When I saw an official "Free Plan" that is automatically deleted after six months, I thought that was a good move: now students could open an account, experiment for absolutely free for six months without the fear of unplanned costs being charged on their credit card, either when experimenting or months/years later because they forgot about their account and some hacker managed to get access to it.
But according to the FAQ "Why do I need to provide payment method to sign up if I’m on the free plan?", it seems you still have to provide a payment method. So, technically, during the six months lifespan of your "Free Plan" account, you still can end-up being charged for some services, if you go over you $100(+$100) "free" credits.
Unless they have an absolute hard limit on the services you can use under a "Free Plan" making it impossible to go over your $100(+$100) credits; but that would be a first and people would ask to have the same ability to put those limits on a regular account...
So I see some progress, but it seems that it's not as safe of an offering as it should be for a "Free Plan".
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