If you've used NetworkCalc recently, you'll notice a few things have changed.
- The ads are gone
- The design has been refreshed
- There's a new page explaining how the project stays running: Support Networkcalc
Here's the short verison of what changed and why.
The ads are gone
NetworkCalc has run on ad revenue for the last few years. Over the last three years, that revenue added up to about $70 total, less than $2 per month. The ads were never meaningfully paying for the project, and they were making the tools slower and busier than they should be for something most people use to get quick answers and move on.
So they're off, permanently unless a valid reason convinces me otherwise.
What's replacing them
Nothing complicated. NetworkCalc doesn't have a paid tier and isn't getting one at the moment. Instead, there's now a support page explaining what the project is, who maintains it, and how to contribute if it's saved you time. A coffee, a small monthly amount, whatever feels right. No account is required to use anything, no feature gating, no upsells.
If you never click that link, nothing changes for you. The tools stay exactly as free and open as they always have been.
A design refresh
Alongside the ad removal, the site's gotten a broader design refresh with cleaner layouts, better spacing, and improved experience across all the pages and tools. The core tools work the same as they used to, and a few bugs have been patched to make them more solid to use.
In general, things are just easier to do now - switching between tools, copying outputs, navigating areas of the site, and even a new API Command Tester tool to build your API commands.
Why now
Honestly: the ad revenue was never the point. NetworkCalc has always been meant as a fast, reliable, free set of network tools. When I first built it, I never thought it would see the level of traffic it does now. Taking the ads out and being straightforward about how the project is funded felt like the more honest version of the same idea.
And publicly, I hope that by removing ads and instead running on the support, I'll be able to fund keeping the project online, and get excited about developing new features.
If you've been a regular user: thank you. If NetworkCalc has saved you a few minutes of time here and there, the support page is there whenever you'd like to return the favor. Either way, the tools aren't going anywhere.