> Akaunting is free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses So my obvious questions are 1. if it's free, how do they make money / maintain

> Akaunting is free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses So my obvious questions are 1. if it's free, how do they make money / maintain it, and 2. if it's online, how is it kept secure. So... > That's right, completely free. The Standard plan of the On-Premise (self-hosted) version is free in terms of price and freedom (source code available). If by "completely free" you mean "with a lot of restrictions, starting with self-hosting" and by "freedom" you don't mean the same thing everyone else means by that (since as everyone else pointed out this is not open source). Okay, fine, by "free, open-open source online accounting software" they mean "free or online but not both, and source-available". That's more lies than I would want from accounting software, but let's see if they're secure. From the front page: > As we talk about your financials, you must be sure that data is in safe and software doesn't abuse them. Open Source software provides you full privacy. Again, not open source, but source-available does mean auditable. Of course, it doesn't mean privacy-respecting (even real FOSS can expose your data, you can just see that it does and patch it), and it helps but it certainly doesn't automatically mean secure. Then on https://akaunting.com/plans https://akaunting.com/plans : > Is my data safe? > Completely safe. Our servers are protected physically and electronically. Any connection between you and Akaunting Cloud is protected by 256-bit SSL encryption, and backups are taken hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. So, uh. I cannot stress enough how much that would not reassure me. No mention of at-rest encryption, no audits, no reason to think they aren't hosting the thing on servers that never get security patches. "We use HTTPS and take backups" is something but it's the bare minimum for any paid SaaS, not something to brag about and nowhere near good enough for something with all your financial information.