4 ms·

It baffles me that people want to pay for something that is widely available for free.

sage 16y ago
I paid for Pinboard in hope that the financial support will allow them to remain viable and keep the service open indefinitely. I've been burned too many times by using free services that eventually shut down when they realize they can't support themselves with ads.
bengross 16y ago
I guess it all depends on how valuable the service is to you. For me, the one-time signup fee seems minimal for the value I get from a service that I use nearly every day. I've used many other bookmarking services, some of which have already disappeared like Gnolia. Pinboard is very stable, faster than Delicious, and the developers respond to requests quickly. I have no connection with Pinboard other than as a happy customer, but I regularly recommend the service and think it is worth paying for. I use Pinboard to help collect data for many of my research projects and the archiving capability ($25/ year) is great retrieving pages that have already disappeared, that I want to go back and reference. Yes, I could use other free services and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (which is amazing), but the speed, support, and reliability of Pinboard make it easily worth the cost. I prefer that services I rely on have a sustainable business model. Charging a very reasonable fee to provide quality service seems like a good model to me.
skorgu 16y ago
The original context is different and the tone is flippant but "If you're not paying you're not the customer, you're the product". Considering how easy it is for ad-supported businesses to suddenly become unsupported and disappear I'm willing to give a nominal fee (~$8 forever) a shot.
- _delirium 16y ago
  A problem, though, is that the inverse isn't necessarily true: if you're paying, it doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't still the product. It mostly depends on whether someone else is paying more. For example, for most magazines, you're the product even when you're paying them a subscription fee.
  - skorgu 16y ago
    Good point. TANSSAAFL.
jfb 16y ago
I pay because I want to be the customer. If I am buying something, I am able to exert market pressure on the provider. If I am a collection of poorly-anonomized data being passed around from J. Random data mining company, I lose this (admittedly, largely nominal) agency. I pay for email, I pay for hosting photos, and I pay for pinboard.
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  > I pay for email Out of curiosity, who do you pay to host your email?
  - cschmidt 16y ago
    In my case fastmail.fm, zenfolio.com, and pinboard.in.
    - w1ntermute 16y ago
      How is their web UI compared to Gmail, for example? Do you feel like you're missing out on any features, or do you access mail exclusively via a desktop client?
      - cschmidt 16y ago
        They have a really nice web GUI. I use it for access to my mail when I'm away from my laptop, where I use Mail.app. I haven't used gmail enough to do a direct comparison. The search is good, and you can set up very complicated rules to file mail into folders.
  - jfb 16y ago
    fastmail.fm. Their webmail is pants (all webmail save GMail is pants), but their IMAP service has been 100% bulletproof. Oh, and MobileMe for pics, but that's because I'm trapped in the MobileMe universe because the value of OTA contact syncing is just ... barely ... enough, and now most of my pics are there. Vendor lock in is easy; the first hit (when I was an employee) was free.
fendmark 16y ago
I agree with skorgu, jfb and bengross. Personally I have used free bookmarking tools, RSS readers, blogging tools & "free hosting" for years, only to see them go belly up or the founders leave and the product is left to decay or suffer years of unnecessary feature additions. It gets really old (and time consuming for those who don't have time to burn) I recently bought Fever for my RSS reader and Pinboard for bookmarking both which I love (and are worth every cent) Personally I plan on avoiding free SaaS based services in favor of paid or open source self hosted solutions whenever possible.
wzdd 16y ago
The alternatives which don't require your own server seem to support themselves through advertising. I consider viewing advertising a cost (and actually I consider it much more of a cost than the $5 I paid to pinboard.in). So, for me, there aren't any widely-available free alternatives.

sage 16y ago

I paid for Pinboard in hope that the financial support will allow them to remain viable and keep the service open indefinitely. I've been burned too many times by using free services that eventually shut down when they realize they can't support themselves with ads.

bengross 16y ago

I guess it all depends on how valuable the service is to you. For me, the one-time signup fee seems minimal for the value I get from a service that I use nearly every day. I've used many other bookmarking services, some of which have already disappeared like Gnolia. Pinboard is very stable, faster than Delicious, and the developers respond to requests quickly. I have no connection with Pinboard other than as a happy customer, but I regularly recommend the service and think it is worth paying for. I use Pinboard to help collect data for many of my research projects and the archiving capability ($25/ year) is great retrieving pages that have already disappeared, that I want to go back and reference. Yes, I could use other free services and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (which is amazing), but the speed, support, and reliability of Pinboard make it easily worth the cost. I prefer that services I rely on have a sustainable business model. Charging a very reasonable fee to provide quality service seems like a good model to me.

skorgu 16y ago

The original context is different and the tone is flippant but "If you're not paying you're not the customer, you're the product". Considering how easy it is for ad-supported businesses to suddenly become unsupported and disappear I'm willing to give a nominal fee (~$8 forever) a shot.

_delirium 16y ago
A problem, though, is that the inverse isn't necessarily true: if you're paying, it doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't still the product. It mostly depends on whether someone else is paying more. For example, for most magazines, you're the product even when you're paying them a subscription fee.
- skorgu 16y ago
  Good point. TANSSAAFL.

jfb 16y ago

I pay because I want to be the customer. If I am buying something, I am able to exert market pressure on the provider. If I am a collection of poorly-anonomized data being passed around from J. Random data mining company, I lose this (admittedly, largely nominal) agency. I pay for email, I pay for hosting photos, and I pay for pinboard.

w1ntermute 16y ago
> I pay for email Out of curiosity, who do you pay to host your email?
- cschmidt 16y ago
  In my case fastmail.fm, zenfolio.com, and pinboard.in.
  - w1ntermute 16y ago
    How is their web UI compared to Gmail, for example? Do you feel like you're missing out on any features, or do you access mail exclusively via a desktop client?
    - cschmidt 16y ago
      They have a really nice web GUI. I use it for access to my mail when I'm away from my laptop, where I use Mail.app. I haven't used gmail enough to do a direct comparison. The search is good, and you can set up very complicated rules to file mail into folders.
- jfb 16y ago
  fastmail.fm. Their webmail is pants (all webmail save GMail is pants), but their IMAP service has been 100% bulletproof. Oh, and MobileMe for pics, but that's because I'm trapped in the MobileMe universe because the value of OTA contact syncing is just ... barely ... enough, and now most of my pics are there. Vendor lock in is easy; the first hit (when I was an employee) was free.

fendmark 16y ago

I agree with skorgu, jfb and bengross. Personally I have used free bookmarking tools, RSS readers, blogging tools & "free hosting" for years, only to see them go belly up or the founders leave and the product is left to decay or suffer years of unnecessary feature additions. It gets really old (and time consuming for those who don't have time to burn) I recently bought Fever for my RSS reader and Pinboard for bookmarking both which I love (and are worth every cent) Personally I plan on avoiding free SaaS based services in favor of paid or open source self hosted solutions whenever possible.

wzdd 16y ago

The alternatives which don't require your own server seem to support themselves through advertising. I consider viewing advertising a cost (and actually I consider it much more of a cost than the $5 I paid to pinboard.in). So, for me, there aren't any widely-available free alternatives.