We apologize if this was not well communicated to you. Pelican is not a SaaS company, so our intent is to provide you with features which far exceed other solutions for free under our Basic subscription. Only customers who need the additional features of the Standard subscription need to pay for the subscription.
Note: The features provided by the Standard subscription are active for free for the first year you have Pelican. After the one year period is over, your site automatically reverts to the Basic subscription.