Recently, I’ve been seeing a huge number of videos titled things like “Build Your Online Store for 0 Dollars.” Many of them have millions of views, and the comments are filled with people saying “thank you” and “this is so useful.”

But honestly, I find it unbelievable — it’s already 2025, yet so many people still believe in the fairytale of “free tools” and “getting rich with zero cost.”  If becoming wealthy were truly that easy, our parents and grandparents would already be billionaires. We’d be inheriting vast fortunes, living in sprawling mansions, getting chauffeured around in luxury cars, and flying first class everywhere.

Looking back over the past 30 years, how many companies have claimed their products were free or even “free forever”? And how many of them actually provided lasting value to users?
Google Search is free, but we pay for it by watching ads.
The news is free, but in recent years we’ve all suffered from misinformation and bias.

Take the online store builder industry as an example. Almost every SaaS-based e-commerce platform that advertises itself as “free” offers extremely limited features in its free tier. And realistically—do you think you can get stable server performance on a free plan? For any platform, premium resources will always be allocated to paying users first.

This means:

• Free users struggle to get enough traffic

• They rarely enjoy good page loading speed

• They are even less likely to compete with paying users who have better tools and resources

As for self-hosted e-commerce systems, the base software may be free, but to build a complete, functional, and conversion-ready online store, you still need to purchase plugins, themes, and additional services. Otherwise, the developers cannot earn revenue, cannot continue updating the software, and cannot offer you long-term support.

In the end, reasonable pricing and a sustainable business model are far more valuable than the illusion of “free.” A free solution may save you a bit of money, but if your store doesn’t grow, your products don’t sell, and you fail to make a profit — what’s the point of “free” in the first place?