100% off the first year
We just launched our product VP Player on Product Hunt today. We thought what is a crazy promotion that would grab some attention in this crazy launch experience, and we decided to give people a whole year for free if they sign a multi-year contract.
And that's exactly what we're doing during our launch week.
Check out our Post on producthunt.com/posts/vp-player
Some companies offer something for free out of a specific purpose. For organizations like Wikipedia the goal is simply to make as much information as possible freely available. This is the same for other open-source communities.
But most for-profit companies do not have such a grander goal in mind. For example, you may want to market another project; acquire customer feedback or data; boost your brand; or simply get more paying users