In reply to Peter Shaw.

Hi there, I'm the tech lead and architect for Jetpack here. Just wanted to drop a note that all Jetpack's free features that you love are still free - Photon, dozens of shortcodes, tons of great Gutenberg blocks, contact forms, etc. We charge for some features that use a lot of server resources or require more hands-on support, or if they are intended for sites that are already running at large scale (e.g. Jetpack Search).

Furthermore, Jetpack is just one of around 50 plugins that Automattic maintains, the vast majority of which are free, e.g. WP Super Cache and others.

We feel that the WordPress ecosystem could use some more high-quality solutions, for example the brilliant Jetpack CRM, so that open source can compete with huge, closed vendors like Salesforce or Shopify or Wix. It's challenging to do this in a heterogeneous environment where sites may run arbitrary code in highly variable environments. We try (sincerely) to only charge what we need to in order to grow our business and provide a great user experience. We are still learning how to do that, and in a way we'll always be learning.