End of the Line for Spanning Sync

After much deliberation, Larry and I have decided to discontinue sales of Spanning Sync. We'll continue to operate the service for existing customers through June 2013, but we won't be selling new subscriptions or renewals.

It's been an incredible 5 years—5 years!—since we released Spanning Sync v1.0. So much has happened.

We've learned a lot about technology and business. We've proven to ourselves that you can make a good living as an indie Mac software developer. And we've had a lot of fun. But the most rewarding part of the journey has been getting to know some of our customers.

Over the years, more than 50,000 people in over 50 countries subscribed to Spanning Sync. Many of those people became well-known to us through emails, forum posts, Twitter, and in person. I can hardly attend a technology conference or meetup without running into someone who's used Spanning Sync. And it's to those people—our customers—that I want to say thank you. You've made this the most rewarding experience of my professional life.

But, as they say, all good things must end, and so it is with Spanning Sync. We've faced what we thought was certain death several times before, notably when Google built CalDAV support into Google Calendar, then later when Apple built contact sync into Address Book. But though these developments hampered our growth, neither of them killed us. What finally did it was Apple's move to the cloud.

In June of last year, Steve Jobs announced iCloud, saying, "We're going to move the digital hub—the center of your digital life—to the cloud," adding, "If you don't think we're serious about this, you're wrong."

Technically, this meant a shift away from Apple Sync Services, the technology upon which Spanning Sync is built. The Sync Services team within Apple was quietly disbanded and the technology deprecated in OS X 10.7.

But it wasn't until a year after the iCloud announcement that the other shoe dropped with the release of OS X 10.7.4. That release included a bug that prevented iCal from properly syncing with Sync Services, and therefore with Sync Services clients like Spanning Sync, BusySync, Blackberry Sync, and many others. We've been in touch with Apple, and it doesn't appear they intend to fix the bug.

Instead, they've suggested we move to the more modern CalendarStore and Address Book frameworks. But this would require a major rewrite, which, given the dwindling need for a third-party solution to sync Apple and Google calendars and contacts, isn't economically feasible for us.

So this is it. On June 19, we temporarily suspended sales and renewals of Spanning Sync. Today we're making that permanent. We will however continue to operate the service until June 19, 2013—one year after we sold the last one-year subscription. If you have any questions about all of this, please contact us at support@spanningsync.com.

(I should also note that this has no effect whatsoever on Spanning Tools for Mac or Spanning Backup for Google Apps, both of which are kicking total ass!)

It's been an amazing time. We have lots more thoughts and stories to share. But for now, on behalf of Larry, Byron, and myself, let me just say thank you.

Best regards,
Charlie

--

Charlie Wood
Spanning Sync, Inc.
charlie.wood@spanningsync.com
blog.spanningsync.com

Comments

[Snowandscience]

Sad to see you go. Thanks for your great service and hard work over the years.

[Risoldi]

This is quite sad. Thanks for the great help you gave me, both with my personal and work calendars. I'll miss the small icon in the system bar, it was definitely one of the most useful, unobtrusive, "it-just-works" pieces of software I have ever used.

[John Hawkins]

At my office we are devastated to hear this news! For those of us on Exchange, sync applications like Spanning Sync were the only reliable way to sync Google and Exchange on a Mac.

It is a sad day, but we are appreciative of all the time and effort you put into this wonderful software over the years. Happy journeys and best of luck on whatever your next venture may be!

[Dave Pipe]

Damn. Well, thank you for everything you have done! Spanning Sync was truly a godsend and I would not have been able to function without it.

Thank you again for all of your hard work!!!

[Jose Sun]

I have used Spanning Sync for 3 years, so I'm sad to see this end. But I hope you guys could find a new opportunity. Thanks for your effort and hard work. It's a really great service for me.

[Codethug]

I have been a very satisfied Spanning Sync customer for a couple of years now, and I'm sad to see it go. Thanks for the great product! Too bad Apple got in the way of a good product.

[Sam Burdick]

Thanks guys for providing such a stable and useful service! You can count me among one of your many satisfied customers who are less than enthusiastic about this decision that Apple made. I will still happily use the cleanup software I purchased from you all.

I'm switching to the cloud for now for calendar and mail syncing. But, I'm not too happy that Apple has decided to be as horizontal and as closed in their product offering. What's next? FaceTimeBook where they close off avenues to Facebook?

[Abhay Phadnis]

Thank you for all the good work you have done! I'll miss your great product and your incredible customer service.

[D]

I must be missing something. Prior to 10.7.4, Spanning Sync was the only solution that still allowed me to share my iCal calendars via iCloud with my wife (she has a Mac and iPhone) and still allow me to sync these same shared calendars with my Google Calendar (I have an Android phone). If you guys rewrote to the new standards and this still worked, I can't imagine you wouldn't corner the market for users like me.

[Chuck Tomasi]

Thanks for all the years of wonderful service! You will be missed.

I'm curious what others are doing to fill the gap. I find myself with Outlook 2011 (to Exchange 2007) and cannot get my calendar entries over to Google so my wife knows when work schedules my time. SpanningSync was the perfect fit for this.

[Kristybhansen]

Count me in among the very satisfied customers -- As a mac user with an Android phone, this was the absolute perfect solution for me. Dare I ask if anyone knows an alternative?

[Aamirbarry]

Real sad to go. Its one the best apps and may be the only doing it to seamlessly. Excellent company with superb support.

I am from Pakistan and we do not have Paypal yet here and I was so grateful when thee guys offered me free services.

I wish them all the best for future.

[twitter.com/mbaizman]

Just saw this news. It's been quite a ride. Charlie, thanks for your dedicated customer support and patience with the "OMG ALL MY CONTACTS ARE GONE!!! (or DUPLICATED!!!)" panicked help requests. I hope the roller coaster was fun, and looking forward to the next chapter for Spanning Tools and Spanning Backup. Good luck!

[Paul Taylor]

Really sorry to hear this. Basically it will mean I lose sync ability because my mac won't support 10.7 - I am stuck on 10.6 until I upgrade the hardware which I don't plan to do for a while yet. This is going to mean having to completely rethink my calendar strategy: I don't want to put my entire life into my Outlook/Exchange calendar at work because my employers won't let that data leave the building, so I'm now going to be looking for some other way of getting my personal life into the cloud so I can at least see it from the office. I imagine there will be other people in a similar situation who would be happy to continue renewing Spanning Sync until upgrade time.

[Prashant Verma]

Just upgraded my mac and realized that Spanning sync won't work anymore! Really sorry to hear this. Spanning sync was an awesome product that worked flawlessly for me for the last 2 years. Thank you for building and supporting it!

[Lea]

very sad to hear that! wish you all the best and thanks for everything!

[Darrell Butler]

Very sad indeed. Byron, you have been a big help over the last couple of years through my challenges of getting "the big three" to play nice. After a number of attempts with other syncing products, Spanning Sync was the only solution that "just worked" (as someone stated earlier) in syncing Microsoft Outlook 2011 on Mac to Google contacts/calendar for use with my Android phone and iPad.

We may be relatively small in number, but know that there's still a market that wants to use the best Personal Information Manager (Outlook) on the best hardware (Mac) with a feature rich cloud service (Google/Google Voice). If you rewrite the code, we'll market the heck for you!

As of now, I'm still one of the fortunate users with OS 10.7.4 that's able to sync. I don't have another solution when the switch is turned off next June so any advise is welcomed!

[John Boardman]

I just switched from windows to a mac and am so sorry to hear this! Could you please update your home page to note that you no longer sell your product and it isn't compatible with 10.7.4+? That would save people like me wasted time downloading an app that won't work.

[Theo Stacy]

Too bad. I uninstalled Lion and back to Snow Leopard due to lack of syncing with anything but iCloud and other software incompatibility. I use a droid so iCloud is non-functional. Will have to look for another solution. Thanks

[Marc Malkwitz]

Sad to hear that this great tool will soon be unavailable. But in fact I don't encounter any problems. I'm running 10.8 "Mountain Lion" and Spanning syncs perfectly my Google data with iCal and Contacts. Has the 10.7 bug disapeared in 1.8?

[Steve Rogers]

(a) Spanning Sync will continue to work until June 19, 2013... but my subscription just ran out and I can't buy another, so I am blocked from continuing until June even if I want to pay! And by the look of this forum, the devs have gone home and aren't listening - they haven't relied to my email either :-(

[Charlie Wood]

Hi Steve-

No, we haven't gone home and I promise we're still listening! We'd like to be able to extend everyone's service past their subscription expiration date and provide service to everybody through next June, but at this point we're writing checks out of our own pockets to pay the server bills, and it's only by natural attrition (as people reach the end of their subscriptions) that we're able to keep doing this.

We really appreciate your support and desire to keep using Spanning Sync. We've talked to the guys at BusyMac, makers of BusyCal, and they're offering a discount to Spanning Sync customers. Just email them at info@busymac.com and mention that you're a Spanning Sync customer.

Thanks again for your support.

Regards,
Charlie

[Rafberger]

Hey Charlie,

Too bad news. I am sorry.

What about the people who paid a lifetime account? do they get the money back?

Cheers,
r.

[Charlie Wood]

Hi Raphael-

We're handling cases like that on a one-by-one basis. We tend to look at how much service we've delivered since the customer signed up and figure out how much they would have paid if they had bought a yearly subscription. So if they purchased a lifetime sub less than three years ago, they've essentially paid more than they would have had they gone year-to-year and are entitled to a prorated refund. Ultimately though we do what everyone decides is fair.

Thanks,
Charlie

[Marcogomes]

Sorry to see you go.

A tip for the orphans: In 5 minutes I've migrated my syncs from SpanningSync to Google in OS X Settings. It is pretty simple for both Contacts and Calendars.