Moxie Software will now provide its full enterprise social networking (ESN) software for free because the company is convinced that standalone, general-purpose ESN capabilities are a commodity.

The company will charge customers when and if they link its Collaboration Spaces product with other, third-party business applications and systems.

"This supports our business model. Other vendors out there will have to rethink their business model in terms of what they charge for," said Moxie Software CEO and President Tom Kelly.

In the free tier, Moxie Software will place no limits on the product's features available to customers, nor on the number of users and amount of time they spend using the software.

Like other ESN products, Collaboration Spaces provides social media features tailored for workplace use, like employee profiles, activity streams, discussion forums, microblogging, groups and wikis.

Having the opportunity to launch a full-featured ESN system for free lowers the risk for organizations, which can then in time decide to take the next step and link it with third-party systems, like CRM and ERP suites, which yields higher value, Kelly said.

The Collaboration Spaces paid tier starts at $3 per user, per month. It is used by about 600 organizations with a total number of users of around 200,000 people. Customers include Teva Pharmaceutical, Epson and Nationwide Mutual Insurance.