I have to concur with the other comments. The ongoing costs of running a robust, reliable cloud-based business like hosting, support team, ongoing development are not insignificant. Consequently, you either have to question the motives or longevity of someone offering a "free" solution. In my humble opinion a "free" provider is most likely:


  • Deriving their income from somewhere else - which could mean your "free" product" is non core or they're deriving value as a bi-product of offering the service, such as via inflated pricing on emails/texts or data capture. Fine but you need to go in with your eyes open.
  • Funded by an investor with deep pockets - great while it lasts, but at some point the chickens come home to roost! Even nice Private Equity houses and VC's want a return on their capital!
  • Taking a short-term punt in the hope that they can capture some customers so that they can generate some income in the future
  • If none of the above, naive and not making adequate provision for longevity and scalability - pretty important attributes for a provider of health records software


As someone who has raised money privately and on public markets and as the CEO of WriteUpp I'm pretty sure there's no silver bullet. All the things that you would expect as a user of a business critical practice management system (technical support, security, hosting, ongoing product development) have a cost associated with them. Of course if you don't want any of this stuff then I guess its ok to take a punt on something free but buyer beware.