Simply Plural is Discontinued

Hello everyone,

Today, July 1st, 2026, the servers for Simply Plural will be shut down. I am aiming to start the shutdown process at 9PM Berlin Time (CEST), to give everyone time for the remainder of the day to still export their data, should anyone wish to do so or haven't done so yet. (Note, if you have issues exporting, please read the bottom of the post afterwards.)

I will be answering a few remaining open questions such as open sourcing and self hosting capabilities, as well as what happens to the Discord server.

But first, I want to thank everyone who continued to support us during the shutdown period, I am grateful for your support and you all made it possible for the servers to remain online a little while longer.

Open Sourcing

The topic of open sourcing the app is a difficult one, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. Generally, I am not against open sourcing the app to allow it to live on, however, the app is incredibly large and was built over half a decade. Simply posting the source code with no explanation or documentation would not allow anyone to properly continue developing the app.

I know some people may say "Oh, but it's fine, people will figure it out or just do their best!", and I understand this argument, but this is not what I want for this app. Having spent a tremendous amount of my time on this app, poured my heart and soul into it, I cannot simply release the source code and see it get taken apart or carried on without proper documentation and explanation of the source code.

I have begun slowly documenting parts of the code whenever I find time, and once I have fully documented everything I would be releasing the source code. However, I cannot guarantee when this would be, or if I will find time to document it all, so there is no timeframe for this.

During the shutdown period I have received numerous requests to release the source code, some were polite, however many were outright demanding it. Continuing to harass or pressure me to release the source code is only going to make me more fatigued and will just lead to me not wanting to spend further time on it. Due to this, I request that you all respect my decision to only release once I've documented everything, and give me the time and space to do so.

Self Hosting

After the shutdown, there were requests to be able to self-host the servers, so that people could connect to them with the app and still use it with unofficial servers. I agreed that this would be a nice option to have, and I had started working on making this possible.

Doing so, however, is a lot more work than anticipated, and there are several hurdles in the app that made this more difficult. With the little amount of time I had, I have not been able to finish this. Due to this, at this point, there is no option to self host.

Similar to open sourcing, if I find time, I will gladly continue this, but there is no timeline for when this would be.

Discord

The Discord server will remain online for now, I do not yet know exactly for how long, but possibly a few weeks to a few months. While the channels are locked, and will remain locked, it's a place that allows me to post announcements and reach many users at once, should I need to do so at some later point in the future.

Final Note

After the announcement to shut down was made, we (SP + mods/helpers) and many other developers of plural apps were harassed and pressured. This behavior from the community has been hard to bear, and lead to a lot of stress and fatigue to myself and other developers.

While people have recently been more polite and understanding, the initial wave of harassment meant that I was unable to spend any time on working on the open sourcing and self hosting of the app.

I have only recently begun to recover fully from all of this, and while I am still willing to continue working on open sourcing and self hosting the app after all that was said and happened, the original reason of why I was not able to continue the app is still relevant.

I do not have as much time as I did when I started this app, so whatever little time I do find to work on those two topics, I wish to do so without harassment and pressure.

Export Issues

If you've had issues exporting, please try a different browser or device. I was informed by a moderator this morning that someone reached out yesterday about their export not working, and this appears to be a browser issue. If you have the same issue, please try different browsers and devices.