Trakys stays free — and here is how it pays for itself

Trakys' core stays free. Here is the monetization model we chose — a Team plan, one-time support and reviewed sponsorships — and why we said no to ads, data and paywalls.

This week Trakys got something it never had before: a way to pay for it. Before anyone worries — nothing you use became paid. Every module, every feature you had yesterday is free today and stays free. What changed is that the project now has an honest answer to a question every free product eventually faces: who pays for the servers?

Why monetize at all

Trakys is self-funded and built by one person who uses it daily. That works — until it doesn't. Hosting, storage, email delivery and databases cost real money every month, and a service with no income model has exactly two futures: it shuts down, or it quietly starts selling its users. Both are worse than just being straight about money from the start.

So the goal was never "maximize revenue". It was: cover the bills, keep the product alive for years, and do it in a way we would be comfortable explaining on this page — which is what this post is.

The options we said no to

Ads inside the product. A workspace you live in all day is the worst possible place for banners fighting for your attention. No.

Selling or renting your data. Never. Not aggregated, not "anonymized", not to "partners". Your tasks, money and sleep are yours.

Moving existing features behind a paywall. The fastest way to make people regret trusting a free tool. Everything that was free stays free — that is a rule, not a mood.

Donations only. Honest, but not stable enough on its own to promise the service will be here in five years.

What we chose instead

Four optional sources, none of which touches the free experience:

A Team plan — $20/month. Free team workspaces hold up to 10 members and 5 GB of file storage, which covers almost everyone. A larger team lifts the member cap and gets 50 GB. Teams that were already bigger than 10 keep every member — only further growth asks for the plan. There is also a storage add-on ($5/month, +100 GB) if files are the only thing you're short on.

Supporters. A one-time contribution of any amount, from the profile menu. It deliberately buys nothing: no badge in the app, no priority, no influence on the roadmap. If you want, your name and a short message appear on the public Supporters page — in strictly chronological order, because the amount should never rank people.

Sponsorships. Companies can apply to sponsor Trakys. Every placement is reviewed by hand, and the policy is published in full: sponsors never receive user data, profiles or targeting of any kind — only aggregate numbers like impressions. If that makes sponsorship less attractive to some buyers, good; those are the ones the policy exists to filter out.

That's it. No ads, no data, no shrinking free tier.

The rules, in writing

Everything free today stays free.
No advertising inside the product.
User data is never sold, shared or used for targeting — by us or by sponsors.
Supporter money buys nothing, and amounts never affect anything.
If any of this ever changes, it will be announced before it happens, not after.

And one more thing

Development of the native mobile app for iOS and Android has officially started, planned for September — a real app with offline notes, not a wrapped website. Progress will be posted here.

If Trakys saves you time and you want it to keep existing, the Supporters page is the way to say so. And if you don't pay a cent — that is completely fine. That was the whole point.