--- title: "Only 25 of 449 business tools we track start free; Dropbox's payers are 2.6%" summary: "TechBag's count of free tiers across 449 products in its category guides, Dropbox's Q2 2026 paying-user figures, and where free plans stop, as of September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/exploring-freemium-model-saas-pricing-strategies format: Analysis desk: "Buying software in India" published: 2025-08-19 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["freemium","free tier","SaaS pricing","Dropbox","HubSpot","Hootsuite","Action1","Postman","GST","DPDP"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/exploring-freemium-model-saas-pricing-strategies.png --- # Only 25 of 449 business tools we track start free; Dropbox's payers are 2.6% *TechBag's count of free tiers across 449 products in its category guides, Dropbox's Q2 2026 paying-user figures, and where free plans stop, as of September 2026.* Analysis · Buying software in India · By TechBag · Published 2025-08-19 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/exploring-freemium-model-saas-pricing-strategies The short version - Freemium is rarer in business software than its reputation suggests. Of 449 products in TechBag’s category guides, 25 offer a free tier; in the security, identity, data, network and backup guides it is 10 rows of 356. - The funnel is narrow by design. Dropbox, the 2023 post’s first example, had 18.19 million paying users in mid-2026 against more than 700 million registered: at most 2.6% pay.[2] - For a buyer, the free tier is a trial with no end date and no contract. Read where it stops (seats, volume, history, or the vendor withdrawing it, as Hootsuite did in 2023) before the business depends on it.[5] In April 2023 this blog explained the freemium model from the seller’s side: attract a large free base, convert some of it, mind the costs. It named Dropbox, HubSpot and Hootsuite as examples. The question an Indian business actually brings to a free plan is the buyer’s version: can we run on this, and what happens when we cannot? This piece answers it with a count of where free tiers exist in the software TechBag tracks, one public company’s conversion arithmetic, and the four places free plans stop. ## Free tiers live in IT operations and developer tools, not in security TechBag’s category guides carry a row for every product they compare, each with a published price, a pricing unit or “quote”. We read every row as the guides stood on 30 September 2026 and marked those that name a free tier, a free edition or a price starting at zero. TechBag countTechBag count 493 product rows across the category guides, 449 distinct products. 28 rows (25 products) name a free tier. 225 rows (46%) are quote-only. Split by family, the seven IT-operations and developer guides have free tiers on 18 of 137 rows (13%); the twenty security, identity, data, network and backup guides on 10 of 356 (2.8%).[1] **Figure: A quarter of service desks and a fifth of developer tools start free; fourteen guides have no free tier at all** *Share of product rows naming a free tier or free edition, by TechBag category guide, as of 30 September 2026, %* ITSM & service desk 5 of 18 27.8% Developer tools 6 of 28 21.4% Secure web & DNS 2 of 11, both Cloudflare 18.2% RMM & patch 3 of 20, all Action1 15% Remote access 2 of 19 10.5% SIEM & log management 2 of 32 6.3% Endpoint protection 2 of 36 5.6% Six guides with one each 6 of 110 5.5% Fourteen other guides none 0% | | Value (%) | | --- | --- | | ITSM & service desk | 27.8 | | Developer tools | 21.4 | | Secure web & DNS | 18.2 | | RMM & patch | 15 | | Remote access | 10.5 | | SIEM & log management | 6.3 | | Endpoint protection | 5.6 | | Six guides with one each | 5.5 | | Fourteen other guides | 0 | Source: TechBag count of its category guides at the 30 September 2026 commit · as of 30 September 2026 · a product listed in two guides is counted in each The security rows that do start free are mostly open source or open core: Wazuh, Elastic Security and Elastic Defend, Xcitium OpenEDR, HashiCorp Vault, and Cloudflare’s zero-trust plan. None of the identity, privileged-access, email-security, DLP, DSPM or managed detection products in the guides offers one.[1] The opposite of freemium is the more common model. Nearly half of all rows, 225 of 493, print no price at all and ask the buyer to request a quote. Between the two sits the large middle: a published per-seat or per-device price, sometimes with a time-limited trial, which lets a team test the product without the vendor committing to support free users for ever.[1] Our view Our view: freemium works where the person who tries the tool can also decide to keep it: a developer, a help-desk lead, an IT admin with fifty laptops. Security products are bought by a committee after a risk review, so a free tier buys the vendor little. When a security vendor gives the product away, it is usually selling the hosting, the support or the enterprise features around a free core. ## The funnel is narrow, and it is supposed to be Dropbox is the rare freemium company that publishes both ends of its funnel. Its second-quarter 2026 results reported 18.19 million paying users, against 18.13 million a year earlier, at an average of US$139.68 a year each; the same release describes more than 700 million registered users.[2] The free plan, Dropbox Basic, is 2 GB of storage on up to three devices.[3] **Figure: At most one Dropbox registered user in 38 pays; the other 97 squares are the shop window** *Dropbox paying users as a share of registered users, quarter to 30 June 2026, % (upper bound)* 2.6% Registered users who pay, at most 18.19m paying (18.13m a year earlier) of 700m+ registered; US$139.68 a year each Source: Dropbox, second-quarter 2026 results (Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1) · as of 6 August 2026 · paying share is TechBag arithmetic: 18.19 million ÷ 700 million; one square is 1% The 2023 post listed “revenue constraints” as a drawback of freemium. Dropbox shows what that means in practice: a free base of hundreds of millions, a paying base that grew by about 60,000 in a year, and total revenue up 0.9% to US$631.5 million for the quarter. The free base is no longer the growth engine; it is the shop window.[2] HubSpot, the second 2023 example, runs a different kind of funnel. Its free CRM is not a cut-down product to be outgrown on storage; it is the database the paid hubs are sold on top of. Two users and 1,000 contacts is enough to put a small sales team’s pipeline in it.[4] Once the pipeline lives there, the paid tiers for marketing, sales and service are upgrades to a system the team already depends on, which is a stronger position for the vendor than any storage cap. The cost of leaving grows with every record, and that is the part of a free CRM a buyer should price. Our view Our view: for the buyer, a 2.6% ceiling is reassuring rather than worrying. It means the free plan is a marketing cost the vendor has already priced in, and is unlikely to vanish on a whim. The risk sits with smaller vendors whose free base costs more than their payers bring in. That is the condition under which free plans get withdrawn. ## Where the free tier stops Every free tier ends somewhere, and the line is the vendor’s real price list. In the rows we counted, the limits fall into four kinds. Knowing which kind you are on tells you when the invoice arrives. **Figure: Free plans stop at a seat, a volume, a storage line, or the vendor's decision** *Free-tier limits printed by vendors in TechBag's guides and on their own pages, as of September 2026* 1. 01SeatsPostman’s API client is free for one user, then US$19 a user on Team. HubSpot’s free CRM allows two users and 1,000 contacts. 2. 02VolumeAction1 is free to 200 endpoints; HCP Terraform to 500 managed resources; SonarQube Cloud to 50,000 lines and five members. 3. 03Storage and historyDropbox Basic stops at 2 GB and three devices. Sonatype’s free Nexus pauses new components past its 40,000 cap. 4. 04WithdrawalHootsuite ended its free plan on 31 March 2023, a month before our post named it as a freemium example. Source: TechBag developer tools, RMM & patch and remote access guides; Dropbox, HubSpot; Canadian Press · as of 30 September 2026 Seat limits are the friendliest: you know the day you hire the next person. Volume limits arrive with growth and are easy to miss, because nobody watches the endpoint or resource count until the tool stops. Postman, Terraform, SonarQube and Sonatype’s figures come from TechBag’s developer tools guide[6]; Action1’s from the RMM and patch guide[7]; and the ManageEngine Remote Access Plus free edition, for ten computers, from the remote access guide.[8] HubSpot’s free CRM terms are on its own pricing page.[4] Three habits keep a free tier from becoming a surprise. First, write down the limit that will bind first, whether seats, endpoints, contacts or storage, and the month you expect to reach it. Second, find out what happens at the limit: some tools stop, some pause new data, some keep working and bill you. Third, export something once, early, so you know the way out works before you need it. None of this costs money; all of it is easier while the account is small. ## The three 2023 examples, re-checked The original post named three companies that ran freemium well. Read against their own pages in 2026, two still do, and the third had already stopped. **Figure: One of the three freemium examples we cited in 2023 had already ended its free plan** *Free plans of Dropbox, HubSpot and Hootsuite, as described in April 2023 and as they stood in September 2026* What the 2023 post said - Dropbox: a free version with limited storage - HubSpot: free marketing and sales software with limited features - Hootsuite: a free version of its social media tool What holds in September 2026 - Dropbox Basic: 2 GB on up to three devices; at most 2.6% of registered users pay - HubSpot: free CRM for two users and 1,000 contacts; paid tiers per seat - Hootsuite: free plan ended 31 March 2023; paid plans only Source: Dropbox and HubSpot pricing pages; Canadian Press on Hootsuite · as of 30 September 2026 Hootsuite’s decision, reported in February 2023, is the useful one. The company said it removed the free plan so its plan structure would match the product’s growth, and free users had to pay or leave.[5] A team that learned of it from those February reports had about five weeks to move a social media workflow or start paying. That is the buyer’s version of the freemium risk the 2023 post did not discuss. If you are buying this in India **What “free” does not include.** A free plan comes with the vendor’s standard terms and no negotiated data processing agreement. If the tool holds customer or employee data, you are still the data fiduciary under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; the DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, with the security and breach-notice duties in force from 13 May 2027.[11] CERT-In’s Directions of 28 April 2022 ask for ICT logs to be kept for 180 days; check whether a free tier’s audit log goes back that far before it becomes part of a system you would have to investigate.[10] **When you start paying.** The upgrade button usually bills a card in US dollars. A GST-registered business then pays 18% IGST under reverse charge and claims it as input tax credit; buying the same plan through an Indian reseller gives an INR invoice with 18% GST instead.[9] Dropbox’s average payer spends US$139.68 a year[2]; at a 50-person company the seat tier, not the free tier, is the number to budget, and TechBag quotes it in rupees. How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 The free-tier count reads every product row (each row carrying a price field) in TechBag’s category guides at the last commit on 30 September 2026. A row counts as free when its price names “Free”, starts at zero, carries a free-edition flag, or its pricing unit names a free tier, edition or allowance; quote-only rows say “Quote” with no free tier. Rows were counted per guide, so a product in two guides counts twice; distinct products were de-duplicated by page link. Trials with an end date were not counted as free tiers. Dropbox’s paying share divides paying users by the 700 million registered users Dropbox cites, so it is an upper bound. The 2023 post’s claims about advertising revenue in free versions were dropped as unsupported. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [TechBag count, product rows in the /browse category guides (493 rows, 449 products, 28 rows with a free tier)](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/devops/developer-tools) — guides as of 30 September 2026 2. [Dropbox, Second Quarter 2026 Results (18.19m paying users; ARPU US$139.68; more than 700m registered users)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001467623/000146762326000045/q22026er-exhibit991q2xq4.htm) — 6 August 2026 3. [Dropbox, Dropbox Basic (2 GB, up to three devices)](https://www.dropbox.com/basic) — undated page 4. [HubSpot, CRM pricing (free for up to two users; 1,000 contacts)](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/crm) — undated page 5. [The Canadian Press via Energeticcity, Hootsuite to ditch free plan, begin charging users](https://energeticcity.ca/2023/02/24/hootsuite-to-ditch-free-plan-begin-charging-users-for-social-media-tool/) — 24 February 2023 6. [TechBag, Developer tools guide (Postman, HCP Terraform, SonarQube Cloud, Sonatype free tiers)](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/devops/developer-tools) — reviewed 24 August 2026 7. [TechBag, RMM & patch guide (Action1 free to 200 endpoints)](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/rmm-patch) — as of 30 September 2026 8. [TechBag, Remote access guide (ManageEngine Remote Access Plus free edition for ten computers)](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/remote-access) — as of 30 September 2026 9. [India Briefing, OIDAR services: GST and reverse charge](https://india-briefing.com/news/tax-digital-services-oidar-in-india-gst-applicability-and-compliance-22465.html) — 29 September 2023 10. [CERT-In, Directions under section 70B(6) of the IT Act (180-day log retention; six-hour reporting)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/Directions70B.jsp) — 28 April 2022 11. [MeitY, Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the DPDP Rules, 2025 (notified 13 November 2025; substantive duties from 13 May 2027)](https://www.meity.gov.in/data-protection-framework) — 13 November 2025 Related on TechBag: the [developer tools guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/devops/developer-tools) has the strongest free tiers we track; the [RMM & patch guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/rmm-patch) shows where an endpoint allowance ends. **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [Developer tools guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/devops/developer-tools) — the strongest free tiers we track, and where each one stops - [RMM & patch guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/rmm-patch) — Action1's 200-endpoint allowance against the paid field - [Dropbox vendor hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/dropbox) — the products behind the paying-user count, and the India buying route