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by diafygi 3229 days ago
Well...yeah. Trello is free, and the expectation is that if you're not paying, you're the product.
3 comments

> the expectation is that if you're not paying, you're the product.

What are you talking about? In what way are Trello users 'the product'? Are you just repeating a catch phrase that people say about other companies or do you actually know this to be the case?

I don't use Trello myself, but unless something has changed there aren't ads being shown to users (the reasons for the 'you're the product' saying for services like Google or Facebook), I'm not sure what data they could sell that would be worthwhile for a to-do app. What else would make the users 'the product'?

AFAIK they make all their money from their premium services, and since being bought by Atlassian I doubt revenue is at the top of their priority list anyway. Atlassian is full of premium services and Trello seems like a way to introduce all of those users to Atlassian's suite.

It also allows them to sell your data for mining purposes. In the next year we are going to see many AI business buy access to many unique large datasets.
"It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized." https://trello.com/privacy
Trello is freemium https://trello.com/pricing, they make money from users upgrading
Trello has a free tier. They don't do data collection as far as I know.

The free tier is a cheap loss leader for the actual product which are the enterprise and team versions which are not free.