Our pledge
When we say “free forever,” we mean it
Published June 3, 2026
You've seen the pattern. A service launches with a generous free tier, you sign up and build a routine around it, and a few years later the rules quietly change. The free tier shrinks. New limits appear. Old features move behind a paywall. Sometimes a single email — “we're making important updates to our pricing” — is the only warning.
We didn't want SLDocs to ever have that conversation with you. So we designed the Free tier from day one with that future-conversation in mind — and we're committing in writing to the terms below.
Why we can afford to keep this promise
The companies that broke their “free forever” promises mostly did so for one reason: per-user cost grew faster than they could absorb. We designed the Free tier specifically to prevent that math from ever applying to us.
- Storage cost per Free account is small and shrinking. Six encrypted documents typically total a few megabytes. Cloud storage prices have declined every year for the past decade and continue to. The per-user cost of running a Free account today is fractions of a cent per month; ten years from now it will be smaller still.
- No bandwidth-heavy features on Free.The Free tier doesn't include fax delivery, mass downloads, wellness-check messaging, or family-group invitations. It does what an estate document vault fundamentally needs to do — hold documents securely and make them available to one designated recipient when they're needed. Nothing more.
- No support-cost growth on Free.Free accounts don't generate the high-touch interactions that drive support cost — no recipient access requests, no family management, no add-on troubleshooting.
- The cap is the same forever; the cost to support it goes down.Because the limits don't grow, our per-user cost can only fall over time as infrastructure prices decline. There's no future in which we look at the Free tier and conclude we can't afford it.
What we commit to
1. Existing Free accounts are grandfathered.
If we ever change the Free tier — capacity, included features, anything — accounts created before that change keep their current terms. Your account stays on the Free tier you signed up under, in perpetuity, even if a future Free tier looks different.
2. No retroactive paywall on what you've already uploaded.
Documents uploaded under the Free tier are never moved behind a future paid feature. If you've uploaded six documents under today's terms, those six documents stay accessible under today's terms.
3. No silent downgrades.
If we ever change the Free tier even for new accounts, we will tell every existing Free user clearly: what changed, when, and that their account is unaffected because they're grandfathered. We will not bury the change in a release note.
What we don't promise
An honest list of what this pledge does not cover, so we're clear with each other.
- We do not promise the Free tier will always look the same for new accounts. If our cost structure changes materially, future Free signups might see different terms. Your existing account is unaffected.
- We do not promise to add new features to the Free tier. New capabilities may be added to paid tiers only.
- We do not promise to never show upgrade prompts. We may recommend paid plans where they're a fit. We will never withhold features you already had under your existing terms.
- We do not promise SLDocs will exist forever. If we ever shut down, we will give meaningful notice and a documented export path. We'll describe those terms in our forthcoming Terms of Service.
If we ever break this
We won't, but you deserve to know what would happen if we did.
The commitments above are published representations. Under U.S. consumer-protection law (FTC Section 5 and state UDAP statutes), that means they are binding on us as a matter of consumer protection law even before they appear in a formal Terms of Service. When our Terms of Service are finalized, this pledge will be incorporated by reference so the commitments also become contractual terms.
If you believe we've modified an existing Free account's terms in a way that contradicts this page, email info@sldocs.com and reference this pledge. We will respond.
See also: our company story, the full pricing breakdown, and the third parties we use to deliver the service.