The Free Column Drifted From Tools You Own To Tools You Borrow

We looked at an eighteen-row version of this chart recently and sorted its free column by how long each entry had already survived: Five Of These Alternatives Are Older Than What They Replace. Five of them turned out to be older than the paid products they were listed against.

This version has twenty rows, two new categories, one row removed — and four free picks swapped for different tools.

Four swaps on a twenty-row chart is unremarkable. What is worth a whole article is that all four moved in the same direction, and two of them moved a long way:

A twenty-five-year-old open-source accounting program became a commercial personal-finance app. A local-first notes tool — plain files, on your own disk — became a cloud notes service with a famously tight free tier. The email row and the voice row shifted similarly, from one freemium product to another with a larger marketing budget.

Every one of those swaps replaced something you own with something you borrow. Both columns still say “free”. They are not the same deal, and the difference only shows up on the day you stop.

Own or borrow

All twenty rows, with what changed

The first three columns are the card’s own. The rest is ours.

The finance row is the clearest example

The earlier version put a twenty-five-year-old open-source accounting program opposite a paid desktop finance package. That is a genuine like-for-like: double-entry bookkeeping, your ledger in a file, free because nobody owns it, and still receiving updates after two and a half decades.

This version puts a commercial personal-finance app there instead. It is a good app and millions of people use it. It is also a completely different product with a completely different business model — an account rather than a file, a service rather than a program, and a company that makes money from premium subscriptions and from a cut of the bills it negotiates down on your behalf.

Both can be used for nothing. One of them keeps working, unchanged, with your data on your own machine, for as long as you have a computer. The other keeps working for as long as the company’s plans and your usage agree with each other.

The notes row tells the same story in miniature: a tool whose whole selling point is that your notes are plain files you own, replaced by a cloud service whose free tier has become one of the more restrictive in the category. Neither swap is dishonest. Both quietly changed what the word in the green column means.

The own-or-borrow test

Four questions, about thirty seconds, before you build anything on a free tool.

Four honest caveats

Borrowing is often the right choice. Nothing here says own is better. A borrowed tool is usually easier, prettier, syncs to your phone, and does not ask you to run anything. For a notes app you will replace in two years, borrowing is obviously correct. The mistake is borrowing for the thing you want to still have in ten years — your accounts, your archive, your site — without noticing you did.

The headline number does not match the card. The title says fifty-plus tools. The grid has twenty rows, which is forty logos. Not a deception — headline numbers get rounded up and lists get trimmed in layout — but it is worth counting, because the number is the thing being sold hardest.

One row improved by being deleted. The earlier version carried a mindfulness row, a meditation app sitting among design, SEO and CRM software. It has gone, and the chart is better for it. Two genuinely useful work rows — analytics and time tracking — took its place.

Several rows still need their own check. The text-to-video row pairs a budget tool against a premium credit-based platform that is often the more expensive of the two. The CRM row has the same company appearing as paid on one line and free on another. And free tiers move: the habit of asking who funds each one is in Ask Who Pays For The Free Column, and whether there is an upgrade door at the end is in The Four Truly Free Tools Have No Upgrade Button.

Questions people ask

Is open source always the own option? Usually, but check it runs on your machine rather than only on their servers. Some open-source projects are offered mainly as a hosted service, which puts you back in borrowing.

What if I have already built everything inside a borrowed tool? Export it once, now, while nothing is wrong. An export you never needed costs twenty minutes; an export you needed and could not do costs the archive.

How do I know if a free tier is tight? Find the number before you start — items, notes, devices, seats. A free tier with no published number is the one to be most careful with.

Why do these charts keep changing the free column? Because they are rebuilt by hand from whatever is prominent, and prominence favours companies with marketing. That drift is the whole subject of this article, and the same pattern applied to labels in “Free With A Google Account” Became “100% Free”.

Ask which kind of free

Twenty rows, one word in the green column, two completely different arrangements hiding under it.

Three entries on this card are software you keep — a vector editor, a photo editor, a self-hosted site. The rest are services that currently cost nothing. All of them are worth using. Only some of them are worth building a decade on.

So before you move anything important into a free tool, ask the only question that matters on the day you leave: when I stop, what do I still have?

Learning a lot does not make anyone good. Doing a lot does.

If you want a deadline rather than another saved comparison, we run a free challenge — there is no barrier to entry, only a commitment fee that is refunded when you finish. It exists because a deadline makes you use one tool properly, which is also how you find out what it really costs.

Which free tool are you depending on — and would you still have your work if it closed tomorrow? Tell us in the comments under the original reel.

More on building a channel for a global audience at mmoyoutube.com.