[VoodooJuJu]

>Because I believe that Ruby is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your goals in record time, and I want to help you make the most of it.

No, you're doing 5 hours free so you can get people into the start of your sales funnel, after which you'll attempt to sell them the paid service. Even if it may be a good worthwhile service, the dishonesty is a hard stop for me and many others.

Just say it's like a free trial and if people want even more out of it, there's a paid version with more hours/features. Just be honest man.

[dushan01]

It is a free trial if it is time-limited. Like 30 days, or 2 months. It is not a free trial if it continues forever. I never said it is 5 hours for the first three months or anything like that. If 5 hours is enough for you(and you would be surprised there are many sites that need nothing more than that, just to keep running), then it will be free forever

[Ocha]

I haven’t heard of a trial that renews every month…

[VoodooJuJu]

I've never heard of a free service that needs my credit card.

[dushan01]

This is to prevent abuse from bots, spammers, hackers, and other things malicious on the Internet. Having a valid credit card means you are probably a real human being

[tejohnso]

Doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me that this person is going to spend 5 hours a month pro bono on a few projects with no attachments or sales hustle. Do you have evidence that they are being disingenuous? You're accusing them of being dishonest.

[VoodooJuJu]

I don't have a peer-reviewed study to validate my wild hypothesis, I'm just a simple businessman, but if you go to the Pricing tier of the page, you'll see Free, and then several paid tiers of service. Then, when you go to subscribe to the Free 5 hours tier, you are asked for a credit card, email, among other things. The idea is to remove friction for easily sliding prospects down the funnel until they ultimately agree to pay you money. That's not pro bono, or public good no-strings-attached work, that's modern sales 101.

[dushan01]

Offering a free service without any kind of barrier would be ridiculous. It is not unknown that free services would ask you for a credit card. For example, website hosting, at a lot of places would ask you for a credit card, even on a free plan. This is to distinguish between bots, scammers and spammers and real human users.

[pantulis]

> Is there a reason you're so certain that they are being disingenuous?

Well, for starters because 5 hours/month amounts to almost nothing in any non trivial project.

I am not saying this is dishonesty or a scam, I think it is a legitimate way of marketing your services. But I would be the fool if I thought that there would be no followup.

[b_be_building]

He's not being disingenuous. He said that he would work 5 free hours. Its not his obligation to provide you a detailed outline of all his intentions.