Issues With Paid Services

It is rather clear that throughout our website we are heavily critical of paid services online. But what issues have led to this criticism? Our biggest focus is correcting the negative impact these issues have on the user, and so this will be the initial focus of this article. Many users have limited finances in a way that they cannot afford services online, even if they can afford internet access. Even for those who can afford these services, it can still be an unnecessary detriment to their financial situation that would result in seeking out unpaid alternatives to paid services.

Some services even use methods to manipulate users into paying when they don’t intend to. Oftentimes such programs only tell users that they are paid once they finish using it and have sunk time into utilizing the service. This may be done outright by prompting the user to select a paid plan once a save is attempted, or in some cases it may be done using an intrusive watermark or other limitation that effectively forbids standard usage of the service. Additionally, even if the services claim to be free, they may allow very limited true free usage and block most core features.

It is also important to take note of a certain tactic that we refer to as “App Pulling,” in which services start out free but slowly restrict user access until they become dependent on making payments to the service. This can either happen universally, pulling the rug beneath all active users at the time in which it happens, or it can happen on a per-user basis, generally through a “free trial” that the user isn’t informed about or that has misleading terms.

Paid services don't only create problems for users, however. For developers, it may initially be easy to charge for applications or services, yet when an alternative is developed that doesn’t require money, users have little reason to choose the paid software. Although paid software is still often found because a viable alternative doesn’t exist, the alternative lacks the reputation of legitimacy that the paid software does, or the alternative lacks features, developing paid software is becoming less viable by the day. And when an alternative to paid software arises, the open source model is often a great solution to keeping the project alive and in competition with the paid software.