Up until recently, JoMo has used free accounts to give users a sneak peak at what it has to offer. These accounts, although limited, were a good way for customers to check if JoMoMail was for them. If you’ve seen our pricing page recently, you might be wondering: Why did JoMo remove the free option? Let’s talk about that.
First Things First
At JoMo, we are fervent believers of transparency. To that end, we find it necessary to explain how exactly Free accounts were handled, what purpose they served, how they were funded, and why we ultimately chose to remove them as an option. Lets break it down part by part, and helpfully help clarify our decision.
The Idea Behind Free Accounts
Free accounts were, first and foremost, intended as a demo. It was important to demonstrate what JoMo was capable of, not just to our clients, but to ourselves too. By giving users access to the core functionality of JoMo, we’d help our clients explore better email solutions for those more privacy-conscious, gain valuable information about the service we provide, and give people the opportunity to try out JoMo whilst we strengthened our feature-set.
Also worth noting, our Free accounts had the same amount of privacy that our paid accounts enjoyed. That means no sifting through your data, no ads, no selling information. Your inbox was your inbox. But as we’ve discussed in a separate blog post, running free services still has a cost. Every byte of data stored has an inherent cost to a business, more data means more servers, which in turn means higher costs to keep them powered, maintained and performing as intended.
The Cost of Free Accounts
So how did we profit from free accounts? Simply put, we didn’t. At least not financially. We do believe that free accounts were a great offer for those wanting to try out JoMo, and many people jumped on board with us (thanks!). More users meant more costs, but there was no way to finance those free users forever, and we wouldn’t even dream of breaking our promise of a safe and private email service just to make a buck.
JoMo is, at the end of the day, a business. Ethics and good intentions can drive a business, but they can’t fuel it. We are still committed to delivering secure and private mail for all. The choice to remove free accounts was not one easily made, as we feel not only are we taking something from users, but we’re also losing a valuable tool in our arsenal. That said, it was perhaps not the right tool for the immediate job. We’ve learned a lot from the experience, and perhaps some day we might even see a return of free accounts, but at present moment we believe we can create a better core offering by removing this option.
With new features such as cloud storage well into production, paid users will have even more to look forward to in the near future. The added costs this will take to maintain, for example, would mean free users would not get to try out these free features, and that wouldn’t feel fair.
The Future
We’d like to stress that current free users won’t be forced to pay for their accounts out of the blue. Your accounts will remain free for as long as you’re with us, as that’s what you signed up to. These changes will only affect new users going forward.
JoMo is growing. We are committed to strengthening our core offer and do right by our customers. Removing a feature such as free accounts is a business decision, and not one made lightly. But this doesn’t mean JoMo is slowing down or coming to an end in any capacity. New users will soon enjoy a much more streamlined way to pay for their JoMo account. Users will also see new features dropping for them to enjoy, such as the previously mentioned cloud storage. In the coming months we’ll be introducing even more security features which we’re sure users will love.
Change happens all the time. It’s part of business life. One thing is for certain to not change, though. Our passion for privacy, security, and our commitment to providing you with the best mail experience possible.
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