In reply to mark k..

@mark you are right, money is essential component for a business. Therefore, you must take in count the set up, development & maintenance hours as part of the equation.

Same as you don't develop your own gateway to save the 3% commission from Stripe.

We invested thousands of dev hours into the service and it comes with a LOT of value. Just one example, EU VAT support.

If developer will choose to move from Freemius in a certain stage - we won't stay on the way. In fact we'll be proud that we helped a developer to grow enough that they can build their own solution.

Most WordPress developers are not tech savvy like you, they don't want to handle with droplets or any sys-admin related headache ? Most devs just want to focus on building amazing plugin/theme features, and Freemius is here to handle the rest.