For example, there are lots of blogging solutions with more or less the same features. Some will charge you a monthly fee, others are completely free. What makes people pay the fee if there are other services that offer the same feature set for free?
I'm willing to pay for email instead of using Gmail. The combination of Google's massive accumulation of data about you and American authorities' relatively easy access to the data strikes me as somewhat creepy. Google claims to not be evil, but the truth is, we don't know, because Google employees are contractually bound to secrecy on a lot of issues.
People say that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product," and there's something to that.
The amount of money needed to get a normal IMAP account with SSL is quite small, and worth it if you ask me.
Often times, people/organizations will pay money when performing a particular task is outside their core business and/or they have nobody on staff with the requisite domain knowledge.
It may seem cheaper to grab a copy of wordpress and host it myself, but then who will manage backups and updates (especially if myself or my staff aren't familiar with wordpress)? It may make more sense for me to spend $49 a month on a host which takes care of the details, so I can simply push content onto the site.
Free versions typically have only forum support. Paid versions usually have better support, and often can handle large surges of traffic better. It all depends on how critical the service in question is to your operation. The more critical it is for you to operate, the more you will pay just to be safe.
Beyond the normal "it should be useful" etc, I find that I'm way more likely to pay for something if the company has a honest human face/startup/etc. My subscription with Pinboard.io fell in that category.
Depending on the context, but many of us might believe "if I have to pay, it MUST be good." By paying, one might think that they are investing to the solution.
People say that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product," and there's something to that.
The amount of money needed to get a normal IMAP account with SSL is quite small, and worth it if you ask me.
http://runbox.com/ and http://gandi.net/ are good options for those who want paid secure accounts hosted in Europe.