Why are these tools free?(And Why I Plan to Keep It That Way)

A few years ago, around 11pm, I needed to do one stupid thing. Convert a file. I don’t even remember what kind, a document probably. What I remember is the paywall.

I found a converter, clicked the button, and got a pricing page. Nine dollars a month. Fifteen a month. Forty-nine for “teams.” For one file. The “free” option was worse: a watermark across the middle, three files a day, and a signup form that promised my document would be safely stored on servers I’d never heard of.

Nine dollars isn’t a lot of money. That was never really the point. The point was that this is where every small task ends up now, in a subscription with a countdown timer. Free, until you actually need it. Then suddenly it’s not free.Even something as simple as converting JPG images to WEBP to reduce file size is something I now have to pay for, which I find hard to accept. But now I no longer need to worry about it.Just like this, it’s so easy to handle!

I’m a developer, or close enough. I’d spent years building small tools for myself, little pages nobody else ever saw. And sitting there that night, it clicked: I could just build this. The thing I needed right now, I could make it myself, put it online, and leave it there.

So I did. One tool at a time. First a converter that actually worked without an account. Then another, and another. I kept adding the things I kept needing: quick edits to an HTML file, tidying up a PDF, touching up some images, poking at some data without installing anything.

Nothing fancy. No login, no dashboards, no analytics telling me which of my own users I should monetize. Just a page that does a thing, and then lets you leave.

I made a few rules for myself early on, and I’ve mostly kept them. No accounts, no watermarks, no nag screens asking you to upgrade mid-task. And your files never get uploaded to my server at all; everything is processed right in your browser. I know people worry about that, especially in Europe where data rules are taken seriously, and honestly they should worry. That’s healthy.

I should be straight with you: this costs money. The server, the bandwidth, the hours I sink into it. Some months I look at the bill and ask myself what I’m doing. More than once I’ve thought about putting a paywall on the heavy stuff. But I always end up deciding the same thing: I’m not going down the subscription route, because it would go against the reason I started this in the first place. Maybe I’ll put up some ads someday, to see if that can cover the server and domain costs. I’d rather run this thing lean than turn it into another paywall that some other poor guy has to run into at 11pm.

Here’s a thing I didn’t expect: most of the people using this site are in the US and Europe. People on the other side of the world, at their own midnight, needing a file fixed. And it works, and nobody asks them for anything. I like being the quiet option. There’s enough software out there that yells at you.

I didn’t start this to build a company. I started it because I was annoyed, and because I could, and it turns out that’s a perfectly good reason. For a while the only visitor was me, refreshing the page to make sure it didn’t crash. Some of these tools are still uglier than I’d like, and a couple of them probably have bugs I haven’t found yet. I’m okay with that. I’d rather ship a slightly rough tool that works than polish a signup flow to perfection.

The best compliment I get isn’t “great design.” It’s “that just worked, I was done in two minutes.” That’s the whole point. That’s always been the whole point.

So if you landed here from a search engine at 1am with a file you need fixed, welcome. I know exactly how you got here. This site is free because I remember what it’s like to be on the other side of a paywall, and I don’t want to be the one building it. If something’s broken, tell me. I actually read those messages.

Now go convert your file!