How I Got $8,367 of Free Perks by Being "First"
11 Jul 2023 · 9 min
In this solo podcast episode, David V. Kimball explains how being an early adopter of SaaS platforms can generate substantial, often overlooked, financial benefits through grandfathered‑in features. He walks listeners through a detailed timeline (2006‑2023) of when major services such as G Suite, Dropbox, Spotify, and many others added generous free features and later stripped them from new users, while allowing legacy users to retain the perks. Kimball quantifies the cumulative value of his retained benefits at $8,367, itemizing each platform’s estimated monthly savings. He then shares practical cost‑saving tactics—signing up for free trials and canceling before they convert, using virtual cards with low spending limits via Privacy.com, and staying vigilant about upcoming feature changes. The episode concludes with a plug for his CheapMarketing.io course, which teaches creators how to exploit free tools and deals to cut costs and boost online presence.
Chapters
How I got $8,367 of free perks by being first. Sometimes it pays to be an early adopter. Grandfathered-in perks are often an underutilized benefit of early adoption in the software as a service sphere. As startups or tech platforms try to gain adoption and enter the mainstream, they'll sometimes give users generous perks in service of an aggressive user adoption strategy. Sometimes early adopters get features so generous it's not a sustainable business model. Interestingly though, rather than completely taking those features away from existing users, they usually just remove them as features for new users going forward. If something seems too good to be true, grab it while you can, and there's a chance you can hold on to it, at least for a while. Platform Feature Timeline. Below is a list of when various features were added or removed, usually beginning with a platform's launch and removed later in its life as it matures. 2006: G Suite from Google launched with an unlimited free option. 2007: Todoist allowed unlimited projects for free users. Microsoft launches SkyDrive with 25GB of free storage. 2008. GitHub Pages launched. Free websites must use a public repository. Dropbox launches. Lets you connect with unlimited devices and gave you an additional 250MB of storage for each new user you invited. Hootsuite launches with a free plan. Spotify launches in Europe with unlimited ad-supported music listening. 2009 Facebook rolls out unique usernames for profiles. YouTube allows custom vanity URLs like /yourname based on username. 2010 Weebly allows free users to use custom domain names and multiple websites. Tumblr allows free users to use custom domain names, automatic /forward redirects, and multiple blogs. IFTTT launched entirely free with unlimited applets. 2011. Spotify removed unlimited ad-supported listening on the desktop version, instead only allowing 10 hours per month for free users. Legacy users were not affected. 2012. Weebly turns off custom domains for its free users, only allows 1 site per user. Mailchimp allows 2 audiences and custom email templates to free users with 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month. G Suite turned off the free option, and existing free users were grandfathered into their accounts. Microsoft's SkyDrive, now OneDrive, changed the free storage space to just 7 GB, but allowed grandfathered-in users to keep their original storage. 2013: Spotify removed the 10-hour listening limit for free users. Patreon launches with a flat 5% fee for all creators. 2014: Netlify launches with a free plan, Allowing websites to be deployed from private GitHub repos. OneDrive changed the free storage limit to 15 GB, added to legacy grandfathered-in users who now have a total of 40 GB. 2015. Bitly allows free users to use custom domain names as long as they're short enough. YouTube no longer allows custom usernames for channels without a discriminator, changes to youtube.com/c/channel_name as an example. Legacy vanity URLs of /name and /user still work though. Lynda.com partnered with public libraries and allowed free access with a public library card. 2016: OneDrive Free users had a reduced storage limit of 5 GB, which did not affect grandfathered-in users that opted to keep their storage. 2017: Discord allows "once a partner, always a partner" type benefits. Free Nitro, vanity URL, etc. 2019: Dropbox limits free users to only 3 devices. Grandfathered in existing devices though, were still connected. Tumblr kills the custom automatic /forward redirects feature for its site pages. Legacy users keep their existing redirects but can't make new ones. Patreon changes its options to Lite, Pro, and Premium. Legacy accounts keep what's called their "Founder's Plan." Kept what they had without additional costs. 2020. Discord changes partner requirements to be conditional. Allows legacy partners to keep vanity URL for life for their server. IFTTT got a paid plan, with free users getting grandfathered into their number of applets, but limited for new ones. 2022. YouTube launches new username handles with an symbol for every channel. Legacy vanity URLs with /name and /user and /c still work. Mailchimp changes free plan to only allow one audience and 1,000 cents per month. Grandfathered-in users keep their original plan. Todoist significantly cut the number of projects you could have for a free account to just 5 for a user. Legacy users were grandfathered into whatever number they had previously. 2023. Tumblr turns off free custom domains for its users, allows legacy users to keep the custom domains they already have. Weebly forces legacy custom domain users to start paying. Hootsuite no longer has a free plan. Legacy free users get to keep their account. Discord username rollout prioritizes partnered, verified, Nitro subscribed, and early Discord accounts first. G Suite, now Google Workspace, free users were completely kicked off the platform. Patreon discontinues its Lite plan, so the lowest cut went from 5% to 8%. So, how much value have I gotten for free based on the lowest possible monthly pricing? G Suite Google Workspace: $1,320, grandfathered in. Todoist: $50, grandfathered in. OneDrive: $840, grandfathered in. Mailchimp: $150, grandfathered in. Weebly, $980, grandfathered in. Discord, $250, as a result of partnership and being an early adopter. Hootsuite, $700, grandfathered in. Dropbox, $375, grandfathered in. IFTTT, $48, grandfathered in. GitHub: $512, thanks to Netlify. Spotify: $240, grandfathered in. Lynda.com, now known as LinkedIn Learning: $2,880, via the public library system. Patreon: $22, grandfathered in. Based on these estimates, that's $8,367 in total value saved. The takeaway: If you have an opportunity to become a user of a SaaS product with a free option early, you should. You don't know what's about to hit the mainstream or what currently free features you have now will be deprecated in the future. Other ways to save: Cancel your free trials. Everything listed above doesn't even take into account starting and canceling free trials which I've done a lot as well. Audible, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Adobe, LinkedIn Premium, Asana, Xbox Live, you name it. Start the habit now. Don't let the allure of free trials trick you into unintentionally paying for premium services. Instead, start and then cancel or set a reminder in your calendar to cancel just before it ends. Or even better, Just use Privacy.com and create a virtual card with a lifetime spending limit of $2, and then you'll never accidentally get locked into a monthly subscription ever again. If you want to learn about more tips like this, check out my course for content creators, CheapMarketing.io. I dig into how you can leverage deals and free tools to maximize your cost savings and optimize your online presence.