Cerulean Studios’ popular messaging product, Trillian, will now be available as a free service for anyone willing to put up with a few ads. For those who aren’t satisfied with the ad-support, Trillian will offer an ad-free Pro service for $12/year.
Trillian offers apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and web browsers that let you chat with contacts using AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, and a number of other chat platforms.
The recent development will now bring of all Trillian’s former paid features to Trillian 5, the new free client. These features include the ability to sign in from multiple locations, themes, and the activity history viewer. Purchasing the Pro version will unlock the ability to store your chat history online.
If you’re currently a Trillian 5 customer, you will gradually be grandfathered into the new Pro system. You won’t have to deal with any advertisements and chat history storage should be unlocked in preferences. If you use Trillian 4, you will likewise be grandfathered into the ad-free program for as long as you use Trillian 4.
The new free mobile apps are not yet available, but Trillian is said to be finishing them and they’re expected to launch fairly soon. It will be interesting to see how well Trillian integrated the new advertisements, which can be quite intrusive for an IM client if not placed properly.
It might just be worth paying the $1 per month for Trillian 5 and its powerful feature set.
