You've seen this before. A startup launches a useful tool. You integrate it into your workflow. Two years later, they pivot to AI, get acqui-hired, or just run out of money. Your workflow breaks.
Google Reader. Heroku's free tier. Parse. Bitrise's free plan. The list goes on.
So when you look at Keyway—a new secrets management tool from a company you've never heard of—you're right to ask: will this thing still exist in a year?
Here's my honest answer.
Who's behind this
I'm Nicolas Ritouet. I've been building software professionally for 25+ years. I was CTO at Upfit, spent 6 years as tech lead at MYCS building their entire tech department, and I've been shipping code since before GitHub existed.
Currently, I'm CTO at an incubator for a French public service. Longevity is part of my job—public institutions don't ship things that disappear in two years.
I co-founded CodeDoor in 2016, a non-profit that teaches refugees to code. It's still running today. I build things that last.
Keyway exists because I needed it. I got tired of the "hey, can you DM me the .env file?" dance every time someone joined a project. I built the tool I wanted to use. I still use it every day.
Why Keyway isn't going anywhere
The economics are simple. Keyway costs almost nothing to run. It's a database, an API, and some encryption. No ML models burning through GPU credits. No massive infrastructure scaling with usage. A single server handles thousands of users.
There's no VC pressure. I'm not racing to 10x growth to hit the next funding round. There's no board that can decide to "pivot to enterprise" or shut down the consumer product. I answer to users, not investors.
I use it myself. Every project I work on uses Keyway. If it disappeared, I'd be the first one affected. That's not going to happen.
The business model works. Paid plans cover costs. Free tier for open source is sustainable because those users have minimal support needs and often convert when they start commercial projects.
But what if?
Life is unpredictable. What if I get hit by a bus? What if something changes?
Here's the commitment:
Minimum 6 months notice. If Keyway ever needs to shut down, you'll have at least 6 months warning. Not a "we're shutting down in 30 days" email.
Your data is always exportable. Run keyway pull and you have a standard .env file. No proprietary format. No lock-in. Your secrets are yours.
Migration takes 5 minutes. Because Keyway uses standard .env format, switching to Doppler, Infisical, 1Password, or any other tool is trivial. Push your exported secrets to the new service. Done.
# Export from Keyway
keyway pull -e production > .env.production
# Import to another service (example)
doppler secrets upload .env.production
The code is straightforward. If you really needed to, you could rebuild Keyway's core functionality in a weekend. It's not rocket science—it's a CRUD app with encryption. The value is in the polish and the GitHub integration, not in proprietary technology you can't replace.
What I'm building toward
Keyway is a business, not a side project. The goal is to make it the default choice for teams who want simple, GitHub-native secrets management.
That means:
- Continued development based on user feedback
- Maintaining backward compatibility
- Keeping the free tier generous for open source
- Building trust through consistency, not hype
I'm not trying to build a unicorn. I'm trying to build a useful tool that pays for itself and keeps running for years.
The real question
The question isn't "will Keyway shut down?" The question is "what's the worst case if it does?"
And the answer is: you run one command, get your secrets in a standard format, and move to another tool in an afternoon. Your CI/CD pipelines need a small update. That's it.
Compare that to the daily friction of sharing secrets over Slack, maintaining outdated .env.example files, and onboarding new developers who spend their first day hunting for credentials.
The risk of Keyway going away is real but small. The cost of not having proper secrets management is guaranteed and constant.
Questions about Keyway's future? Email me directly: hello@keyway.sh