I’ve been using Captain FTP for about the last year and a half. During that time, they have gone from version 1.3 up to version 3.0. I’ve been a registered user since they started charging for 1.x or 2.0 (can’t recall exactly).

As you can imagine, during that time they have a had a few bugs and other hiccups just like any software does. I’ve sent in several bug reports myself. At one point, I had a fairly long conversation/argument with them regarding some functionality that I thought was implemented incorrectly.

I was, um, rather persistent about how I thought it should work and several releases later they ended up changing the behavior. I figured I’d pretty much pissed them off by continuing to argue with them rather than just agreeing with their reasoning. As it turns out, they appreciated the feedback.

Captain FTP 3.0 with SFTP support was released in the last few weeks, but instead of being a free upgrade like the 2.x versions it came with a (reasonable) upgrade fee. I downloaded the new version and replaced my current version with it just like I’ve done with each release for the last year. This time though, I was greeted by a try/buy screen.

A day or so later I got the e-mail from them announcing the new version and warning people not delete their old version if they don’t want to pay for the upgrade. I replied to them with a bug report and asked for the URL to download the latest 2.x version. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from them with a free upgrade code and a note saying that they remembered me and appreciated my contributions to their product.

Last night I received a tasks bug report from Scott Johnson and this morning an email from Mark Bryars with a suggested improvement to photos. Both of these have helped make my applications better and I really appreciate them taking the time to get in touch with me.

So if you have an application you like, don’t be shy about emailing the developers and giving them feedback. Smart developers really value good feedback.