anywhere as google returns only 15 results:
https://www.google.de/search?q=%22filezillapro.com%22

And this domain whois information is protected by WhoisGuard and hosted on a complete different server. The filezilla-project.org is hosted at 136.243.154.86 which is part of the german hosting company Hetzner. The owner of the domain is Tim with all transparent data. But filezillapro.com is hosted at 198.54.114.158 which is part of the U.S. company Namecheap. This looks really strange to me.

It looks like the Pro version has nothing to do with Tim's project. Instead it looks like an additional version of a foreign company. Am I right?

[Floyd R Turbo]

Now there is a Pro version available, ok. But why is there no news on the website or in the forums? I mean you have change logs, version information, the project page and the news sub forum and nowhere are informations published regarding the new Pro version?!

I found a separate website as well:
https://filezillapro.com

But it seems not to be published anywhere as google returns only 15 results:
https://www.google.de/search?q=%22filezillapro.com%22

And this domain whois information is protected by WhoisGuard and hosted on a complete different server. The filezilla-project.org is hosted at 136.243.154.86 which is part of the german hosting company Hetzner. The owner of the domain is Tim with all transparent data. But filezillapro.com is hosted at 198.54.114.158 which is part of the U.S. company Namecheap. This looks really strange to me.

It looks like the Pro version has nothing to do with Tim's project. Instead it looks like an additional version of a foreign company. Am I right?

If you click the Buy link, it takes to you the same upclick cart page and is does when you buy it from the mysteriously buried method that I found before. So, nothing shady going on here.

As for the new site, finally! Namecheap is the registrar (where the URL was purchased) and he apparently bought the privacy option (some offer that for free) which removes any personally identifiable information from the registrar. Nothing shady. I have 50+ domains, all with privacy. Because I wanted to and it was free with namesilo.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Also, there is a 100% separate forum with a separate login for Pro license owners. Not the way I would have done it, I would have just made it a separate usergroup but that might not be possible with phpBB (freeware)

[mgutt]

Namecheap is the registrar (where the URL was purchased) and he apparently bought the privacy option (some offer that for free) which removes any personally identifiable information from the registrar. Nothing shady. I have 50+ domains, all with privacy. Because I wanted to and it was free with namesilo.

Maybe you are a private person, but Tim is selling a software so he has a company. And because of that he is forced by german law to publish all contact details:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tmg/__5.html

Of course he needs a german tax id and he is forced to provide invoices, too. But as I said. It looks like someone else provides the Pro version because the payment process is completely anonymous as well. You are speaking about a separate forum. Again an indication for my guess because its easy to create a second user group inside of phpBB3 and give access to a new subforum. And it would be possible to display it for all users without displaying the containing topics (making some advertisment for the pro version).

And it does not explain why he does not publish any information regarding the pro version on the general website, project page or general forum.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yeah I don't know why the reason for the separate forum. I PMd him about converting to Xenforo (I would perform it for free) because I pretty much hate these old school forum software platforms but I didn't get anything back.

As for the German laws/etc, I can't speak to that. From my perspective, it didn't appear there was anything wrong. But now I understand where you're coming from

[botg]

The reason for the separate forum is priority support for customers. The problem with re-using the existing forum is distinguishing between users of the free version and paying customers, too many things that can go wrong. Sure, the forum software could be modified to support all possible use-cases with some effort (a few weeks of work), but setting up a separate forum instead is so much simpler (4 hours).

The lack of information about the Pro version is a known issue that's being worked on. It's just a matter of prioritizing work. See it this way, would you prefer our efforts going towards getting the software out, adding new features and fixing bugs or instead into writing lyrics on some website?

As for filezillapro.com, it's a website of a business partner authorized to market FileZilla Pro.