The short answer
Free tools usually come with no support commitment, no uptime guarantee and no contractual remedy. That is a reasonable trade for free, and it needs knowing before the tool is load-bearing rather than during an outage.
Ask four questions: who can help, how do we get our data out, what happens if it is down, and who else can administer it.
The four questions
- Support: is there any, and what is the realistic response?
- Export: can we get our data out in a usable format, without asking?
- Availability: is there any commitment, and is there a status page?
- Administration: does more than one person have access?
- Continuity: what happens if they change the terms or withdraw the tier?
Point four is the one that bites most often and has nothing to do with the vendor. A free tool set up under one person's account becomes inaccessible when they leave.
Where free tools genuinely fail you
| Situation | What free usually means |
|---|---|
| Outage during your busiest day | Community forum, no escalation |
| Data corrupted or deleted | No recovery commitment |
| Terms change | Notice, take it or leave it |
| You exceed a limit unexpectedly | Hard stop or automatic charge |
| The person who set it up leaves | Access problem, sometimes permanent |
The bottom row is entirely within your control and is the most common. Use organisational accounts, not personal ones, for anything that matters.
Keep your own copy
Export your data on a schedule rather than relying on being able to when you need to. That covers vendor problems, your own mistakes and the case where you decide to move.
An export you have never tested restoring is not a backup. Check that the exported format is actually usable somewhere else at least once.
Decide what is allowed to be free
Draw the line by consequence. Tools whose failure is inconvenient can be free. Tools whose failure costs money or blocks customers should be paid, with support.
Writing that policy down once saves the recurring argument, and it makes the exceptions deliberate rather than accidental.