I've always thought that plans where custom-domain-or-not is a differentiator between free and paid are unethical. In this case, antithetical, too. (If a sufficient number of people abandon Twitter as part of the your-own-personal-homepage bandwagon, but they make the unfortunate mistake of letting their dart land on Postcard and signing up for a free plan, then you really haven't achieved the stated goal. You've recreated the way she was tethered by name to twitter.com/alice, except the difference is that you're the beneficiary, not Twitter—because she is now held captive at alice.postcard.page.)
In this case, it's just cost-based pricing. I'm using Render.com to host, and they charge $1.25/mo per custom domain. I can't afford to give away domains for free.
I'm open to some kind of free trial, too.
I don't offer domain name purchasing - so people own their domain, independent of Postcard.
The effect (see "antithetical") is the same, even if you're just passing on the costs that someone else is imposing on you, instead of capturing it all for yourself. That's one oversight in this response/rationalization. There's at least one other oversight (or possibly dishonesty) at play here.
That Postcard is merely passing on the cost of custom domains doesn't actually explain Postcard's pricing wrt this issue. If someone wants to use Postcard without having to use a postcard.page domain, they have to pay $8 a month, not $1.25 a month.
Previously: <https://hackertimes.com/item?id=21921176>