What is free and what is paid?
Free to read and take part; paid to create. Registering, reading, commenting, arguing in a forum and belonging to someone else's community cost nothing, anywhere on the platform. Creating something of your own — a page, a site, a store, as many domains as you like under one panel — runs on a subscription to the control panel, sold by a regional representative of the platform.
What does the subscription include?
Access to the panel where you build and run your sites, and the AI inside it. At Start the AI is switched on and you buy tokens as you need them; from Standard upward a token allowance comes with the subscription. Server — the whole platform on your own machine, for organisations — is outside this ladder and priced case by case.
And if I want someone to build it for me?
That is separate work at a separate price: a partner studio installs and sets the site up on your own hosting for a one-off fee, the same price list at any of them. Afterwards you pay the regional representative directly for panel access — the studio has nothing to do with that payment. Design, content and later changes are charged separately too.
Why are there no figures on this site?
Because a number without a market attached is misleading. This site is the platform: it describes the tiers and what is in them. The figures belong one level down, to the regional representative serving your market, who publishes them in their own currency. The reasoning is set out on the pricing page.
Do I pay for the software itself?
No. The software is developed and distributed by the HILDUS foundation, which sells nothing and hosts nothing. What costs money is access to the panel, a machine to run a Server-tier installation on, and — if you want it — someone else's labour.
Then where does the money in the project come from?
From two places, both below the foundation and below this site: regional representatives selling panel subscriptions, and partner studios charging a one-off fee for installing a site on the customer's own hosting. The foundation earns from neither, and this platform is not built to make money either.
What about hosting?
Normally the site runs on hosting you already have, and it stays your infrastructure. Buying hosting from the platform side exists as an extra option, not as the basis of the model — and whoever hosts the machine, what your community earns stays with you.
Do you take a percentage of sales or advertising?
No. Nobody takes a share of what your community earns, and no advertising is injected into your pages by us.