It is not like that: you should not relay on a service for which you don't pay.
Yes certain services needs to be "free" (since they are social network kind of things), but for services which hold and manage your data, email or anything like that (something like cloud storage, email, project management, source control, etc.): it is stupid to have a free service handling that.
But I still meet people who pay $5 for starbuck coffee every single day, but they use some free system for their cloud storage. And Dropbox is just $10/month.
Somebody will say that paying for some service still does not guarantee the service will be around. Yes it is true: but chances are lower.
You should not rely 100% on a service you pay for either, be ready to switch gears on a moment's notice as fast as possible. You never know, the US government may shut them down without warning due to some government bureaucrat trying to get his moment in the spotlight.
I agree: paying for a service does not guarantee that the service will be around. However, if the service is 100% free, then it guarantees that none of the users of that service are actual customers.
Comments
It is not like that: you should not relay on a service for which you don't pay.
Yes certain services needs to be "free" (since they are social network kind of things), but for services which hold and manage your data, email or anything like that (something like cloud storage, email, project management, source control, etc.): it is stupid to have a free service handling that.
But I still meet people who pay $5 for starbuck coffee every single day, but they use some free system for their cloud storage. And Dropbox is just $10/month.
Somebody will say that paying for some service still does not guarantee the service will be around. Yes it is true: but chances are lower.
You should not rely 100% on a service you pay for either, be ready to switch gears on a moment's notice as fast as possible. You never know, the US government may shut them down without warning due to some government bureaucrat trying to get his moment in the spotlight.
I agree: paying for a service does not guarantee that the service will be around. However, if the service is 100% free, then it guarantees that none of the users of that service are actual customers.
Exactly. From the OP: If you have 1 million free users, that is 1 million people that you can serve ads to.
If you aren't paying for it, YOU are the product.