[necovek]

This seems to imply paying for a service guarantees it will stay up.

We've got tons of evidence to show that's not the case. It might increase the likelihood of it staying up due to paying customers, but it might also not. I don't think we have data to conclude either way (more paid/ad-supported services spring up than completely free "services" — to loosely contrast that with just regular "web sites" — but more die an unglorious death too).

If you want assurance you'd be able to access your data or desired functionality, the only approach is to use a free-software based service that allows you to export your data (and import it into another instance). Depending on your desires, you could either pay someone to host it for you and be ready to host it yourself when they decide to kill it, or host it yourself from the get go.

People make this risk assesment subconsciously all the time. Eg. whether to use gmail.com for their email account or any small random provider ("hey, gmail is more likely to stick around")? Whether to host on YouTube or... You get the point.

[tlavoie]

All good points of course, and the more honest service providers will tell you the same. In Pinboard's case, the author has regularly joked about being hit by a bus, and how people need to back up their links. He's also got an API in place to enable exactly that.

You could use the same API as a model to reinvent your own personal service, if you so choose. I use it (for now) to just back up everything important, and I'll figure out what to do with the data later if I ever need to.

[everybodyknows]

> This seems to imply paying for a service guarantees it will stay up.

Apposite point seeing that the Pinboard Blog referenced above was last posted to in 2017! Moreover, the home page appears as an unreadable jumble on Firefox mobile.