James Wilding's Weblog

A year or two ago, I was looking at some community websites when I found one that promised to be “free forever” (they even said “we’ll never charge for our services”).

This kind of promise is stupid. You don’t know what your business will be doing in a year’s time — unless you’re a dedicated non-profit with a clear idea of how you’ll be funding your free service, promising never to charge for it is nonsense; meaningless.

Of course the website in question did exactly what you’d expect: started charging for their services (the “free forever” promise quietly disappeared from the site). It was inevitable: how would they have made money otherwise? I don’t know how much fuss the change caused amongst existing users — I never did sign up — but it struck me as sloppy and insincere: there was no apology, and no explanation.

Promises are great — they make for excellent marketing — but they’re even better when someone actually sticks to them.