"was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many oth

"was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many others before them." Although VC money is worse, you don't know that at all about profit-based models. Any profitable company can sell out or cease operations at any time. One that I got burned on recommending was FoundationDB that was selling an awesome database for good prices with steady growth. After Apple bought it, they shut it down. Of all like that, it was one of only ones to get resurrected into an open-source product. Most just disappear with the big company transitioning the paying customers into their own, crappier offerings. This is why I push for anyone trying to create products with longevity and good practices to use an open core model in a public-benefit corporation or non-profit. Best example in recent times is probably Ghost: https://ghost.org/about/ https://ghost.org/about/ Note: I don't use Ghost. Just loved the business model they're trying. One of only trustworthy models out there.