Moosend's “Free Forever” plan no longer free
ahoi.dev
ahoi.dev
"As they enter a new era of innovation and want everyone to enjoy the full suite of Moosend’s features, they will update their pricing plans."
Who talks like that? Its either someone who isn't a native speaker (then hey, good job for learning another language) or marketing doublespeak.
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As a guy running a small time SaaS, I get needing to make money. Just don't do entirely misleading things like using the word "forever." They're now on record as being a company that doesn't keep its promises. Everyone should act accordingly.
No company is capable of delivering on "forever" promises, so as soon as a company makes one, they should go "on record". Companies fold all the time, or more recently, get acquired by the imperial megacorps who may decide to change the terms. The only meaningful way a company can make something forever free is to provide a self-hosted FOSS option (like Gitlab) because then that artifact can outlive the company.
The problem most people have is the company going back on their promise out of their own volition. In essence it could be considered a "bait and switch", especially considering the nature of the business they are running.
Maybe Pratchett was onto something when wrote this:
"Mention has already been made of an attempt to inject a little honesty into reporting on the Disc, and how poets and bards were banned on pain of - well, pain - from going on about babbling brooks and rosy-fingered dawn and could only say for example, that a face had launched a thousand ships if they were able to produce certified dockyard accounts. "
> In 2004, TextDrive bootstrapped itself as a hosting company through crowd funding: customers were invited to invest money in exchange for free hosting for the lifetime of the company.[39] TextDrive and, later, Joyent repeated the money-raising procedure a number of times in order to avoid the venture capital market.[40][41][42] and began to flounder, suffering from an absence of leadership and plagued by reliability issues, with users leaving for other hosts.[42]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyent
They took money from people and failed to uphold their end of the bargain.
I had paid $400 for this plan when they were just getting started as a way of supporting them and helping them bootstrap their business. I learned my lesson, however. I had been using their main service for clients at the time and I moved everything away and never considered them again. Absolutely cost them more than the savings they thought they were gaining (probably cost them more than their savings in just the first month).
Indeed. On Facebook, I kept seeing ads for some cloud computer provider offering a "for life" VM for $100. I'm like, first off, that's going to be a very low-end VM. Second, "for life" is probably going to end in <5 years when they discover how much that actually costs them, or the company bombs.
> Absolutely cost them more than the savings they thought they were gaining (probably cost them more than their savings in just the first month).
How is it costing them money if they already got your $400 and aren't paying anything monthly? If anything, keeping you around was costing them money.
The only thing they're losing is lost sales from negative word-of-mouth, but that's very hard to quantify.
This reminds me of 1MB being free and the dev claiming it would last as long as you want it.
I got an email a while back saying it's no longer free.
One causes me to think “okay, that’s a standup company” and the other “well, don’t need to know anything more”.
Some people will distrust the platform, some other will reassess as stay if convenient, but can't really be assumed that all the users will fall in the first category.
If someone promises you something in exchange for something else (even something intangible), you have a legal claim against them. If someone promises you something for free, you are not entitled to it.
For a lawsuit like this to work, the plaintiffs would have to show that they paid something for the “free for life” service. Maybe they could argue that they paid with user data or something along those lines, but it’s a pretty tenuous argument and not one a judge is likely to go along with.
I'm not going to speculate on what a court would do, but what you've written here is 100% wrong. There are obviously benefits to having more people use your product. That's why they did it.
When I was in college, there was a volunteer activity (I don't remember the specifics). If you wanted to volunteer, you had to sign an agreement to show up, and you had to explain what you were getting in return, like extra credit for a class. If you didn't do that, they'd turn you down.
That seems awfully strange, so why did they have that requirement? Because no-shows led to a bunch of waste, and they'd had problems with no-shows in the past. The volunteer agreement established consideration for both parties.
"Free forever" plans are not charity. There are massive benefits for both parties.
Unless you rely what they promise you to the determent of other offers or a hundred other situations.