This is a blunt warning to anyone who ever purchased, or is thinking about purchasing, FileZilla Pro.
I bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased.
- Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version.
- Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
I have a folder in my server where I archive the last several versions (usually 3-5) of all software I install. It would have helped in this situation but the main reason I started doing it >25 years ago is in case companies disappeared.
Funny project, funny people, funny ideas. There is some really black and white thinking around feature requests on their forums - for example, segmented ftp downloading for their ftp client.[1]
They are not, nor have ever been interested in solving customer problems. That's ok; that's their privlidge.
I began installing perpetually licensed software in VMs about 15 years ago. When I upgrade my (hypervisor) hardware, the VM still runs just fine. Obviously, a VM wouldn't be a suitable environment for FileZilla.
I guess we’ve reached a point where instead of taking personal responsibility for our backups, we just try to turn the internet into our personal army against products.
While I understand the author's frustration, I think they should take a moment and look in the mirror. A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity. Their reasons really aren't that relevant here. Likewise the rant about Mozilla is completely unfounded. There are many things to be upset at in the modern software world, this is not one of them.
It's 2025, not 1995 or even 2005. Installers for apps like this are tiny for cloud storage today. Cloudfront's recent flat tier pricing would even probably do the trick. free tier is 100gb data transfer a month, 1m requests. If that doesn't work, Pro is 50 tb, 10m requests, that's 15 bucks a month.
Now go complain to Adobe, where they just shut down their activation servers and leave you with 1k$ of "perpetual" unactivable & unusable software, no matter how much care you took keeping the installer media.
wasn't every traditional license where you bought some software that you could use indefinitely a perpetual license? and how many places allowed you to redownload a paid software product multiple times? is filezilla here really out of place. is it not just following the norm? don't most applications work this way? especially the ones who don't implement some kind of license key check? i mean, without a license key system, you can't sell a product and offer it as a free download as well. how would you verify that only those who paid for it can download it? so it doesn't make any sense for this to be an issue.
Realistically, this is why buy-once software is a bad idea. Users have expectations that can only be met via subscription service. If you choose the buy-once you'll get complaints like this with online mobs and so on. If you do services, you'll get paid and you provide the service and everyone's happy. SaaS is the better model in every way - including for the user.
The license policy sounds annoying, but the bigger question (to me) is: why are we still talking about FTP in 2025? If you need file transfer, use SFTP/SSH, rsync, rclone, etc. And if you want a GUI, WinSCP has been doing this for free for ages.
FileZilla refused to give me a copy of the version I purchased for 'security reasons,' even though they were already updating the version installed on my system, so it makes little sense to deny me access to the app. It is also worth noting that in the first email I received from them, they had already offered me a discount coupon to buy a new version. I strongly believe the decision to withhold a copy of the software is driven by financial motives rather than security concerns.
> If you’re considering FileZilla Pro, understand exactly what you are walking into: You can pay for a perpetual license, and later be denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own.
No. You are not denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own. It's on you to maintain backups of your installers. If you have that backup, you may install it and run it legally.
> Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
I can understand that logic. If an out-of-date version is found to have a vulnerability, then if they provide that version but don't update it, they are exposing themselves to lawsuits. Whether or not the lawsuit makes sense is another matter, but I can imagine the company's lawyers putting the kibosh on providing an archive of outdated installers.
As IronCore evolved, it eventually got packed — `+[obj load]` executed prior to entry point — and provided a JavaScript to Objective-C bridge. JS payloads were remotely downloaded and AES encrypted...
While offers were the usual suspects back then (Advanced Mac Cleaner, MacKeeper, and a customized Chromium app), the technique could be abused in a couple of ways so to spy on specific targets.
Anyhow, I don't know what you do with FZ, I am very much into rsync (OSS) and Transmit app (Panic).
I don't often try to get previous versions from the developer. While there are strongly ethical and consumer-centric software houses, I have been long conditioned to expect predatory behavior, usually with some degree of incompetence.
So my first inclination wouldn't be to try filezilla but archive.org. After that I'd search for other options and see what was most trustworthy.
29 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 48.6 ms ] threadI bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased. - Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version. - Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
Full text on link.
Did they ever claim they would hold a backup of the installer?
They are not, nor have ever been interested in solving customer problems. That's ok; that's their privlidge.
1 https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/2309
I'm afraid I don't really understand what the author is angry about here.
It's like going, "weird that they named it hemoglobin when it bears no physical resemblance to hematite!"
exactly. If you buy a music CD and lose that CD, while you have the license of the music on that CD, you should not get a free CD as replacement.
if you buy a software license, at least store the install binary?
No. You are not denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own. It's on you to maintain backups of your installers. If you have that backup, you may install it and run it legally.
> Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
I can understand that logic. If an out-of-date version is found to have a vulnerability, then if they provide that version but don't update it, they are exposing themselves to lawsuits. Whether or not the lawsuit makes sense is another matter, but I can imagine the company's lawyers putting the kibosh on providing an archive of outdated installers.
https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/osx-ironcore-a-or-what-we-k...
As IronCore evolved, it eventually got packed — `+[obj load]` executed prior to entry point — and provided a JavaScript to Objective-C bridge. JS payloads were remotely downloaded and AES encrypted...
While offers were the usual suspects back then (Advanced Mac Cleaner, MacKeeper, and a customized Chromium app), the technique could be abused in a couple of ways so to spy on specific targets.
Anyhow, I don't know what you do with FZ, I am very much into rsync (OSS) and Transmit app (Panic).
So my first inclination wouldn't be to try filezilla but archive.org. After that I'd search for other options and see what was most trustworthy.
I've done well with oldversions.com in the past. Last I heard they were still reputable. http://www.oldversion.com/windows/filezilla/
Even without knowing which version the author is looking for, I'm betting I could locate a suitable copy.