Singapore and San Francisco-based Nitrous.io was launched to offer a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) in which software developers could work on source code and even share their work. A cloud IDE provides developers all the tools they need to begin programming, without the need for a complex configuration process on their systems. Instead, the programmer accesses a ready-made IDE from a remote server.
The startup yesterday announced that it is shutting down its service on November 14, completely taking its customers by surprise. It has closed for new signups, and therefore has stopped taking new users.
Payments made after October 16 will be completely refunded, Nitrous mentioned in its blog post. People with existing projects will be sent an email with a link to download their data, but after 15 days the data will be deleted.
Nitrous will also release an open-source version of its cloud IDE that its users will be able to run on their own servers. It has not revealed the exact timeline regarding this.
Founded back in 2012, Nitrous.io has raised US$7.7 million in total funding including a $6.65 million Series A round in 2014. Its investors include Bessemer Venture Partners (which led its Series A round), as well as Draper Associates, CrunchFund, 500 Startups, TIBCO Software, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Golden Gate Ventures and Peanut Labs co-founder/CTO Prosper Nwankpa.
Nitrous launched its new pricing model back in April, but other than that no other new features were unveiled. It had also hired a new CEO last year to push more aggressively and get professional developers on board. The reason behind the shutdown isn’t known yet.
Other cloud IDEs include open source tools Eclipse Orion, which was recently incorporated into the Google Cloud Shell, Koding, and Cloud9, which was acquired by Amazon Web Services.
