Voluum vs BeMob: the free-tier trap when you're just starting
The setup: A beginner-budget operation, ~$30/day spend, testing one offer. Picking a first tracker between Voluum (paid, ~$69/mo entry) and BeMob (free tier up to a click cap).
The move: Ran BeMob's free plan to save money, then hit the wall and compared the real cost of the 'free' choice.
The numbers (illustrative): BeMob free covered up to ~100k events/mo. Fine at $30/day. But the moment we found a winner and pushed to $150/day, we blew the cap mid-month — tracking silently throttled, and we lost attribution on ~2 days of scaling, roughly $200 of data we couldn't trust.
The lesson: Free tiers are sized for the stage you're trying to leave. The cap bites exactly when you scale — the worst possible moment to lose data. The $69 Voluum cost is trivial next to one botched scaling window.
What I'd do differently: Start on a free or cheap tracker only if you have a hard alert at 80% of the cap. We had none. The 'savings' evaporated on the first good day. For a tool you bet attribution on, pay before you need to, not after it fails.
Arb Files
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