Free is great right? Everybody likes free food, free prizes,
and free t-shirts, but what about your business? There are a lot of free tools
and software available for business use that, at first glance, would appear to
be a win-win. The provider makes money from ad revenue or the hope that you
will subscribe to an upgraded package and you get a free tool for your business
that would otherwise cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. The problem here is
that relying too much on free software could leave your business vulnerable to
unexpected expenses if the developer decides that they no longer want to offer
their software for free.
Free software can be great as it allows you to try something
without a large commitment of time and money and allows for some cost savings,
but it shouldn’t be relied upon as a primary tool that is crucial to your
business’s day-to-day operations. Unexpected changes or price increases can
leave you scrambling to approve a new budget or find a replacement for software
that has become a major part of your business. Even if another alternative is
utilized, there is still the expense of wasted time transitioning and training
employees on how to use a new program. If free software is a big part of your
business, you need to have a plan in place in the event that the software
suddenly changes or becomes subscription based.
A recent example of this issue is the (formerly) free remote
desktop tool LogMeIn. For those of you
not familiar with LogMeIn, it is a tool that allows you to view and control
another computer from a remote location. This tool was great for IT
professionals and help desk operations since it was easy to use and most
importantly, free. Now that LogMeIn is
no longer free, users will have to pay the yearly fee or find a suitable
alternative. This has caused a bit of an uproar in the IT community who used
this tool as a key part of their daily operations as well as home users who
enjoyed a simple free tool for the occasional long distance remote computing. LogMeIn
Pro now costs $99 a year to access up to two computers and $449 to access up to
ten. Another issue with the LogMeIn example is the timing; users were given
only a one week notice before the new policy is implemented. A week is simply not enough time to business
users make an informed decision on how to move forward or research and
implement good alternatives.
If your company is currently using a free piece of software
across a department, entire company, or is considering the use of free software
in the future, here are some key questions to answer in order to plan for
unexpected issues or price increases:
·
Do they
currently offer a paid option? Is this paid option competitive with others
options?
For most free software, the free options are
not suddenly switched to fee based. Usually, the free option is removed and
free accounts are migrated (after paying) to the lowest priced paid option.
Another way to look at this question is “If the price of the product wasn’t
free, what would you be willing to pay for it?”
·
Are there
features in the software critical to your operation that aren’t available
elsewhere?
If the answer to this question is “yes”, planning
for a LogMeIn-type of rate increase is harder to do since you must determine how
critical these unique options are to your business, and what the best
alternative is. A similar comparison would be if you compared Microsoft Office to
Google Docs.
·
Is the
data easily exported out of the presently-free software?
Whether it’s a significant package of
software or a small note-keeping or task list app, do not use or even
consider implementing a free piece of software that does not allow you full
control and access over your data. This type of situation is extremely
dangerous since a software crash or migration to a new system would involve re-inputting
data manually into the new software. Oppositely, software that does not allow
for the import of various data formats may be equally time consuming and
cumbersome to use.
The appeal of using free software in a business setting is
very tempting for obvious reasons, but there is always the potential that it
won’t stay free for long. If you must use free software or feel it is the best
fit for your individual situation, make sure you are prepared for for the end of the "free trial".
Free is good — no question about it — but you still "get what you pay for," in my experience paid remote support tools like logmein, R-HUB remote support servers, teamviewer etc. are worth.
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