[alexsolo]

The main reason we haven't offered a perpetually free account is because we're a bit different than other SaaS companies: hosting isn't our only cost, we also have to pay for each phone and SMS alert we send.

The other reason is that we see PagerDuty as solving a real "hair on fire" problem, and we think if you're one of the businesses that needs this, it's reasonable to pay a certain amount for the service. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

[arnorhs]

Ok, that's understandable. My default thinking would be: offer e-mail only notifications for free users, but you made a good point.

Your target audience/market is obviously not the casual user/blogger type so it makes perfect sense.

[lsc]

Might I suggest a free account that is limited to email alerts? It probably wouldn't cost you much, and it wouldn't cut into your 'business class' business... but it'd be a nice way for small timers to get a taste of your service monitoring their personal stuff (and then maybe recommend it to the boss)

[btilly]

I'd guess that anyone who needs to receive text messages already knows about the email to sms gateways that their phone carriers provide.

[koenigdavidmj]

But you don't really need this service for that. Nagios sends directly to those (just like any other email address).

Of course, the two-way SMS that lets you wake up the other guys if needed would break under this.

[lsc]

yeah, and many people disable those due to spam problems.