Freemium is a popular business model for web apps and online services. The idea is pretty simple (and a touch obvious): offer a great product that people want to use, and let them have it for free; charge a fee to the small proportion of the users who need it to do just a little more. A lot of web businesses are built on scale, and that makes freemium attractive. Imagine if Twitter or Facebook had charged to sign up when they were new start ups. Few people would have taken a punt on something as stupid sounding as Twitter (it did sound stupid, really it did, watch this if you don't believe me) and without  a user base, Twitter is nothing but a bit of software. Of course, Twitter is still free to use and isn't freemium at all but a lot of other web services and social media businesses need to build big user bases, and then persuade some of them to pay. Flickr is a great example of this: you can do a heck of a lot with a free Flickr account, and Flickr has lots of users as a result, some of whom pay twenty-five bucks per year to access premium features.

I'm actually a Flickr pro member, so every time you use Flickr for free say a little thanks to me for paying my dues and subsidising the storage of your holiday snaps. I don't hold any other premium accounts, but I do use a fair few freemium services. I'm not sure why, but I thought I'd add them all up. This proves nothing about anything, except for the fact that the amount I could spend without breaking a sweat is pretty big. I was especially surprised as I'm a fairly paired down and focussed user of things compared to many people I know (I don't sign up for everything that's passing my way).

Here's the break down:

I haven't needed to make a Gantt chart for a long time, but I've been on a bloody training course on Microsoft Project, and even bought an epic book on that package. Today for the first time in years, I needed to make a Gantt chart. Quickly.

I no longer have MS Project, and I don't have a PC to put it on. I figured in the years since I last touched it t some sort of web app would have appeared which could do the job just as well. Sure enough a tweet later, @ganttchart sent me a link to Tom's Planner. It's a smooth interface, and for a basic project timeline you've got everything you need. I don't think it can manage some of the advanced resource management stuff that Project can do (in fact, I think it's been deliberately designed to avoid that sort of thing).

The service is in public Beta, giving out free accounts. There's going to be some sort of pay model down the line, but the website suggests that a freemium model will be included allowing one project at a time, gratis. There's also a commitment to give Beta members a year's free service:

Once Tom's Planner is released out of beta, it is our intention to extend all actively used beta accounts for a minimum of one additional year without any obligations. This will enable all Tom's Planner beta users to continue to work with and use Tom's Planner for free for at least one more year.