Free Yourself

FreeMe.com is providing ISPs all the ASP stuff you've seen before — calendars, planners, contact management — but it's all free.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[July 13, 2000]

FreeMe.com is an ISP-to-ASP service with a twist. With proprietary technology, it places a GUI on servers in an ISP, and then connects that GUI to software running in its Exodus-hosted NOC.

In order to get its product out there, the company is offering a minimum level of service free. It is targeting small businesses, between 1 and 100 employees, and hopes to reach them through regional ISPs. The idea is simple: ISVs have applications, ISPs have customers, and FreeMe.com is the middleman who links them all together. ISPs get sales commissions, ISVs get royalties, and everyone is happy.

FreeMe has already enlisted 40 ISPs and has signed letters of intent with about 1000 ISPs. It claims access to 1.5 million subscribers through those ISPs, and hopes to grow to 9 million subscribers by this time next year.

The product

The software is accessed through the model-V controller, a GUI that resides on the ISP's servers. The GUI then sends and receives data from software that resides on FreeMe's NOC.

Rick Swanson, CEO of FreeMe, is enthusiastic about the NOC. Even though the company is just getting started, "we've got a colo at Exodus, with 100 Mbps of dedicated bandwidth, and we've got over 1.5 TB of storage already. We have two cages with about a hundred servers."

FreeMe currently has agreements with several ISVs: NowDocs, journyx, NetLedger, OfficeMart.com, CompuBank, ReallyEasy.com, TouchPointClick.com, SpellChecker.net, EmployEase, Google, and thinkfree.com, and more are signing up every day.

Mr. Swanson says that the software offered is slightly above the usual. For example, the web-based email allows users to send and receive multiple attachments. And the all-in-one interface will speed productivity. For example, at the top, on the menu bar, is a "SpeedMail" drop down menu that enables one-click email.

More services will be offered in the future. FreeMe expects to offer VoIP services. This will require a small piece of software that will reside on a user's computer.

Totally mobile future?

Rick Swanson said that because the software uses XML, because the APIs are visible, and because the GUI is separate from the software, the entire product is not tied to the PC. It should be easy to customize the product to run on mobile devices, for example, by turning the GUI into a text-based interface.

The plan
The company is using ISPs and ISVs as partners to reach small businesses of about 12 employees. A scalable, low-bandwidth solution that does not require expensive customization is perfect for this market.

Although the basic service is free, supported by advertising, FreeMe expects to charge for an ad-free version, and for storage for email and data. With 1.5TB already hooked up and "on the shelves" they have a lot to sell. At present, FreeMe expects to charge about $1 per MB per month, so the free service would come with 10MB, and an upgrade to 50MB would cost $49.95 per month.

Here are their projections:

So why do margins decline as subscriptions rise? Because some of the APIs are written in-house, but as the service grows, and more apps are brought in through ISVs, use of the basic in-house apps will decline and more revenue will go to the partners — the ISVs and ISPs.

—End