Free Trial, Freemium, Free Forever: What Each Really Means

Where the $9 subscriptions come from

Look at your card statement and you'll probably find a few small monthly charges you don't remember choosing. A lot of them started as something free. Software uses the word to mean three different things, and each one costs you something different.

Free trial: free until a date you'll forget

You get the whole product for 14 or 30 days, then it charges the card you entered on day one.

The catch is the date. Nobody remembers it, and the first charge is usually the one that tells you the trial is over.

What to do: the day you sign up, put a reminder on your calendar two days before the trial ends, with the cancel link in the note. Decide then, not after the charge.

Freemium: free until you depend on it

A basic version is free for as long as you want. More storage, more users, or the one feature you need costs extra.

The free tier is built to feel a little too small once the tool is part of your day. That's the business model working as designed. By the time you hit the limit, moving everything somewhere else feels harder than paying.

What to do: before you put real work into a freemium tool, look up the price of the tier you'd realistically need in a year. If you wouldn't pay that, pick something else now, while you have nothing to move.

Free forever: free because you're paying another way

Some tools really are free, with no plan to ever charge you. Running them still costs money, so it's coming from somewhere: usually ads, or what the company can do with the information you put in.

Plenty of these are a fair trade. The problem is when client information goes in. Some free tools reserve the right to read, analyze, or train on your content, and that's a real issue when the content is your clients' private files. Paid tools aren't automatically safe either, but they more often put privacy commitments in writing, because you're the customer.

What to do: for anything that touches client data, read the part of the terms about how they use what you upload before you rely on it. Look for whether they keep it, how long, and whether they use it to train anything.

Four checks before you sign up for anything free

• Will this start charging me, and when?
• What does the paid version cost, in case I end up there?
• If it's free forever, how does this company make money?
• How do I get my data out if I leave?

If you already have a stack of small charges you can't account for, Subscription Creep covers how to find them all in an afternoon.