Many of these projects have no revenue and only exist because a free plan existed. Paying is a non starter so asking where that next free alternative is is a logical intermediary step before shutting it down and moving on to something else.
Why is paying a non starter? There’s a lot of hobbies in the world that require money. I can’t just barge into a climbing gym and say “I’m sorry this hobby will give me no revenue so I refuse to pay”
No one barged into Heroku. The company offered a free service because they considered it a worthwhile marketing strategy. It has to be free because no one, including the authors, are interested in paying for the projects that are looking for another free option.
I created an Ember.js and Ruby on Rails clone of an old video game called Heroes of Might and Magic because it was fun to show my old buddies what I could do and play through some mock battles. I have no interest in paying for a server to host this so it’s just going to disappear from the internet. I have no interest in doing the work to port it over to even another free service. It never would have existed had Heroku not been an option when I had the idea. Obviously I could pay for it, it’s just not worth paying for. It’s similar to piracy, I consumed a lot of content back in the day simply because it was free. I never would have paid money for those music or to watch those movies.
