Noticed on their website, that you cannot hardly discover the link to the "Free" version of the software anymore.
For the time being, if you hit their website, and type "Free" in the search box at the top you can still find this link, which has the copy of the software still available for download;
Best free backup software. Hard drive backup and recovery, image and clone freeware - EaseUS Todo Backup Free
They've stopped offering 'support' for the free version.
So far as I know they don't intend to start charging for the 'home version' though.
...and as for making the free version hard to find.
Well they are in business to make money you know.
I can understand not offering support for the free product. This can be a very common practice with free software.
Being in business to make money..I get that. But they didn't used to hide this software and make it so hard to find. I've pretty much gotten to the point where I don't recommend this software to others as they aren't able to find it unless I give them a very explicit link. There are other free alternatives which do a suitable job.
Well I might be a bit harder on them about it in some circumstances, but this isn't a huge multinational or even something large enough to be considered corporate. It's a relatively small company that is probably trying to stay alive in the current market conditions.
I think this is more a move of desperation than one of morally ambiguous misdirection.
Well they are going the right way to go bust.
I can't say it's "Morally ambiguous" -- we could question the whole ethics of people wanting to "Make Money" which is not a simple topic by any manner at all.
They have their product lines and are free to distribute them in any way they so choose -- but having released a Free version -- I do agree with the premise that they should not HIDE the link any more -- they can easily say that as from dd/mm/yyyy we will no longer be supporting our Free product and it won't be shown on our home page but will still be available from the archive.
Incidentally several companies seem to be doing this now.
For instance Alcohol 52% Free edition needs hunting down ( this is a Virtual DVD / CD mounter). W8 users note that this facility is now built in to the OS from Explorer -- right mouse click mounts an ISO image.
Cheers
jimbo
Companies are free to do things however they see fit. We as consumers can choose whether to consider supporting them or not. Personally, I use Acronis, but for those who don't want a paid for solution, EaseUs is often what I recommend as it has more features than Macrium.
I posted the quote below about a month and a half ago when I was going too update Easus Todo Free and I also noticed then like pparks1 that the free version was hard to find but just assumed that it was my poor searching skills and also I discovered that the newer versions of Easus Todo Free no longer had the ability to create a WinPE disk.
They've also removed differential backups from the latest free version. I always preferred this over incremental backups. You have to pay for the workstation version now to get differential backups.
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