And so what? There's no evidence (and it's impossible to assess) that they're in a worse position compared to a hypothetical scenario where they would haves started from the beginning without free plans.
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.
For many people, this is their first introduction to Moosend. Imagine the difference of perception between “Moosend stops offering new Free Forever accounts, offers one year of continuation for existing accounts” and “Moosend cancels all Free Forever accounts and upgrades them to the highest tier Enterprise plan, with only 30-days notice”.
One causes me to think “okay, that’s a standup company” and the other “well, don’t need to know anything more”.
It is the classic "lifetime warranty", which ends up being defined as the lifetime of the product. The end of the lifetime is defined as "when it breaks".
This! My car has “lifetime transmission fluid” in it. Which translates to 150k miles. With change every 30k miles they’re known to last 300k+. It’s ridiculous.
I view all "free for life" promotions like this. Years ago I bought a free for life hosting plan from some provider. It lasted several years before they decided enough was enough. They moved the free tier people over to a server that would make an AWS micro instance look like the modern version of a Cray. I contacted them to complain about it and they essentially said, "What did you expect?"
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).
> I view all "free for life" promotions like this.
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.
I removed my clients from their standard service. I only ran my personal web site on the free tier. Because I supported them and liked their services I also hosted a number of others on their standard paid plan (probably 5 different clients). I pulled all of them so they lost what each of those were paying per month.
Such a lawsuit would probably be immediately thrown out.
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.
> 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.
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.
It's funny that you would consider some college volunteer activity as precedent for a real judge in a real court in a real lawsuit between real corporations. Insert eyeroll emoji here.
If you read really closely you can see the semantic game. They're not making the "Free Forever" account not-free, they're terminating free accounts. So it was "free forever", where "forever" is implicitly defined as "as long as free accounts exist."
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.
> They're now on record as being a company that doesn't keep its promises.
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.
I would personally argue that as long that is true, such promises should not be made.
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]
Most reasonable people interpret "Free Forever" as "Free, as long as the company exists". The risk of company folding is baked into the statement in my opinion.
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.
We’re long overdue for a “pay for services you use” recoil now that our personal data can’t be easily sold to pay for them, and the pandemic forced a reckoning of revenue models.
41 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 98.4 ms ] threadSome 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.
One causes me to think “okay, that’s a standup company” and the other “well, don’t need to know anything more”.
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.
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.
Unless you rely what they promise you to the determent of other offers or a hundred other situations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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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