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pikdum
ziml77
Still a net gain for the company. Getting something from them for free means you are costing them money. And I would bet your word of mouth was also worth negative dollars to them since you're going to be telling people about the free tier.
Sebb767
> And I would bet your word of mouth was also worth negative dollars to them since you're going to be telling people about the free tier.
The whole point of having a free tier is to onboard customers and then upsell them to a paid tier. If a referral is costing them money, they are missing the point of a free tier.
jarym
Not trying to be funny, but if you're on a 'free forever' plan and happy with it there's already a close-to-0% chance they'll get any money off you...
bombcar
I have had my company purchase company plans for products I use as free or free for personal use.
I will never recommend Google Apps for Domains or whatever it is called now after they dicked around.
rootw0rm
Google Workspace...the one that they let us beta test for free starting like a decade ago? they rolled out a free opt-in after announcing the move to discontinue the free service. here's a cropped screenshot i just took of my control panel:
pikdum
Probably not from my personal use, no.
But for company use, I'd rather pay for something I'm happy with using personally or have had good experiences with in the past, rather than rolling the dice on something unknown.
bdcravens
Then why offer it to begin with? Presumably a company does so because there's some form of value for them.
orbz
During early development you get feedback (both actively and passively), and if you’re raising funds it gives you inflated metrics and indication of PMF.
At later stages those are less valuable, so they might not be getting value out of it anymore.
juliusgeo
Most of my recommendations for services to use come from my friends who have either used that service on a free plan, or a paid plan. It matters very little in terms of the network effects of their service whether or not you're on a "free plan". See GitHub's free subscriptions of CoPilot for open source contributors.
eviks
You might be happy, but then hit a free limit and decide to pay to be even more happy The chance is low, but not that close to 0%
maleldil
There could still be word of mouth that leads to paying customers. Or circumstances change and the paid plans are worth it for previously free customers.
sizzle
You can pry my MalwareBytes lifetime license from my cold dead hands
matwood
> If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior.
I'm sure they are also willing to give you back any money you have paid to date...
kcartlidge
> I'm sure they are also willing to give you back any money you have paid to date...
A "free plan" is one thing, and what you say is totally fair for that.
A "free forever plan", though, contains a promise. And whilst we know it isn't literally true (companies die or pivot, takeovers happen, economies crash etc), there's an element of broken trust when "forever" is not only dropped but the communications around it are silent or misleading about the loss.
I've no skin in the game (or axe to grind) but it feels like that might be the crux of the issue - it's a question of integrity when communicating.
swyx
you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver?
i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who is without sin…
dmn322
1) it's not people, it's a company. They're 2 different things. People have consciences and families. Companies are beholden to shareholders. People can find a different job if their company fails. I don't think we need to be forgiving to companies. They're not forgiving to people. They act on policy.
2) While I admit that I'm guilty of it too, overpromising is pretty destructive. It causes you to have to work harder and give stuff for free to deliver, but that in turn causes other people to have to do that too. If overpromising is very common, then that would mean the market is artificially lower, which is why you have people scrambling all the time doing quick and dirty fixes for everything and lots of companies with horrible work-life balance. It would probably be good for the industry if overpromising were a shameful taboo and not just a simple slipup.
alexvoda
GP post regarding 1 is just a manifestation of the illness in the US of considering companies to be people.
You should not have empathy for a company.
eduction
That’s fine, you don’t have to love a corp like they’re a human, or empathize, but they’re definitely going to screw up in a human way because they’re made of humans, so customers are going to be disappointed if they expect too much.
The earlier comment called ending free lifetime updates/service “incredibly scummy behavior.” That seems way off to me. In the pantheon of bad corporate behavior that’s not even a 1 out of 10 in severity. It’s “disappointing behavior” but not surprising or IMO particularly bad. None of us is entitled to free service from others. That’s just not how the world works long term. Nice if you can get it but don’t be surprised when it ends.
By the way I think you’re right that it’s destructive behavior - one company does this, competitors face pressure to do the same. But I am not sure acting like it’s a shameful moral outrage to overpromise is a good solution. The problem isn’t morality, it’s bad incentives, with “10X or bust” VC thinking at the root. I don’t hate the players I hate the game.
duckmysick
Regarding the first point: you're right in the context of large corporations (such as Mattermost). We also have sole proprietorships, which are strongly tied to the owner.
nine_k
"Forever" is such a word which you should nit utter lightly, especially in the context of a service commitment.
I see that mistakes are made, and they need to be fixed when they become obvious (usually other people have to fix them than the people who made them). But there's no expectation that making and fixing such a mistake should be free, without impact on reputation and customers' goodwill.
whuan
Can't agree more, especially true in terms of business
late2part
Agree. Absolutely NEVER say 'never.'
bryanrasmussen
Forever is such a word that it should never be expected to hold except in some limited scientific and mathematical contexts.
selcuka
You must have missed this part if you read the article:
> But Mattermost is breaking the “free forever” promise made to its customers, and without any acknowledgement or apology. The “free forever” note was quietly removed from Mattermost’s website in the month leading up to the announcement, and is never mentioned in the email Mattermost sent to affected customers. Surely, one can expect better than that from a company whose stated principles include “customer obsession” and “earn trust”.
dazc
'Surely, one can expect better than that from a company whose stated principles include “customer obsession” and “earn trust”.'
One should expect better but one should also expect such words to be basically bullshit too.
kcartlidge
This seems to be the crux. Very few people would expect forever to mean literally forever, but when it is taken away it should be acknowledged (and ideally, but optionally, explained). It should not be ignored as if it never existed in the first place, just for the sake of reputation.
prmoustache
One could argue that if you aren't paying, you aren't a customer but a user.
jrm4
No.
You would deserve ALL the vitriol. That's the risk you take. I mean, vitriol is just words and you will live. If anything, as a lawyer, I might go looking for "did they create a contract" as well.
But tech companies promising free things and going back on them, or delivering poorly, is probably literally the worst thing about tech these days.
hatsune
If you are making something as a branding or contract, then you better keep it. People break promise every time and not like all of them are evil, malicious, or should go to jail. But a bank failed to pay back frequently will definitely found themselves doubting where the customers go.
It's not because they are evil persons. It's because when that promise and trust is broken, I need to severely rethink about other thing. If they ever comes out with NPO financial report or even a formal apology, I'm fine - I mean I'm mad a bit, but not angry. They tried something and it doesn't work, like every success story (or failure story that no one asks) things do go south. But if the solution of the company is secretly hiding it or even publicly denying it (not in this case but that kind of stuff did happen before), then they are not getting a penny from me.
As making cloud storage free for everyone without ads forever is not quite possible nor sustainable, unless you farms telemetry for money (GDrive, dropbox with insane telemetry found recently). It is purely understandable and predictable the business model will die some day, and it's definitely not to blame them for not being able to keep this forever. This is not QE4 and money is not printed in house. But apology and even a changelog is free and it definitely cost more to try to hide it then be honest with it. That's a misdemeanor to perjury for me.
fphhotchips
> you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver?
I have. But then I worked my butt off to make it right. If I still failed, then I apologised and owned it. I didn't pretend it never happened.
jstummbillig
> you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver?
I think it's worth noting, what incentives are at play here. It's not a neutral mistake: By claiming "free forever" you are heavily frontloading your adoption/marketing and I have to assume you are not just doing that by accident.
So unless, in the worst case, you are ready to fail your company over keeping the promise, just don't ever claim "forever".
paranoidrobot
Mistakes are human, sure.
But companies love to put labels on things like this with seemingly little thought.
Offering something for free with the 'forever' label on it is I believe deliberate - trying to distance themselves from others who have offered a free plan, but either pulled the rug once they got popular, or snuck in conditions or time limits.
If they had withdrawn the free plan from new customers, but grandfathered in existing users they would have kept their promise and earned at least some good-will.
2h
doesn't seem like much of a loss to lose that "business":
a user who hops from free service to free service, and is so opposed to spending money that they will badmouth any business that wants to actually charge for its service.
Brian_K_White
But I will not become a customer either. Bystanders and witnesses are all potential customers.
rurp
If a company is happy to lie to and disregard those customers, why offer a free plan in the first place? It makes no sense. People who are willing to pay will notice this behavior.
jxf
This blog post is from the "never let a competitor's mistake go unnoticed" school of thought.
stanmancan
Not sure I totally agree. Capitalizing on a competitors mistake is kind of slimy; calling out their poor business practices is not.
Users will invest their time and resources into using your product based on the promise that it’s free forever. Changing your mind later puts the burden on them to figure out how to move forward.
Even if I was a free user and I was considering a paid plan that type of dishonesty would make me move to a competitor. What else will they change their mind on? No thanks.
bb88
Yeah, not sure about this either. What it does do is to make me think about the free tier for apps I use, and then wondering what I will do if that free tier becomes more expensive than the value I get out of it.
This reminds me of the love/hate relationship I have with the Fusion 360 free tier, and maybe even some paid tiers where lifetime is not really lifetime.
z3t4
You set off the cost of moving elsewhere, like an insurance. Or you are smart and use commodity services.
tough
They should at least grandfathered any users on the -free forever- plan
bombcar
Or tell them it may stop being free in X years, where X is large enough that it’s aways off but close enough that some decide to switch. And then stop new signups but never actually take away the free plan.
The “good work Wesley, I’ll probably charge you in the morning” plan.
0xcde4c3db
Agreed. Does anyone have any insight as to why companies fail to do this? Naively as a non-{marketing,business development,COO} guy, I feel like the cost to keep delivering those services ought to pale in comparison to the value of having even a tiny number of those customers go into a forum like HN or Reddit and say "we've been there since the early days and we're really happy".
Sure, it's inherently a tech/financial/support load to maintain a special category of customer, but I don't see it as fundamentally any different from a successful company managing the discontinuation of a popular product. You cut off new customers, let attrition take its course for the existing ones, and take your lumps from any high-value/high-touch customers who drag their feet on moving to the new thing. It's work, but so is climbing a ladder. Do you want to elevate the company or not?
jxf
> Not sure I totally agree. Capitalizing on a competitors mistake is kind of slimy; calling out their poor business practices is not.
Which part of what I wrote didn't you agree with?
fsckboy
obviously I'm not GP because, what is wrong with capitalizing on a competitor's mistake? Isn't that the point of competition?
karaterobot
> Capitalizing on a competitors mistake is kind of slimy; calling out their poor business practices is not.
Agreed, except I can't find any examples of them calling out good business practices by their competitor, so I have to question whether it may be kind of slimy and disingenuous after all.
trinsic2
Yeah, I disagree. It dosnt seem right to capitalize on another's mistakes by calling them out on it, and then offering a competing plan.
Dalewyn
>Users will invest their time and resources into using your product based on the promise that it’s free forever.
Unless you're a naive new entrant into the real world who doesn't know better, it's on you if you're fooled into thinking something is "free forever".
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
orphea
You resort to victim blaming.
Words should have meaning, you know?
If there is no such thing as a free lunch, then you should not be allowed to offer free lunches.
eredengrin
Totally agree. In fact for myself, if a company is offering a free service, especially one that has significant cost on their end (bandwidth, compute, and storage are common cases), it's somewhat of a red flag to me. Too many things in tech have been "free" only to discover years later the negative consequences either for their business (which is ultimately bad for me as a user) or for society as a whole (which is also bad for me as a member of society). I much prefer transparent and sustainable business models that aren't based on some handwavy explanation that the free users will somehow lead to a bunch of paid users and that's how they'll make money Soon.
daniel_iversen
Don’t disagree, but even more important I like that it’s being called out. It’s the word “forever” in “free forever” that really irks me - very likely marketing was lazy (and deceitful, really, when you think about it) and calls it “free forever” without the business having had real serious conversations (even at the board level) about using a word like that and what it means to the business strategy. I’m not saying people don’t make mistakes but I’m also betting companies just sling words like that out there without a second thought.
Name_Chawps
Clearly whoever wrote it meant "indefinitely" and didn't realize that "forever" doesn't mean "forever until we decide otherwise".
kragen
i would rather say it's from the 'never let a competitor's dishonesty go unnoticed'
that you call it a 'mistake' speaks very poorly of you
lolinder
> that you call it a 'mistake' speaks very poorly of you
There is zero need to launch personal attacks in this context.
kragen
this is not an accident; it is a fraud
the person lying about it by calling it a 'mistake' is engaging in precisely the same kind of violation of their own integrity as mattermost is
undefined
matrix_overload
Yep:
1. See a competitor forced to drop free tier due to costs and VC landscape.
2. Get an avalanche of free users move to your platform.
3. Observe skyrocketing costs with meager impact on revenue.
4. Boot the free users. But hey, at least we did it with an apology. It changes everything, right?
nimbius
I feel like if its 2023 and you're still gullible enough to fall for "free forever" bait and switch offerings from cloud providers then we need to have a frank discussion on neofeudalist late stage capitalism where a mainstay of its many successes in the digital realm is to literally trick you into consuming a product and pretend like it never happened.
db48x
It’s just straight–up fraud. People have been defrauding each other for a while now; I don’t think we need to invent hypotheticals like “neofeudalist late stage capitalism” to explain that behavior.
Gigachad
Also the old saying “if it’s too good to be true …”
If something costs money to someone else and doesn’t generate them any returns, you can expect it’s likely you won’t continue to receive the free service forever.
sigstoat
> neofeudalist late stage capitalism
how does that differ from "late stage capitalism" and/or "neofeudalist capitalism"?
George83728
The "late stage" meme smacks of unwarranted optimism. It presumes too much knowledge about future manifestations capitalism yet to unfold. I guess it ties into the notion of communism being a deterministic inevitability according to the science of socialism. Hubris, is what it is.
taffronaut
For 25 years, Image Line have been shipping the FLStudio DAW as a one-off purchase with free lifetime updates, and since I've been receiving those updates for a significant chunk of those 25 years since I bought the Producer Edition, it seems pretty sustainable.
In their words "Why? Because we believe you should get the program you paid for, bug-fixed and updated for as long as we develop FL Studio." [1]
[1] https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/lifetime-free-updates/
mrtksn
One time payment and forever free updates means the product dies when the growth stalls OR they create other services around it and sell those.
It can work for some products and often those turn into freeware once they find a subscription or consumables for which the users are eager to pay for.
brookst
1000% this.
It also means that the company is incentivized to continually add features that will lead to new sales, rather than improve existing features to make the product better for previous purchasers.
I want to subscribe to pay for the products I depend on. Because I want to be an important stakeholder in product decisions. I do not want the company to consider me as sunk profit and a drag on expenses from here on out.
boomlinde
> It also means that the company is incentivized to continually add features that will lead to new sales, rather than improve existing features to make the product better for previous purchasers.
How? ImageLine and its competitors tend to offer free trial versions of their software, so they're not simply selling feature lists. Users can try out and feel the software, so there is an incentive to refining existing features, because those fundamentally form the basis of whether a potential customer buys or not.
Perhaps you could add more features to try to convincing users that already have a a DAW-of-choice to switch to FL Studio, but I think you overestimate how big this market is compared to the constant stream of new bedroom producers. A DAW can be a relatively big investment for a bedroom producer, not only in terms of money but in time to learn, so the cost to change your mind is high.
ohgodplsno
And when the product dies, you know what you still have? Your fully up to date product with the latest updates, until the very last day.
My wallet isn't here to pay for your company's inability to find a market.
ghaff
You have a "fully up to date" product until an operating system upgrade breaks it or there's a security vulnerability that really does need to be patched.
Although I sold a small-time file manager shareware product for a number of years, I tend to agree that forever upgrades isn't a great model in general. Especially if sales are trailing off over time, I have zero incentive to provide updates/patches especially if some major change is needed. In my case, I decided that a significant upgrade would require major changes and it wasn't worth the effort. Not sure it would have been even with an upgrade fee but certainly wasn't absent one.
mrtksn
Buying a dollar for pennies always feels good, sure. However, using products of unsustainable businesses means you can't depend on it. For some products that's not a problem, for others it can become huge problem when you find yourself locked in maintaining old version of an OS or a companion software. The effect of not getting updates is very pronounced in professional or industrial software where to this day some people are forced to secure floppy disc supplies and deal with Windows XP.
In college we had a lab of really old PCs which run a very old version of AutoCAD because the school purchased that version and it wouldn't run on modern machines, I was told. There was another lab in similar situation with Adobe products.
After the subscription model raised to prominence, people get the latest version of the software and pay only as long as its useful for them. It's a win-win because the developer has the incentive to provide the best possible service in order to retain customers.
boomlinde
For ImageLine, this business model has been sustainable for 25 years.
berniedurfee
Therein lies the problem. Growth is always the goal until everything blows up.
It’d be great sometimes to switch from grow to sustain. Instead of going after the next 1000000 customers with new features, just stop and focus on making existing features amazing for existing customers.
No new markets. No doubling ARR. Just chill, make stability the goal.
bitL
Won't work for any externally-capitalized company.
berniedurfee
Reaper does the same thing: ridiculously inexpensive and insanely well built, one edition, updates every couple weeks, supports an SDK, I could go on.
I think it’s also freemium with a nag screen.
How this is sustainable is beyond me, but I’m thankful every day there are still some SW companies who do amazing things without sucking the life out of their customers at every turn.
dontknowmuch
FYI, Reaper's license is for life, but the updates aren't.
"A new license includes free upgrades through REAPER version 7.99." from https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php
berniedurfee
Given the cost and length of time between needing to buy a new license, it’s effectively lifetime upgrades.
bitL
FL Studio lives off plugins that aren't free. Still, it's great that the producer edition is free forever, but one might need to pay them from time to time when falling in love with some new sound ;-)
sowbug
Their platform has a neat feature: you can use all the plugins they sell, but you can save projects using only the ones you've bought. It's a more granular version of the crippleware approach to licensing, and yeah, as you say, it can be really effective if you've worked a new sound into one of your compositions.
(It's been a while since I fired up my copy, so this might have changed.)
mkimball
I too am a long time owner of of FLStudio. However, I have noticed that many new features added to FLStudio are not added to the base program, but rather sold as an add-on.
Perhaps the free lifetime updates plan is the reason for this.
MikusR
Same with Total Commander. 25 years of free updates.
ChuckMcM
I wonder if they ever compared the price of AWS hosting and just renting a rack at a colocation facility.
One way of thinking about this is that "free" isn't "enterprise" and while you would love to have them convert, hosting free users on a rack with a 500MB Cogent IP transport contract can be had for < $2K/month. So $24K a year. Is it a "teir-1" data center? no. Does it have failure redundancy? no. Is there a risk of data loss in the event of a power failure? yes. But all of those things are what drive the costs up and are what make the "paid" plan, worth more than the "free" plan. Would it be good enough for people? Absolutely.
zdragnar
I'm pretty skeptical of this approach. There are generally two reasons to offer free tiers:
1- hope users will upgrade to paid plans
2- hope free users will spread name recognition through word of mouth to people who will pay
Generally speaking, "free tier" users are the worst- they demand more from support and expect to give nothing in return. Very few transition to paid users.
What happens if you give your free tier users a degraded experience compared to paid users? They'll complain that your service is slow, loses their data and is a terrible product. You're shooting yourself in the foot, because you'll get no fewer upgrades and a terrible reputation.
Even if you try to communicate that the free tier doesn't have the stability or performance of a paid plan, if I experience the free tier and am unhappy with it, you've raised the bar considerably for meeting my expectations for the paid plan. I'm more likely to pay for a competitor than pay for your product in the hopes that it'll improve.
blagie
No, I don't think that's right. I can name other scenarios:
1) I am at a megacorp. I want to rapidly prototype without going through purchasing / finance / bureaucracy.
2) I have a personal and a work account. I learn something on weekends on the free tier and use it at work.
Both of those have happened (with me, as the user), and led to millions of dollar of business to cloud vendors. In the case of #2, the cloud vendor has no way of knowing that the conversion came from a free tier. In the case of #1, I'm not even sure they tracked it.
I am astronomically less likely to use tools without a free tier, at the very least at the level of validating that the product is useful, and ideally, at enough of a level to get started.
The AWS free tier is almost exactly the right level, but would do better without expiration. It's not costly or usable to build anything significant in the free tier, but more than enough to get started. The one-year limit is an issue, since when I switched jobs, it was no longer usable.
Other scenarios I've seen:
- Early-stage startups. It's dirt cheap to offer free tier to someone with O(0) users, and most stay there. Those that hit the exponential growth curve more than make up for it, and won't have capacity to migrate. AWS courts these hard.
- Education. What people learn in school, they take to their jobs. Especially engineering software companies make hard plays here.
bruce511
All good points, but I'll add that "free trial" is a very good hook, "free forever" is not.
So offering free trial periods (like AWS do for a year) is very effective, and very measurable.
Free Forever is clearly not self-sustaining, do one of us will inevitably be disappointed eventually, and i suspect that'll start by being you and end up being me.
squeaky-clean
> I have a personal and a work account. I learn something on weekends on the free tier and use it at work.
But have you ever used some free tier, found it to be flaky or buggy and then still continued to upgrade to the enterprise tier because they promise you the paid tier is less flaky than the free tier? I wouldn't believe them.
zdragnar
#2 basically counts as a word of mouth reputation. #1 is essentially an upsell. Your other examples are the same, just the other way around.
In any case, if the free tier sucked, all of them would be unlikely to convert. People will remember that your product sucks, not that they had to pay to get decent performance.
squeaky-clean
It reminds me of the game "Game Dev Tycoon", where they released a version on torrent sites where after about a year of ingame time your company would go bankrupt because of loss of profits due to piracy. The retail version of the game didn't even include piracy as a mechanic, it was just added as a joke in the torrent version.
Still, Twitter and Reddit discussions about the game were filled with "don't buy that game. It's impossible to play for more than an hour without going bankrupt". Of course none of those users admitted that they pirated the game, and word-of-mouth reviews of the game became "don't buy it, it's terribly balanced / unfair"
zdragnar
This is really what I was trying to get at. Having a shit free tier off a great way to get a terrible word of mouth reputation.
wmf
If your free plan is unreliable good luck converting users to paid though.
ChuckMcM
Ah but the rub is that it would not be unreliable.
One of the things I discovered was that "reliable" in the eyes of non-engineers isn't the same thing. I have a NAS system for my important data because I know it is reliable, I know dozens of people who "have a copy on a flash stick" because they consider that reliable.
You can build "good enough" in a rack that will serve a LOT of clients. One layer of ZFS (1U + 3U) for storage, Five 1U servers, one 2U 10G switch.
In my experience that is 1 failure (that results in an outage) every 2 years at most. When I was at Google I (like everyone) had access to failure information about equipment in the "fleet." Motherboards do fail, but VERY rarely, disks are the worst offender but with double parity ZFS you have a week at a minimum to replace a failed drive. ALL the drive failures at Blekko announced themselves before they failed with SMART data.
So in addition to the colo cost you've got an engineer spending part of their time watching the rack, fractional head count cost.
masfuerte
I have a tiny VPS that costs less than $2 per month. I run a chat server on it. In seven years it has had no failures and one hour of planned downtime. That's better than any of the major cloud services. Simple stuff is surprisingly reliable.
DoItToMe81
What software are you using? I'm guessing it's probably not Matrix.
squeaky-clean
Mind sharing that chat server so that all of us can use it, still think it will be stable? ;)
prmoustache
And if that vpn had been hosted in OVH's Strasbourg datacenter, in 2021 you would have had a huge downtime and possibly total loss of data without a backup in another datacenter.
It is like driving under influence. Many people get away with it most if not all their life. Other die in stupid car crash alongside their pregnant wife mere days after their mariage.
You are lucky until you aren't.
skrowl
[dead]
asynchronyse
Google pulled off a similar thing with their photos app. Offered "unlimited" storage in 2016, improved the AI leveraging all our data, discontinued in 2021.
Never using cloud again.
WolfRazu
Wasn't it still "unlimited" for photos uploaded before the cut-off? That's quite reasonable for a free service vs. "paid lifetime".
asynchronyse
> quite reasonable
Maybe. I'd use the word 'compensatory'.
Using two apps to access half of my media each renders either one useless.
chii
When someone else controls your compute, you're not owning but renting, regardless of how or what they call it in the marketing.
Unless legislation changes to make sure consumer rights are respected for cloud offerings, it won't change one bit.
I would say buy your own drives, and store your own data on location. Use cloud as a backup rather than a primary use.
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ChrisMarshallNY
I worked for a hardware company that serviced devices decades old.
I remember walking through the back room of our Service Department, and seeing cameras on a shelf that were 60 years old. They were there for parts, if someone brought in an oldie.
I'm sure the service wasn't free, but they were willing to do it.
In our work, we were constantly being told to "play the long game," and think about how the software would age.
They were still using an SDK that I wrote in 1994/5, 25 years later.
LoganDark
> Zulip’s support strategy is, as much as possible, to solve the reported problem > it’s not how most companies handle their support load
This is so sad, Alexa play despacito. If "most companies" no longer actually solve issues through customer service, what is even happening to the world?
I'm starting to feel like the purpose of customer service is actually to waste the customer's time with the impression of helpfulness until they no longer have any energy and give up pursuing other avenues.
Presumably to prevent upset customers from leaving bad reviews, trying to contact anyone else at the company, or threatening legal action.
It's just de-escalation and exhaustion.
donatj
Is there ground for legal action, particularly if you depended on this? It seems like a contract of sorts, and if any of their sales people ever assured anyone it was "free forever" I think that becomes a verbal contact.
blagie
Yes. It does not become a "verbal contract," but the concept is promissory estoppel. Look it up.
If you make a promise, and I rely on that promise, and I suffer financial loss, you're liable.
It's a good idea too. If you promise that a plan will be free forever, people should be able to rely on that promise. You might get beta tester, promoters, or whatever you want. If those people stop being useful to you, you can't just throw them on out on their bums. You're hosting their data, there's a cost to migrating that data away. If they've integrated with your APIs, it can be a high cost. If that what you'd like, promise "free" but not "free forever."
It almost never makes sense to sue -- it's just not worth it -- but a business which breaks a "free forever" promise is probably breaking the law, and in the era of the internet, is almost definitely breaking the law in some jurisdiction.
vel0city
In many jurisdictions contracts can't actually be "forever" though. They need to have some kind of possible end state.
differentView
So you're saying I may be able to get out of this contract I have with my wife.
nocoiner
I’m a lawyer. I think a reasonably competently drafted terms of service could obviate most legal exposure. In the event that a promissory estoppel cause of action was established (like other posters have, I think, correctly noted, but which would also be an expensive affirmative burden to prove in court) then the plaintiff would still have to prove damages. And what is that, $10 per month per user for the affected period? And I don’t think “forever” is an enforceable affected period.
So short answer, probably no practical legal remedy imho.
j16sdiz
I guess you can at least claim the cost for migrating off the platform, no?
nocoiner
Quite possibly. But not certain; and quite likely not with the cost of lawyer bills and court fees to get to that point (to say nothing of the distraction that would cause to the business and/or key executives).
emacdona
IANAL, but: 'If only one party offers consideration, the agreement is a "bare promise" and is unenforceable.' [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration_in_English_law
wmf
There's no consideration though.
blagie
There is. The goal of the "free forever" is to (1) exposure / publicity (2) lock-in (3) ecosystem / API integrations (4) eyeballs (5) customer counts for investor decks (6) etc.
Consideration doesn't have to be financial.
dougall
Really? Is there case law to this effect?
These things happen, and have value, but I wouldn't have considered them as "given as a quid pro quo" or "mutual promises".
heartbreak
That’s debatable. Not all consideration is obvious.
newscracker
This is well written, but it doesn’t really explain how or why Zulip will maintain its free plan forever. However, the existence of this post also makes Zulip committed deeper to not pull the rug on the free plan. Whenever that happens, I’d like to believe that there would be grandfathering for existing users on the free plan (unlike the rug pull that Google attempted with its free GSuite/Workplace offering and decided to not do it after a lot of backlash and bad press).
One thing I dislike about these chat platforms is limited message history. The 10,000-messages or 90-day message search history limits are arbitrary as well as too short to be useful for any group that has more than a few members on a specific topic/area. For some (or many?) people, this will be a practical and annoying limitation that makes the platform useless for anything other than trivial chats where history doesn’t matter (except for “this is what you said two days ago”).
Instead, they could consider offering very small (?) teams unlimited history. Platforms like Telegram (and Discord too, not sure?) are offering more and more features for free. Enterprise application integrations may be one area where Slack/Mattermost/RocketChat/Zulip may have an advantage for the time being.
sigstoat
> This is well written, but it doesn’t really explain how or why Zulip will maintain its free plan forever.
i don't see anywhere zulip has made that claim, merely that it is currently free. in fact, it explains that they're careful about what promises they make, so that they don't end up having to break them.
CUViper
In the conclusion:
> We fully expect to continue offering the Zulip Cloud Free plan indefinitely,
tormeh
That merely says that there is no plan that the writer knows of to pull the plug on you. And indefinitely is a duration of currently undefined length, not infinite length.
sigstoat
which isn't a promise that it will be "free forever". in the context of the rest of the article, it's not even an attempt to mislead you into thinking it will be free forever. though it is apparently enough to base willful misunderstanding on.
TheCleric
And their broader thrust in the post is less the forever and more of the "own your mistakes". Don't pretend like you never had a free forever plan.
Their promise seems to be less "we'll ACTUALLY be free forever" and more "we're free right now, but if that's going to change, we'll communicate with you".
alsobrsp
I have been using a free plan for over two years. Zulip is awesome and, in my opinion, way better that slack. I use both on a daily basis.
usr1106
I agree. If I ever have to leave my current job (which could be soonish, startup and runway you know...) one of the things I'll miss most is the clean messaging experience provided by zulip. Everyone who likes the HN UX should be comfortable with zulip, even if it's quite a bit richer in details.
We run our zulip on a smallish EC2 instance. It's probably less than a Euro/month/employee.
dijit
We pay zulip for their hosted version, which works out cheaper than slack and in any event I would like to support the development.
I have had pushback from non-technical staff (and pushback from tech workers for a week, but now they seem to be very happy aside from UX bugs esp with the mobile app).
If you're ever looking for work, we are hiring across the board, fully remote in Sweden or Germany. (due to tax!)
Jill_the_Pill
Fully agree -- professor hosting college classes on Zulip after leaving Slack
tiedieconderoga
If I were a legislator, I would introduce a bill to ban footnotes in advertising. Everything that the company feels it needs to print, must be included in the main ad copy.
Enough with this coy duplicity.
richbell
Where I live there are several large billboards advertising incredible offers. The fine print is so small I'm not sure it's even possible to read.
kristopolous
I agree with the sentiments but I don't know if that's feasible
newjersey
If an ad for a depression medicine on the tv has time to say crazy things like “side effects may include depression, […] and death”, I am sure Charter and Comcast have enough time to say that their gigabit coax service is only gigabit for downloads, not for uploads.
tiedieconderoga
Why not, besides the practical impossibility of the current Congress passing such a law?
IMHO, it would level the playing field for honest manufacturers and service providers.
Sure, it would effectively outlaw many types of ads that we see today, but do you think any of the types of ads that rely on hidden fine print are really all that valuable to our economy or society?
kristopolous
Ok let's take contests. They're void where prohibited and a bunch of other rules apply. Should the odds of winning along with these caveats be stated in the copy?
Let's take guarantees and warranties. There's certainly nuances there. Should all those also be disclosed in the main copy?
Let's take the main thing here. What if they went out of business? Forever never actually means for perpetuity.
All these are obvious? So is the rule to stare everything but the obvious? Who determines that?
There's so many practical details that complicate things here
In fact, much of these things have made their way into the law a long time ago. Maybe you just want to restrict the freedom of how they can display it?
dijit
there are laws about this (in the UK), and very often you can get settlements.
Misleading advertising is a punishable offence and “terms and conditions” is usually not a strong enough defence if the terms are dense enough or buried enough.
dalmo3
"terms and conditions apply"
anonzzzies
People don't look at the history of the company or the owners when they sign up; if I sign up for a 'one time pay, forever' plan, I need to to know this company, or, if it's new, the owners, have a history of delivering on promises in the past. If I sign up with a company that has delivered something for the past 15 years reliably and now add a forever plan, I can assume with some certainty it will continue. If it's startup of 1 month old with some owners without track record, I can assume they won't honour this deal when things go either really well or really badly. But I guess most people just buy stuff like this on a whim and then complain it doesn't work out.
lrhegeba
while i agree with your conclusions regarding the probability if a "forever"-plan will be honoured, people are rightfully pissed. and it doesnt matter if people bought on a whim or after extensive research, the company advertised it as "forever" and when they now dont honour the deal they should be called out as fraudster/liars. cause thats what it is and i dont care if others do it too.
anonzzzies
Fully agree, but the research helps. I buy them sometimes if a service I have used for years offers one suddenly to get in some cash. I have not been betrayed; I do have some that are 15 years old. And they work.
But yes, fully agree with you; name + shame.
duxup
Maybe it works to have a free tier and yank the rug out from everyone, and maybe the solution is that we should just pay for what things cost?
The whole internet is like this, people often don't want to pay, they want it free, then the advertisers pay, we get pissy about advertising, and we become the product, and we flock to the next free thing after the free thing stops being free ...
I wish things weren't all free, I wish we paid easily, and the relationship really be between us and the provider, directly with enough money to actually make them profitable. But it isn't that way for a lot of things, and I feel like we as users are part of the problem too.
Dylan16807
> maybe the solution is that we should just pay for what things cost?
Well I bet how much those free accounts were costing is way less than $10 per month per user. The self hosting page suggests that you can have "up to 1,000 users" on a few dollar VPS. A little more if you need to upload tons and tons of images.
duxup
Be nice if there was a widely accepted small payments type system that would make $10 a month less standard.
2b3a51
posteo.de is an example of a company offering an email account with some storage for 1 euro a month on Roundcube webmail or IMAP/POP3. Not a customer, nor anything to do with them, but I do keep this in mind in case my current ISP gets taken over or goes under. Once there is a credit card registered and all it is easy to upsell ( more storage and more aliases &c).
I wonder if they make any money on the 1 euro accounts given the tendency of most people to not use the max resources?
version_five
I agree with you, I'd rather pay for stuff. But paid products required appropriate information about what you're buying. A freemium model is one way that potential buyers can decide if a thing is valuable enough to pay for.
duxup
Free for 60 days?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but a more direct relationship I would hope would establish a better pattern for everyone.
karaterobot
> maybe the solution is that we should just pay for what things cost?
I understand your frustration, but in the end things cost what people are willing to pay. It would be hard to determine an intrinsic price for a cloud-hosted chat server.
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If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior.
If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.