WordPress Developers - What do you use to release plugin & theme updates?

Hey there!

I've been in the WordPress space for about 6 or so years now, spending most of my time developing plugins that either follow a freemium or add-on model.

These companies would host a 'basic' version on WordPress.org but the paid side of things would be hosted on their own servers, with their own update control and so on.

If you're a WordPress business owner, what do you use to release updates? Are you one of the brave ones that edit a PHP file to update the version numbers and upload a new zip file? Or do you use a third-party service?

I've seen the former option be used in a number of cases, but I've always found that it feels like so much work and can be so 'delicate' when things go south, there has to be other ways.

I spent a couple of months building out a third-party service called WP Updatr (https://wpupdatr.com) that allows you to release plugin & theme updates in just a few clicks. Interest for this hasn't been nearly what I thought it would be. This isn't a self-promo at all but rather me just reaching out for some feedback. Did I miss the problem that I thought I was solving, is there really no need for something like this?

WP Updatr was released towards the end of November 2020, since then I've tweeted about it and shared it with work colleagues. I've got 1 paying customer (I worked for him a couple years ago, he isn't using it though) and about 5 or 6 free users (I work with all of them).

Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I realize 'distribution' is such a critical aspect of launching a product - only problem is that I'm more of a 'code' guy and the rest doesn't come easy to me at all.