KC Softwares, maker of SUMO and other apps, is shutting down

It is always a sad day when a respected and, at least somewhat, popular software developer or development company is shutting down the business.

KC Softwares was first mentioned here on this site in January 2008. We tested the company's flagship product SUMO, Software Updates Monitor, against four other programs designed to improve the updating of Windows applications.

Lots of mentions followed, as well as an extensive review of SUMO in 2015. SUMO was not the company's only program; there were others, like DUMO, designed for driver updates, Startup Sentinel, to manage autostart entries, or Video Inspector, a program to display information about the codecs that a video file required for playback.

SUMO is an excellent program. It scans installed programs on the Windows PC and checks the installed versions of the programs against a database that contains information about the latest versions of programs.

Users could then update none, one, some or all of the applications, use a disallow-list to protect programs from being updated, and also include beta or development editions in the checks.

If you visit the KC Softwares website right now, you'll see a termination notice at the very top of every page.

The following explanation is offered on the site: "KC Softwares activities are to be terminated by end of October 2023. All products are to be considered as End-Of-Life (EOL) on October 31st 2023. Sales are stopped."

The company has stopped sales of its products already and plans to set the status of all of its software applications to discontinued on October 31, 2023.

No additional information is provided on the website. We asked KC Softwares about the termination and managed to find out more about the closure. While it did not reveal a specific reason for the closure, it did state that "several good alternatives" are on the market.

The EOL data means that products that rely on server connectivity, such as SUMO or DUMO, will stop working, once the server architecture is shut down.

As far as SUMO is concerned, the creation and rise of the Windows Package Manager winget, may have had an impact on downloads and sales. SUMO users may check out the application; while it does not offer all the features that SUMO offers, it may work for part of the user base, for instance, to update all Windows programs at once.

Now You: do you use KC Softwares applications?

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