I think a good free tier still makes sense as long as it seems sustainable overall. For example, if a lot of people are willing to pay for at least a basic plan

I think a good free tier still makes sense as long as it seems sustainable overall. For example, if a lot of people are willing to pay for at least a basic plan, I feel a little better. I think for CI/CD having a generous free tier is great because it makes it easier for people to get started and really dig into a project, not to mention the obvious benefit to open source that works as a continuous PR machine. Practically everyone knows what Travis CI and CircleCI are. I still agree that it can be unnerving at times. I worry about services that seemingly offer no paid tiers. Like, draw.io. Thankfully draw.io actually seems to be sustainable, but you wouldn't guess it based on their very unobtrusive app!