
Launch HN: Termius (YC W19) – SSH client that works on desktop and mobile - rkudiyarov
We are Roman and Dmitry, co-founders of Termius (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;termius.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;termius.com</a>). Termius is an SSH client that works on desktop and mobile. The big difference with other SSH clients that Termius syncs data across devices using end-to-end encryption.<p>DevOps, sysadmins, and network engineers benefit from using Termius because they can keep all the information for managing their servers in one secure place, e.g., snippets, connection strings, history, etc. Our product vision is to rebuild the command line experience around an engineer, not around the mainframe where it all started. For example, Termius will help engineers to safely keep information about their servers, shell commands, and terminal logs. This information will be accessible from any device and used to improve productivity, e.g., autocomplete commands in the terminal.<p>Dmitry and I met when we both got our first job in a small game development studio in Omsk, Siberia. Actually, at that time, it was an advertising agency with an ambition to become a game development studio. We were students, and it was a perfect place to learn on our own a ton about software development in C++. After four years of hard work, we managed to release a 3D game for PC with real-time physics. We involved kids in testing the gameplay, which allowed us to watch other people using our software. It was a life-changing experience when we saw how software could drive emotion, especially with kids and games. After that, we got hooked on building products that people love.<p>After the commercial failure of the game studio, we went to work for an outsourcing company. We were working on some enterprise software, which was not a lot of fun.  Therefore we were working after-hours and weekends on many ideas. After two years, we decided to start our own outsourcing company. We planned to use outsourcing company resources to develop our first product.<p>Roman started Termius as his pet project at our outsourcing company about seven years ago. Roman needed a way to start a C++ project compilation from my iPhone. The project used a lot of Boost::Spirit and a complete rebuild could take around 15 mins. This time was ideal for a cup of coffee with colleagues or a short bout of office-chair fencing. However, some compilation or linking errors could come up, so he needed to keep an eye on it. It was hard to justify paying $10 for iSSH for such a minor use case. Free SSH clients in the App Store were ugly or had ads in the terminal window. Roman thought that a basic SSH client with the terminal must be available on all platforms for free and ad-free. SSH is as universal as email, and most operating systems have at least one basic and free email client. That is how it is all started.<p>First, we needed to solve a couple of UX challenges. SSH client requires terminal emulator support to render the output. Also, the mobile keyboard doesn’t have some necessary keys like Fn, Ctrl, Alt, and Tab. Besides, these keys must support sequences(Ctrl-Alt-x or Ctrl-x Ctrl-f) to support Emacs. That was our first UX challenge. Initially, we developed Ctrl and Alt in the shape of a lollipop
pinned to the sides of the terminal window. Those were special buttons with two states: tap for single usage(for Ctrl-C) and drag to the center(locked state) for combinations like Ctrl-Alt-x. We have changed the design of the terminal window three times to make it easier to grasp. We ended up emulating a lot of what native OS does because users are familiar with those patterns already. In the recent versions, all the additional keys are grouped and sit on top of the system keyboard. Ctrl and Alt work a lot like Shift(double tap to lock) which was introduced later by Apple.<p>Once we released Termius (at that time was called Server Auditor) for iOS and Android, we started to get quite a lot of feedback on the missing features and bugs. Frequently this feedback was in the form of one-star review with a typical comment like “Will switch to 5 stars if you add blah”. In some cases, we had no idea why users needed those features and had no way to ask about it. App Store did not provide the response feature at that time. Therefore we integrated the feedback channel and the feature voting straight into the app(UserVoice). After that, we were able to communicate with our users a lot easier. This tight feedback loop kept us engaged and motivated to keep working on the product. We also got to hear stories from users who used Termius in different life situations. Some users fixed a server being on holiday or saved their bacon because they could continue working from their iPhone. One of the fascinating cases was a story from one visually impaired user who was managing a server on his iPad using Termius and VoiceOver.<p>Initially, we released Termius as a free app for iOS and Android. After a year of continuous work, the apps got to the first places in both app stores when you search for SSH. Organic search traffic combined with good ratings drove pretty good daily downloads numbers. We realized that we are building something that people want.<p>When we were researching user churn, we realized that we could solve even a bigger problem. Some users stopped using the mobile app because it was daunting to keep the information up to date on the mobile device. They downloaded Termius to use when they are away from their desk. However, when an emergency happened, they didn’t have all the things to deal with it, e.g., connection strings, keys, commands to restart a service, you name it. As a result, a standalone mobile SSH client was useless for them, and they had to run to their desk. We realized that if we add a desktop app and secure sync with end-to-end encryption, then all the data would stay fresh on all devices and users would be able to rely on the mobile apps.<p>Moreover, having sync enabled us to rethink the whole command line user experience. For example, Termius could accumulate all the commands when you work in a shell and use them for auto-complete an all devices. Another example, that engineers encouraged to invest a bit of their time to keep the information in order because it stays with them all the time. Termius supports groups and tags to maintain a list of hundreds of hosts.<p>What is next? Tens of millions of engineers use the command line to interact with remote computer systems. Many of them maintain infrastructure together. Our next step is to bring more collaboration to sysadmin and DevOps teams based on their interaction with the command line. Things like terminal logs, recently executed commands and lists of currently runnings systems could be shared among all team members with Termius. That would make the whole process more transparent and new member on-boarding a lot easier. The similar transition that Google Docs brought to collective document creation.<p>HackerNews community probably has the highest concentration of engineers who might use Termius daily. Therefore we would love to hear your feedback!
======
stakhanov
Can I just vent on how extremely annoyed I am about normal bits of software,
that aren't even genuinely a service, being priced on a subscription basis at
ridiculous price levels?

5$ per month is $300 over a five-year time period, which might be the lifetime
of, say, a newly bought laptop computer. Now imagine you're at an electronics
store, looking at laptops, and there are two identical laptops sitting in
front of you. One has a pricetag that says $1000. The other has a price-tag
that says $1300. You ask the sales clerk: "What's the difference between those
two?" The sales clerk answers: "This one comes with a piece of software that
lets you SSH into remote machines." You answer: "But there's free software to
do that." The sales clerk goes. "Well... But it's colorful and shit."
Seriously?

~~~
onion2k
Termius is free if you just want a nice terminal emulator. You only need to
pay if you start using the features that securely sync your connection details
between devices, and frankly that's a _really_ useful feature.

~~~
Asooka
> You only need to pay if you start using the features that securely sync your
> connection details between devices

That is its one advantage over regular ssh and e.g. JuiceSSH for Android. I
can also sync my connection details over dropbox (host+port) and authenticate
each device using public keys. Yes, Termius would be a lot more convenient,
but the parent's point stands that "is this convenience worth 60$/yr".

I suspect the answer is yes to a big enough portion of sysadmins, especially
if they can get their company to pay for the license. The rest of the poor
folk get to learn how to build it themselves, as usual.

------
SebastianKra
I used it back when it only cost 10€ per year. It was polished, but didn't
really do anything special. I considered buying it but as a light user, I
couldn't justify the price.

Now its 50€/Year, and are so many other great SSH Apps on iOS that I just
don't see why I would ever pay that much for it.

I guess that's the curse of subscriptions. You can only sell it to your most
dedicated users, which means that you have to raise the price even more.

If I'm any indication, there are a lot of free Termius users, who would be
willing to pay a one time fee just to get the most basic features like sFTP
and Tabs.

~~~
wut42
I too find the price too steep, for the use I'd have. I'm not interested in
sync, I'm just interested in the advanced ssh features (sftp, background
sessions, tabs, hops). 50€/year for just this is way too much.

~~~
cawwot
I agree, it would be nice to see an approach that allowed access to just
advanced ssh features (if you can call something like sftp an advanced
feature) for a slightly less steep price point.

------
sebular
I've used Termius on my iPhone a few times when I needed to complete a small
task and couldn't be at a computer. For that use case, it's been fantastic!

However, Termius on the desktop (Windows, in this case) falls short of the
usability threshold for me because of slow performance, especially at high
resolutions. When scrolling a large number of characters across the screen,
performance is significantly worse than using Linux terminals like gnome-
terminal or Terminal.app on macOS.

Every few months I end up installing the latest version of Termius to see if
the performance issues have been fixed, but they have not. Instead, I'm using
an installation of mate-terminal on Ubuntu for WSL combined with the X410
server. It's much more clunky to set up and use, but performance is great.

I expect that with the introduction of Windows Terminal, Termius will lose
ground if it doesn't improve.

~~~
Scarbutt
Maybe an agent that just syncs would be a better option (for desktop), so
users can keep using their preferred terminal.

Interesting that it is a YC startup.

~~~
rkudiyarov
You can use Termius CLI that syncs the data to your machine and enable working
with it in the terminal [https://docs.termius.com/termius-cli/termius-
cli](https://docs.termius.com/termius-cli/termius-cli)

~~~
jamesponddotco
Hm, seems like it stores SSH key passwords in plain text?

[https://github.com/Crystalnix/termius-
cli/issues/132](https://github.com/Crystalnix/termius-cli/issues/132)

Any comment on that?

~~~
rkudiyarov
Yes, that is user's home directory, e.g., SSH keys in ~/.ssh are also plain
text.

~~~
jamesponddotco
Not their passwords, tho. I am not trying to be difficult here, just trying to
understand the reasoning behind leaving the passwords stored in plain text.

~~~
rkudiyarov
We found no way to store password somehow else as Keychains are platform
specific, but we plan to add Keychain support in the future.

~~~
Terretta
If you used ‘platform specific’ built-in secrets sync you’d be done... but
then how would you justify charging for the built in sync? So I see your
conundrum.

------
freehunter
I've used Server Auditor/Terminus for years. Saved my butt once when I was on
vacation and my docker containers were bouncing one-by-one. I didn't have my
laptop but I pulled over to have my wife drive while I sat in the passenger
seat with Terminus debugging the issue and deploying a fix from my iPhone.
That's pretty empowering. And supporting Mosh for free is a huge plus!

I had no idea Terminus had a desktop app. I'm definitely going to give it a
try. Thanks for all you do!

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
That's amazing that you remember using it under the old name Server Auditor.
We realised it was not the best name for a product as it has this negative
audit flavour. "OK", we thought and iterated on the name resulting in Termius.
This time people (and even Google) started to confuse it with Terminus.
"Jesus", we thought and worked on making Google understand it right. It worked
with Google, but people still seem to like Terminus more. Now we're thinking
to either fix people's perception or come up with a new name. How do you like
the name, btw?

~~~
OJFord
Not GP, but I did misread the submission title as ...Termi _n_ us... Seems
more natural, for whatever reason, to me at least.

Is the problem that it's an existing trademark, or just that it's annoying to
change again?

It probably doesn't matter if I misread it, search engines will take care of
it as if a typo? (Same applies to anyone accurately searching for the name I
misleading recommend them, too.)

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
Thanks! Yes, that's a bit annoying to change it again and communicate (and,
possibly, confuse users even more). Agree, the search engines suggest Termius
as a fix now, so we'll probably leave it as is.

~~~
xrd
I have to say, I don't like the name and confused it just like the other
people.

But, perhaps you could do something with the capitalization of the name to
make it more obvious:

"termiUS"

You could accentuate that effect with using a larger font for the last two
letters.

Seems like one of the benefits is synchronization, so emphasizing US fits. And
then you don't lose your hard fought Google ranking.

But, in any case, it's a great product and good luck!

~~~
rkudiyarov
Good point, we have another domain termi.us so we might alter the name just
with a dot.

------
michaelmrose
After creating an account and installing the app I am pleasantly surprised by
the app insofar as actually using it to access a remote computer however.

\- I have no idea if the premium features listed are inducements to pay for a
premium version or if there is no way to use the app at all without paying the
monthly fee.

\- I don't want to create a calendar event to remember to pay or cancel. I'd
infinitely rather have the app affirm that I wont be charged unless I make an
affirmative choice to use your app beyond the trial and click pay the first
time. This is especially true on mobile where google already has all the info
needed to bill my account.

\- The UI has no cancel option. I am left with the strong impression that I
have to call someone on the phone or email to cancel at which point someone
may or not bother to cancel the account or hey just keep billing me for no
reason. I'm sure your are more conscientious and professional about that but
I've seen erroneous behavior from otherwise great people.

In brief I'd like to see clarity as to if the subscription is required to use
the app, an affirmative step prior to billing my account, and a way to cancel
in app or on the web page. Thanks for sharing your work.

~~~
akarpov
Thanks for your feedback.

After the trial ends you won't be charged. We don't use iOS or Android native
mechanisms to provide trial functionality. Once your trial is ended you can
switch to basic version with a few limitations or you can explicitly buy the
subscription - no hidden charges.

We also have a web dashboard where you can manage your account.

------
Cynddl
Thanks for the detailed post! I'm usually wary of using close-source programs
for sensitive tasks such as connecting to all my remote servers with SSH.

I haven't found any details on the libraries you use, especially for
cryptography, nor the steps you have taken to secure your software. Where can
we find more info?

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
Totally understand. As Termius turned from a pet project to our main focus we
made security transparency our immediate objective. We are working on the
detailed documentation on cryptography, SOC2, and periodic security tests done
by 3rd party security professionals.

However, we have addressed the most sensitive part of the product -- the
approach we use to store and sync hosts, passwords and keys:
[https://docs.termius.com/termius-
handbook/synchronization#ho...](https://docs.termius.com/termius-
handbook/synchronization#how-it-works-under-the-hood). Syncing of
keys/passwords can be turned off when your policy does not allow it to be
stored elsewhere. We also support 2FA and Yubikey for authentification.

~~~
ndiscussion
Thanks for this, not the OP but security is also my #1 concern with this type
of product. I'm probably not in the target market anyways so maybe you don't
need to listen to me but I love it when companies release info on the way they
keep my data safe.

One example, before I sign up for a critical vendor, I like to ensure I can
set up secure 2fa with no sms recovery (because sms recovery is broken by
design)

A security whitepaper of sorts will probably go a long way on this type of
product

------
AnyTimeTraveler
So this is an Electron app that does what JuiceSSH and X-plore do for me on
android for free, but with synced configuration and monthly payment.

Sorry, but I don't value not having to copy my SSH configs over to my phone
once every blue moon at $4.99/month.

~~~
StavrosK
You can use it for free, as I have, and it's quite good. The payment is only
for syncing, which is not worth it for me, so I don't pay.

~~~
ohithereyou
According to their Pricing page[1], you require the $5/month subscription to
use SFTP. That seems like an odd decision for a company who proudly calls out
that they use 'end-to-end encryption' to sync your settings.

[1] [https://termius.com/pricing](https://termius.com/pricing)

------
teh_klev
Folks, I honestly genuinely hate to be "that guy", but neither your
description above (too long), nor your website really explains why I need your
product. I went to the docs page but it's still not telling me what it does
exactly, how it works and why I need this? As a Windows/Linux admin/dev/devops
guy what's the selling point?

I think you need some diagrams/videos to explain your stuff a bit more. Show
me how it works. Show me the road bumps you're smoothing out.

~~~
usaphp
>I went to the docs page but it's still not telling me what it does exactly

First paragraph of their comment:

> Termius is an SSH client that works on desktop and mobile. The big
> difference with other SSH clients that Termius syncs data across devices
> using end-to-end encryption.

~~~
teh_klev
Yeah, I read that....but how? I can already do that with tooling I already
have. What's the benefits for me over a bunch of bash and powershell scripts?

------
irq
I love using Termius on my 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard. It’s a beautiful
full screen terminal with extra features that just happen to pop up right when
I need them. I’m delighted to see Termius is with YC now!

Feature request: Unlock the ability to use Termius as a swiss army knife for
every iOS app - Using the new Shortcuts features released as part of iOS 13,
it seems possible (I have not dug 100%) that support could be built to allow
Termius to scp files, in a way that allows collaboration with most every iOS
app. A specific example:

I take a photo. I hit the Share button. I tap the Termius icon. A list of
hosts I have ssh’d to appears (perhaps with a most recent “current working
directory” next to each entry). I tap “webhost (public_html)” and whatever
photo I sent to the Share button is uploaded via scp. (Replace photo with
“arbitrary file” from the Files app)

~~~
rkudiyarov
Excellent suggestions, I discuss them with the dev team. Would you able to
share(roman[at]termius.com) your user stories? What for are you using Termius?

------
l4yao
Wow, this app saved my butt over a year ago when I ran out of laptop battery
while out in the field. It was one of those rare cases where my low
expectations did a complete 180 in the first few minutes using the tool.

------
arciini
This is pretty cool - I've used it as an alternative to building a few web
dashboards and admin panels for some of my quick-and-dirty past projects.

The combination of Termiums's saved snippets and a short shell/node scripts
let me do a lot of monitoring using simple shell scripts rather than having to
run a separate web-server hidden behind some auth. Plus, it's still easier to
build an interative shell script than an interactive webpage.

------
hcheung
I had Termius installed on my phone for years, and uses it very occasionally
in emergency situation when I don't have my notebook around or when wifi is
not available. I tried several other apps and eventually settled with Termius
and keep it on my iPhone and my iPad for years. I do noticed that there are
more intense development in the past six months or so, however all the new
development are no longer supports older iPhone/iPad where i had Termius
installed. I'm not a system admin, and categorised as one of those casual
users, personally I never feel the needs to use Terminus Desktop because even
for a casual user to switch from what has been setup on the Desktop to a new
app is too much of works, but this might be just me...

------
GordonS
I was very surprised to see this is a YC startup - I thought they only
invested where there was the possibility of a huge exit?

While this looks interesting, $5/m is a lot for the functionality on offer -
for something as "small" as this, I'd personally prefer to pay on a yearly
basis, maybe something like $20/y.

I just can't see this delivering big returns, unless of course there is
something much bigger on the road map.

------
gruturo
I unfortunately have to concur with the posters feeling irritation at what
seems a very unreasonable subscription price. The most useful feature enabled
by the paid subscription, the syncing of data, is something i anyway do on my
bastion host/jump host, which is the only point from which the other systems
are accessible. All profiles for reaching the systems are there, all my notes
are there (encrypted), and it’s set to record all sessions - although not get
shipping these logs away to a more protected location. The only thing missing
is the key material, which I will gladly manage manually.

------
ezequiel-garzon
I’m a hobbyist at best, so the subscription is not justified or useful for me
(plus I just don’t like subscriptions). I wish you guys had some intermediate
product that allowed a one-time contribution through the App Store. Anyway,
thanks for such a great app!

~~~
rkudiyarov
We serve the free version of Termius to hobbyists which is pretty powerful and
has no ads. One more benefit that you can rely on it because it is part of a
growing startup. Btw, we saw a lot of dead SSH clients in app stores along the
way, just because they had no business model, e.g., one-off payment.

~~~
PostOnce
"no business model" e.g. one off payment

and yet Microsoft (worlds most valuable company btw) built an empire selling
software.

~~~
jamespo
And yet here we are in 2019 and they're moving to subscription model

~~~
Terretta
Because now they can rope-a-dope the market segment who don’t need to upgrade
every year, usually only with a new computer.

It’s rent seeking of a sort. No additional needed value delivered, artificial
change to extract more monies.

------
foreign-inc
How is this a billion $ business? I've been rejected by YC a number of times,
even though we have lots of docker downloads. So, I am just curious, what
worked in this case.

~~~
rkudiyarov
Our pitch to Y Combinator: The number of network engineers and sysadmins is
around the number of software developers. Sysadmins use SSH all day long while
maintaining infrastructure for SMB and enterprise. Termius makes those admins
more productive, reduce the amount of errors, and enables collaboration(leads
to easier onboarding for new team members). The additional point is that no
significant innovation has been done in this space(command line&SSH) for the
last twenty years.

~~~
Terretta
I liken it to drinking water.

No “significant” innovation has been done to H2O in a while. That hasn’t
stopped plenty of companies getting built on selling what most people with
disposable income can also get in high quality for free.

And much like already paying for iCloud, Google Drive, One Drive, or Dropbox,
most companies that “subscribe” extra for water delivery to the water cooler
in the break room, already pay a water bill.

------
farisjarrah
Hello, I am a new iPad user and this is one of the first iOS apps I ever
downloaded along with iSH on testflight(the alpine linux distrobution for
ipad). I have 2 questions if you don't mind:

1) I love iSH because I dont need to be on the internet or connected to any
other devices to get a local shell. Is there interest in the project in
creating a local shell using busybox or the like built into the app? As
awesome as iSH is, unfortunately things like F-keys and general user interface
still need a bit of work.

2) Will you folks support mouse integration on iOS 13?

Thanks for the great app. I am rooting for you folks.

~~~
0xThiebaut
I was about to recommend iSH too so here is the link [1] for anyone
interested. The major advantage of iSH, besides being free, is its ability to
function offline. Many other SSH clients where just proxies to a server which
wasn’t useful on air-gapped or NAT networks.

[1]: [https://ish.app/](https://ish.app/)

------
kichuku
I am a network engineer and I had been using Termius in the MAC for about an
year now.But whenever if there is a need for log collection, I have to use MAC
Terminal. Because I cannot scroll with the mouse and select the text. This is
a big disadvantage for me. (I don't want to press cmd+A and do a select-all)

Also it will be better if the list of connections (and folders) are displayed
readily accessible always in the left or on the top.

I have not used the app in mobile. Because I am skeptical to store the
hostnames and IPs (and definitely passwords) on a third party application.

~~~
rkudiyarov
We are working on session logs at the moment; we know that it's a pain to use
Control-A. Is there anything we can do to make you comfortable to use the
sync? For example, we already encrypt all the data using AES-256. We are going
to get SEC2. Anything else?

------
bprasanna
187MB for an installer! What extra do we get instead of Putty/Other SSH
Clients to justify this humongous size!? Can't size be slimmed down!

~~~
rkudiyarov
Electron apps are pretty fat in general, but the Internet speed in most places
got pretty fast anyway.

~~~
bprasanna
Thank you for the quick response. Also, Is it possible to strip down the
memory usage as well? Because for 5 ssh sessions the memory usage along with
core app was standing at 300M+.
[https://imgur.com/a/muh1zTs](https://imgur.com/a/muh1zTs)

~~~
akarpov
Thanks for noticing. Better memory management and performance improvements are
definitely the areas we'll be focusing on.

------
bifrost
I've been a longtime user, I love it! Its a must have on all of my devices.

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
Thank you, Tom, really appreciate your support!

------
ei8htyfi5e
Product and website look great. Thanks for sharing. Though, can I point out a
small discrepancy on your landing page? You claim over 24,000 engineers use
the product, then in the same section you claim over 300,000. It makes me
scratch my head and honestly I think you lose a bit of credibility. And on the
pricing page you claim 10,000. Which is it?

~~~
mclehman
The pricing page seems to be wrong either way, but the main page claims
300,000 total users with 24,000 using it daily.

~~~
ei8htyfi5e
I didn't catch the daily number. It just seems like they should pick the
bigger one and stick with it so users don't need to parse.

------
keithah
Excited you guys made it into YC! I've been in a Termius subscriber since 2016
(please don't kill early adopter subs!) and it's been worth every penny. Also
used ServerAuditor and paid for that too. :)

I have transitioned to using the desktop app almost entirely (altho it's
annoying my mosh windows don't just stay connected all the time like they used
too) and can't wait for React/WebGL to speed it up.

It would be awesome if there was a CLI app I could run that I could send a
push notification that I could click on from my phone and it launches termius
with the appropriate host. Currently I'm using pushover, but when I get
something I have to flip into termius and manually connect.

I'll post more of my ideas into uservoice. :) Thanks for being prompt on
responding to emails too, I can't wait until the new rendering engine (react I
assume) doesn't suck!

~~~
rkudiyarov
Thanks for your kind words! I've shared them with the team!

We are designing the push notifications from a server at the moment.

------
nisuni
Termius is simply amazing! I use it regularly from my iPhone, and it’s the
only terminal app that feels natural using: you can double tab to have tab
completion, swipe to go up and down, etc...

Since I can manage cluster jobs as I was at my desktop, Termius really
increased my productivity.

Keep up the good work, guys!

~~~
rkudiyarov
Thanks for kind words! It keeps us going!

------
trishmapow2
Small thing I noticed on the pricing page, 'annualy' is misspelled - otherwise
looks very nice.

~~~
rkudiyarov
fixed, thanks!

------
codetrotter
My main usecase that I use Termius for is that I read mail in mutt on my self
hosted mail server. I’ve been hosting my own mail for many years now. Having
access to my mail server from my iPhone is nice.

Thank you for making Termius and for the effort that you have put into it thus
far.

------
znpy
Monthly payments for an SSH client? Like, seriously ?

------
jploh
I do not have very valuable feedback but I've used Termius on the iPad twice
when my laptop wasn't available (both emergencies). I haven't found the need
to look elsewhere for an iOS SSH client. Great work and good luck!

------
jamesponddotco
Is the "Termius Dark" color scheme saved anywhere? I like to use the same
color scheme as my terminal when I am using vim.

PS: Love Termius, by the way! We will be sure to switch to the team plan once
the sharing feature launch.

~~~
rkudiyarov
We are about to onboard the first team for a closed beta of Group Sharing! Let
me know roman[at]termius.com if you want to test the beta as well.

~~~
jamesponddotco
Oh, great, will do! Any comment on Vim, though? And on a second note, any
plans to support true colours?

~~~
rkudiyarov
True Colors now in beta [https://termius.com/beta-
program](https://termius.com/beta-program). Could you elaborate a bit more on
the idea with VIM? We are planning to add custom themes in the future but I'm
not sure if it will help with your request about VIM.

------
ptaffs
I also have been using Terminus from iOS to get to servers I manage. It's been
great, thanks. They keyboard will always be difficult but you solved cursor
keys and tab. How are you going monetize?

~~~
rkudiyarov
We sell a subscription for premium features that are available on all devices
and make engineers more productive. Our next step is a plan for teams where we
want to enable collaboration, e.g., sysadmins quite often maintain the same
infrastructure so they should have one source of truth of the current
state(what servers do we have? what are the recent changes?).

~~~
spudlyo
I wish you guys luck! Engineers may be a hard group to sell this to, given how
great free desktop terminal emulators are, and how easy it is for an engineer
to engineer tooling to generate ~/.ssh/config files from existing sources of
truth.

From the research I've done when I was considering using my iPad as a
terminal, Termius seemed like hands down the best iOS terminal app. However on
macOS, you're going to have to compete with the likes of iTerm2, Kitty, and
Alacritty, all very fine open source programs innovating in the terminal
space.

------
jaequery
I never used Termius but I used similar SSH apps on my iPhone which did the
trick for me.

What I'm curious about is, what is Termius monetization strategy? From what I
can tell, it's 100% free?

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
Termius uses a freemium model. You can get most of the functionality for free,
the premium and teams plans offer some professional features such as cross-
platform sync, host sharing, sftp, agent forwarding etc.

------
stephenr
You want me to pay you more per month than I pay to sync all my mail, files,
photos etc, for a worse terminal than comes with my OS for free?

How is there a market for this?

------
teamski
Nice read about Termius' background.

I like Termius, it's by far the best ssh client on iOS. I just wonder if this
syncing is really a crucial feature.

I have one main remote dev server which is the gateway to all other remote
servers. I use most of the time the main server and haven't had the need to
sync anything. Installing keys on ssh clients is indeed a bit tedious but you
do it only once.

Or do I miss anything?

------
yifanlu
Great app but the ability to remap caps lock to Esc on an external iPad
keyboard is why I went with Blink shell instead.

~~~
rkudiyarov
We are working on Remapping of CapsLock for iOS. Stay tuned.

------
reacweb
Hello, I have a phone with a big screen. I use connectbot and tmux. My single
issue is that it is almost unusable when I do not have my bluetooth keyboard
with me. Hacker's keyboard is not very pleasant and does not interact well
with connectbot (the virtual keyboard hides half of the screen).

I will try Termius.

------
huxflux
Except for the _requirement_ of a paying monthly subscription to use certain
features I truly like Termius.

------
diehunde
Looks very interesting. Is it possible to install the Linux version without
using snap? Thanks.

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
We are now adding .deb package. Currently in beta, but should be released
pretty soon. You could try it here [https://www.termius.com/beta-
program](https://www.termius.com/beta-program)

~~~
diehunde
Thanks! It would be great if you can also release a .rpm for other distros as
well. I'm using Fedora 30 and Snap is generating some issues, that's why I
rather install it using a package.

------
nojvek
I’ve used Termius on my phone. It’s phenomenal. Didn’t realize there was a
desktop version too.

------
moeadham
Can you enable the SSH client on mobile to supports yubikey for GPG-agent
authentication?

------
yboris
Not to be confused with the _Terminus_

> a highly configurable terminal emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux

[https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus](https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus)

------
bstar77
Not sure if I missed something, but I can't add fonts. Is that not possible?

~~~
dmitry_lyfar
We don't support it at the moment. Adding fonts is on the roadmap, but,
unfortunately, I cannot give an ETA for this. What fonts would you like to
have, we may be able to add those to Termius?

~~~
bstar77
This is a bit of an edge case, but I want to be able to use an ANSI friendly
font for Telnet BBS'. At the moment, the supported fonts just render garbage.
It would be ideal for me to select my own font as I find it unlikely you will
add 'unscii 16-full'.

~~~
vok
Actually, UNSCII is also what I’m looking for in Termius (for drawille).

------
OJFord
Blimey, why is the Wozniak quote buried so low!

~~~
rkudiyarov
We were psyched to get this quote from Steve, but the product is a bit complex
to grasp, so we devoted the whole landing page to communicate the value.

------
assertnotnull
I already have a working SSH app on my phone. I use it once in a blue moon
because it's all cloud now.

------
nautilus12
Man, its a desperate state of affairs when I have to access my terminal on my
phone...

~~~
geofft
It could be worse. I semi-regularly use Microsoft Remote Desktop from my phone
because my workplace's security policy doesn't allow ssh from off-network....

------
guptarohit
I've used the mobile app, it's simply amazing!!

------
Xelbair
SaaS was a mistake..

------
hsk823
Thank you for creating one of the essential apps for mobile devices to be able
to use ssh.

I'd like to see Termius go beyond SSH. Add in scp / rsync support for file
transfers. Add VNC / RDP support for virtual desktops. Or at least X11
forwarding.

~~~
rkudiyarov
Termius already has file management capabilities through SFTP and Amazon
S3(Android only). We will eventually add X11/RDP/VNC, but now we are focused
on the command line UX to a remote system.

------
markmm
Using a terminal on a mobile is a horrible experience. Smart phone UI's are
the antithesis of CLI

