2) "we currently have enough funds to support 226 more days of hosting"
I know it's possible for 1 and 2 to not contradict each other, but it certainly gives the appearance of being a potentially unsustainable service, and thus a potentially unreliable service. If I'm going to set up an email hosting account, I'm going to want to expect it to be available for the long haul.
You're right, the wording is a bit humorous and certainly contradictory. I should rephrase the statements to say:
1) "free for as long as the service exists"
2) "we currently have enough funds to support 226 more days of hosting given that no one supports the server costs
Hosting a simple email service such as Pawnmail is cheaper than the cost of hosting many individual mail servers for each domain, so the incentive to donate exists as long as individuals and companies value the service. Being financially open is an attempt to fix the problem met by Google and Microsoft, who have suddenly discontinued their free custom domain email hosting services within the last year.
> Each email account costs us approximately $0.30 per year, and we currently have enough funds to support 318 more days of hosting.
Curious. What does the $0.30 figure take into account? Is it just server and IT or does it also include customer service and other administrative work?
Good question. To clarify, the $0.30 figure is simply the cost of servers per number of users. The figure may vary according to average space used by accounts and bandwidth.
The figure does not include administration, but donations may be used for human resources. After a reasonable amount is distributed, funds will go into the server budget, thus increasing the "days remaining" meter.
I have a pretty good idea of the costs of running an email service, since I do that as well - and I do wonder if you have any redundancy or backups or any of the niceties considered here (and I bet you'll feel less happy about giving your time for free at some point)
Last thing I saw with "free forever" on it was called Evony and it used to advertise all over my Facebook a few years ago.
When investing (time) into something like this I always try to work out how the business is going to be sustained. Like many of us, I've been burnt badly before.
I'd genuinely like more businesses like this to be up front with commercial plans just to give reassurance to its customers.
2) "we currently have enough funds to support 226 more days of hosting"
I know it's possible for 1 and 2 to not contradict each other, but it certainly gives the appearance of being a potentially unsustainable service, and thus a potentially unreliable service. If I'm going to set up an email hosting account, I'm going to want to expect it to be available for the long haul.