Why I made Aspen free

I love experimenting with technology and turning an idea into something people can actually use. Aspen ESA is one of those projects. I built it to help Arizona ESA families work through questions about purchases, find the relevant handbook guidance, and keep their receipts and documentation organized.

The original plan included a free tier and a paid subscription with more features and room to grow. I spent time building those plans and thinking through the launch pricing. But as the product developed, I kept coming back to whether a subscription was the right fit.

I recently decided to change that. Aspen is now a free community resource for Arizona ESA families.

Why I changed direction

Part of the decision came from what was happening around Aspen. Similar eligibility and documentation tools became available for free through a payment platform. When your business is handling payments, you can offer those tools for a different reason than someone trying to support a standalone subscription.

That made me take another look at what I was building and where I wanted to spend my time.

I could keep adding features to justify the subscription, but I wasn’t convinced that was the best direction for Aspen. I still liked the underlying product: helping a family understand a question, keep the information behind a decision, and have their records ready when they need them. Those are useful problems to work on.

Making Aspen free lets me focus on those things without also having to figure out which features belong behind a paid plan.

Aspen remains independent. It doesn’t approve purchases or handle payments. It helps families find handbook information and organize their own records. Being free doesn’t remove the responsibility to be accurate or clear about those limits. That work still matters.

What free means

The paid plans and launch offers are retired. Families can use Aspen for multiple students, receipts, saved decisions, audit-packet preparation, and exports without a subscription.

The AI features still have daily limits. Answering questions, checking purchases, suggesting curriculum, and analyzing receipt images all have costs behind them. Those limits help me manage the expense while keeping the tools available.

I may eventually add an optional way for people to support Aspen. If I do, it won’t unlock extra features. The purpose would be to help support something they find useful.

What I’m learning

There is a real trade-off here. I’m giving up the subscription model I originally planned for Aspen, and the costs of hosting, AI usage, and maintenance don’t disappear because the product is free.

I also have to be thoughtful about how much time I put into it. Making Aspen free doesn’t mean I can promise unlimited development or add every feature another product offers. I want to keep it useful and manageable while leaving room to work on other projects.

What I want to learn now is whether families find enough value in Aspen to come back to it. Are the handbook references helpful? Does having receipts and decisions together make the information easier to find? Where does the application still make something harder than it needs to be?

Those are the kinds of questions I enjoy working through. Building a working application gives me a chance to test an idea, learn where my assumptions were wrong, and make changes. Sometimes that means improving a feature. This time it meant changing how I planned to support the whole product.

I’m still interested in building products people will pay for. For Aspen, I think this is a better fit, and I’m looking forward to learning from it.

You can try Aspen on the web, iPhone, or Android.

I’d love to hear what helps and where it falls short. That feedback will help me decide what to improve next.