Twitter will shut down password manager Mitro on Aug. 31 after buying it last year

Mitro, a password manager app for individuals and groups that Twitter acquired last year, is shutting down the free tool on Aug. 31. Mitro announced the news today in a tweet.

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Mitro is shutting down Aug. 31st: https://t.co/4jaGFL0jGa We no longer have time to keep it going. Sorry, and thanks for your support.

— Mitro (@MitroCo) July 11, 2015

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Users can export their data now. Starting on July 18, you won’t be able to create a new account. On Sept. 13, all data will be deleted.

“We have been maintaining Mitro in our spare time, using our own money,” Mitro said today on a new page on its website. “At this point, the cost and administrative burden has become too much. We do not have time to properly manage a service that people rely on for their security. As a result, we need to stop running it.”

The Mitro team recommended that people switch to another password manager like 1Password, Dashlane, or LastPass. But if the shutdown will cause “an extreme hardship,” the Mitro team wrote, people can pay at least $200 per month to keep Mitro alive if they email ej@evanjones.ca. “It’s possible we could extend its life until December 2015, but this seems extremely unlikely at this point,” Mitro wrote.

It’s not surprising that Twitter is going down this path with Mitro, given that the same thing has happened to other properties Twitter has acquired like Summify, We Are Hunted, Posterous, Whetlab, and TenXer.

Still, it’s interesting because the Mitro team specifically went out of its way to open-source the client and server code for its app. That’s unusual for a Twitter acquisition these days.

Mitro started in 2012 and was based in New York. Investors included Google Ventures and Matrix Partners.