In August 2017, Max Lynch, CEO of Ionic, announced the discontinuation of Ionic Cloud's Push and Auth services by February 1, 2018, encouraging users to transition to alternative providers such as AWS Pinpoint, OneSignal, Firebase for Push, and AWS Cognito, Auth0, Firebase for Auth. The decision was made to focus on enhancing Ionic Pro's development and testing tools rather than competing with superior mobile backend as a service (mBaaS) providers. Users were reassured that no further significant changes to Ionic Cloud or Pro were anticipated, and the company remains committed to improving the developer experience by concentrating on tools that streamline the design, build, test, deploy, and monitor phases of app development. The announcement highlighted Ionic's strategic shift to leverage third-party backend services, thus allowing Ionic to concentrate on its core competencies and long-term business success.