[sgromano]

According to Andy Singleton, CEO of Assembla.com, he said:

We did offer free private workspaces in 2006-2008. We didn't have a clear business model at the time. We started out with a goal to get to know programmers who worked on distributed teams. We supported this for three years, working nights and weekends. However, it turned out that the demand increased exponentially, and our costing and admin costs were out of control. So, we had to cancel some of the free services and ask our private users to pay a small subscription fee.

This time, we have been much more careful with the business model. Some of the things that are different are: * The package is different. In this free repo package, you do not get all tools. We have many opportunities to sell our premium tools to serious projects. And, we have more and better tools to sell. * We are using affiliate sponsors - essentially advertising. We are offering cloud hosting services to our users, and we make affiliate fees when we sell them. In the future, we will offer other cloud services that you can add to your "code in the cloud." * We have a profitable subscription business that pays for our admin and support team. We only have to make sure that we have a high quality service that attracts a few more of the customers that appreciate the complete service and pay for it.