Just like any product or service, the cost of online tools can vary widely. Why are some apps subscriptions, others one-time payments, and many others completely free?

Well, it depends what kind of tool or service we're talking about.

Some tools are a one-time payment because they aren't offering an ongoing service, so they don't have ongoing costs to keep you around. However, these companies usually count on you bringing in more money down the road. You buy the tool once, but might purchase add-ons later on.

Others are subscription-based because they're providing an ongoing service to you. For example, say you launch a website. The company hosting your website pays ongoing costs keep it online for you, so they charge you ongoing costs in return.

Many, many other apps are "free" because they're getting something else from you that's worth much more than your money.

The unfortunate truth: no app is free

You pay for these services – your social media apps, your games, your work tools, your browser platform, your fitness apps, your education, shopping, finance, podcast, video apps – in exchange for your personal information. You may pay with:

• Your email address, phone number, name and age and location
• Your content – creative work, images or text you create or upload to their platform
• Your financial information – your credit score, your debts, salary assets and purchase history
• Your personal files – your text messages, audio messages, voice recordings, emails, photos and videos, contacts
• Your eye and scrolling movements
• Your lifestyle & preferences – where you go frequently, where you work, the places you like to eat, your gym, your hobbies, your religious beliefs, political opinions, sleeping patterns, the websites you visit.
• Your dreams & desires – The vacation you want to take and where you want to go, whether you want to buy or rent a home, your relationship status and goals, whether you have children or want them
• Your fears & anxieties – Your fear of hair loss, weight gain, aging, financial problems, health issues

Your money is not your most valuable commodity for these apps. You and your data are.

Why do these apps value my information so much?

Most sites and tools are willing to risk so much on obtaining your information because there are many companies (and more every day) who are willing to pay a lot of money for it.

Advertisers want your information so they can track your habits and sell you perfectly timed ads that are suited to your current interests and lifestyle.

Big Artificial Intelligence companies want your information so they can train their AI models on it.

Social media apps like Facebook and Instagram want your information so they can optimize their algorithms and keep you coming back to spend more time and money there. Of course, they also make money selling your information to other third-party companies.

Every time we sign up for a new app or service, we blindly check boxes that agree to Terms & Services we barely understand – if we even make time to read them.

Some of us are OK with those terms. We might not mind sharing our listening information with a music app or YouTube, because of how valuable those songs or videos are to our every day. Or we're fine sharing our buying habits with Amazon, because it translates into more useful product recommendations.

We all have lines we're willing to cross to get something that's more valuable to us in the moment.

Unfortunately, even if we accept this trade on the surface, we often don't fully understand its repercussions. Today, the greatest harm is the cost our psyche pays.

We alter our behavior, our very mode of being, to please algorithms and online audiences that only take from us.

We give countless hours of time to social media feeds, pleasing ad buyers and other companies who get to learn every intimate detail about us to get more of our money.

We allow those who are not looking out for our best interest – who don't even care or know who we are – to subtly paint the lines that shape our world.

Where your money goes when you pay for a mymind membership

When you pay for mymind, your money goes straight toward the service you're paying for. We pay for the services that power your mind (such as hosting your content and indexing it with artificial intelligence so you can find it later), and in turn charge you a fee to keep those services running.

Otherwise, your subscription pays our team's salaries to continue working on mymind and making it better.

We could go the easier route and get outside funding, but that compromises our vision as an independent, small team. We'd no longer have control over making the app we dream about, and would answer to investors rather than our members. We've never been interested in that kind of work and enjoy building small tools and communities on our own. That's always been who we are.

We could sell mymind for free and opt to sell your data, like almost everyone else. But that goes against everything mymind is about. We're tired of using tools that take more from us than they give us, and we imagine at least a few other people out there are too.

Then why do you offer a free basic plan?

We offer a "guest" plan so you have the chance to experience mymind without pressure to pay for it. This plan is limited by storage rather than time, so you can use it at your own pace without anyone urging you to upgrade.

If you stay within that storage limit, it's free to use forever. We cover the bills for it in the hope that you find it valuable enough to become a paying member.

Beyond this limit, we have to charge for mymind to cover the costs we pay to host your content and keep it safe. We offer a range of paid monthly or annual plans to make mymind as accessible as possible to everyone.

The value and trade-off of any purchase is up to the buyer to determine. With mymind, it's our goal to make that trade simple, honest and fair. It's our hope that eventually, we're not the exception.