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Friday, September 04, 2009



Would it be possible to obtain a license if we purchased FeedDemon 2.x a while ago?

I already paid for feeddemon some time ago.. Are we able to get a licence for free?

I realize I won't win a popularity contest by saying this, but we really can't let older serial numbers unlock the ad-free v3.0.

Please understand, since FeedDemon was created way back in 2003, we've only charged for it one time. The upgrade from v1.0 to v2.0 was free, as were all the smaller upgrades between v1.0 and v2.0, and v2.0 and v3.0. There have been almost 20 releases since v1.0 (some minor, some major), all of which either used the same serial number or were free. So I don't think it can be fairly argued that we've been unreasonable.

And, of course, we didn't even plan to make a paid ad-free version. Honestly, I didn't expect much demand for it, so I was surprised to hear so many people say they'd rather pay than see the ads - and it's hard to ignore people asking to pay you :) So, we ended up making a paid ad-free version to satisfy that demand. Given that, at least for now, a v3.0 serial number costs only US$9.95, I'm OK with saying that this is a major new release, and older serial numbers won't work with it.

BTW, I should add that your serial number will work on multiple computers, so you don't need to purchase a serial number for each computer you use. There is a to-be-determined limit to how many computers you can use the same serial number on, of course, but we'll be generous with that limit.

Very good work! Is there any hope to add the browser select option in some future release? Thanks a lot :)

I paid for FeedDemon back when it was in version 1, and I have no problem paying what is to me a very modest upgrade fee for such a great piece of software. And what a relief not to have to endure those ads any more (sorry Nick).

Thanks, Jeremy :)

Great News!

$9.95 is a very nice price to remove those ugly ads :).

Where is the link to buy a serial?

Great Work Nick!

@Jordi: You can purchase a serial number from within FeedDemon - just select Help > Purchase, or wait for the "Want to get of these ads?" message to appear in the ad panel.

I've been a naughty boy changed my hosts file ;).

Indeed still this is visible :P

I have been quite vocal in the past about my displeasure with the ads.
It's great to see an ad-free version available and $10 is a VERY reasonable price.
I paid for FD back at version 1 and I have no problem with paying another $10 five years later.
Thanks Nick for making a paid version available and for making the price more than fair.

I have been amazed at how nicely the ads fit in the interface in FeedDemon, and I am someone who just started using FeedDemon a couple months ago. The ads have (amazingly) been useful as well as not distracting, and I think it is an example of how ads ought to be done everywhere. I usually don't like ads under most circumstances, but they haven't bugged me at all in FeedDemon; in fact, I have found out about a couple of interesting companies/products/services through the ads. Thanks for a great product, and I'm looking forward to the final release. Keep up the good work, and thanks for making advertising, for once, a nice thing!

@Matthew: Thanks - your comment made my day :)


FeedDemon has improved significantly, and those ads are the only noticeable downside FD has now over the original v2 versions, at least for me.

I certainly don't see a problem with not accepting the older serials. It was pretty clear that the license was for the v2 series, and there certainly have been enough changes and improvements to justify making v3 a major release.
And given the current cost, well, there's also no need to give any discount for people upgrading from a previous license compared to a new license...

On the technical side, it could be a good idea to let esellerate know that since you're not physically shipping anything then it's not really justified to ask for full address details.
Similarly, it will be better to do this in an actual browser page, not a window opened by FeedDemon. I do trust you to direct me to the real esellerate site, and from there to the real PayPal site, but it would have felt much better to be able to verify it in a real browser window/tab.

@Yaron: Very glad to hear you like the new FeedDemon! I _think_ eSellerate still needs to ask for your address in order to process your credit card. It would certainly be nice not to ask for it, though - it's less for you to type, and I don't hang on to that information.

That window opened by FeedDemon is actually an embedded Internet Explorer - in other words, you are viewing the order site in a browser. FeedDemon simply hooks into it in order to extract your serial number at the end, and then activate itself without you having to do anything.

@Nick Bradbury - Glad I made your day ... thanks again for a great product!

Nick, I do realize that the window is embedded IE. The thing is that in the embedded window I can't see the address bar, verify the site's certificate, etc (I wasn't clear on what part of "browser" I meant. It wasn't about the rendering, but the overall UI).
If there's any problem with what FeedDemon, or eSellerate, do, I have no way of knowing whether I'm on the correct site or got redirected to some phishing site that managed to insert itself there.
If I make the purchase directly through the browser, not in an embedded window, I can check all that.

About the address, they do need it if I pay with credit card, yet they shouldn't need it if I pay with PayPal. But they ask for full address before asking about the payment method, and I have to provide an address regardless. Not you fault directly, it's an issue with esellerate, but it could be nice if as a customer you could complain to them about it. Maybe they do have it as optional when you set the account, but just don't bother to make sure the option is noticeable.

My first thought, as others here, was "I've already paid once", but $10 is a reasonable price to pay and being without ads makes FD so much better!

Looking forward to the release version of the software.


I'm currently using 2.7 and I'm trying out 3.0 pre-release and I'm sorry to say that I'm a bit disappointed for a couple of reasons:

1) The number of items kept for each feed are still limited to 2500. I understand (in fact you said it in your note on archiving) that you want to "minimize the disk space used for cached feeds" but honestly it's simply too low and I'm constantly running up to the limit. May I suggest raising it to at least 1,000,000 per feed (especially when hardware is not a concern, for me at least)?

2) Likewise, each page in FeedDeamon is still limited to showing 200 items per page. It's simply annoying to flip through 13 pages of unread news items. Why not just give me the option of showing *one* big, long list. If you must place a limit, then can you raise the limit to at least 50,000?

3) You still can *not* have feeds with the same name (even in different folders). As a result I have to name my feeds like "BBC - Business" and "WSJ - Business" in order to avoid name clashes. It's just ugly!

4) Still *no* nested folder.

Issue 1 & 2 are the most critical, and I find it diffcult to convince myself to paid for an upgrade if I'm still limited by the same restrictions placed on an older version.

Issue 3 & 4 are concerned with merely aethetics. I understand to do that might involve rewriting part of FeedDeamon and change the way it works. So if it can not be done for version 3, then so be it and I can always work around these issues (in an ugly way though). Something for version 4, perhaps?!

Nick, I want you to know that I've tried various RSS readers in the past, and FeedDeamon still delivers the most satisfactory experience for what I need to do (there are others that can do what I mentioned above but have their own separate issues). If they can be resolved then I'm more than happy to pay $10 for version 3. Please note I'm paying for resolving the above limitations and *not* for the new improvements introduced with the new version (though some are nice to have).

Hope I don't sound to angry and apologies if I offended anybody.

Best Regards


@Yaron: That's a valid point, and you're not the first to mention that. I'll provide a way to order through your browser in the next build (most likely by detecting when the wizard is cancelled, and then asking if the customer would prefer to order via their browser).

@Ren: I have to ask why you want to keep and view so many articles? Retaining 1,000,000 articles per feed and displaying 50,000 at once strikes me as something *very* few people would either need or want. I don't mean that to be critical - it's just that your requirements are rather unique :)

BTW, I had planned to add nested folders at some point, but the fact that Google Reader also doesn't support nested folders led me drop the idea.


I have been using feeddemon for a quite long time and I am a lot satisfied with it and can say that it is the best in its functioning and in interface. I am so happy to see the way twitter works in it. I have a small(?) suggestion about the twitter section. Can you add the star button for bookmarking the favorite links in it?



Thanks very much Nick for this release! I didn't really notice the last RCs, which went so quickly one after another, as I was so busy.

Although I'm not that annoyed by the ads I happily pay it, because I think it supports the good cause, which is indeed a proper, profound development of FD! :)
And that is worth A LOT !! Because what would the world be without this ONE professionally usable feed reader?

Also I already see you seem to have fixed the bug I had with Google Reader, great!

it is really good to see how well you handle the support requests and the (ever-abundant) criticisms. No wonder you're a shining light amongst sofware developers.

@secretGeek: Thank you! BTW, nice blog - just subscribed to it in FeedDemon.

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