Sprockets, a collaboration tool ASP targeted at those in the marketing and media professional services industry, has an interesting pricing model: "Sprockets charges a low monthly fee per project, and you only pay for a Sprockets service if you use it. This eliminates up-front purchases of hardware, software, per user licensing fees, and support." The "low monthly fee" ($10/project) is much lower than other such apps aimed at businesses, and they obviously expect to make a lot of their money on the per-use fees; their project example shows a total fee of $66 for a three-month project. The micro-payment-like schedule sounds good in theory, but if one is to believe history and, as Clay Shirky put it, The Case Against Micropayments, I fear it's not going to fly with users. The biggest hurdle for workgroup-type apps is getting people to change their habits and use them. Knowing that every use is costing them money (no matter how little) does not encourage frequent use.

Sprockets also has a suite of both business and personal free tools. The notable difference, however, in the landscape of today and that of The Great Free Era of the web is that these free tools are obviously for marketing purposes only -- Sprockets is not defining themselves as "the free web PIM" or any other such thing. In fact, the word free is not even on the home page.