HackPad is free when working with public pads, and costs $2 per month / per member when working with "Private" pads, within a subdoman that has to be set in the module admin page.
The module (or Hackpad?) prevents working with public - not setting the siubdomain.

Is there a possibility to work free with this solution?
What is the benefit of using such a commercial solution vs standard free EtherPad?

Thanks

Comments

bburg’s picture

bburg
he/him
Location Washington, DC
commented

Hello jvielle,

I was just thinking of this module today and noticed your question. While the Etherpad software is free and open source, but to use it, you need to keep it running as a service on a machine you host. So in this case, free isn't really free, you still need to pay for the hardware it runs on, and need someone with enough technical know-how to setup the server and database. Then you need to make sure it's maintained, aside from applying any patches and rebooting the service if it ever comes down. Using a hosted allows you to delegate those responsibilities at a price.

The module isn't currently built to support the free service, but it might be possible to build this functionality. I'm unfortunately swamped with other projects at the moment.

*Edit*
I forgot to mention that Hackpad has built an API that allows integration with Drupal in the first place!