At the lower end of the market, the main competition (Google, Bing, Apple) are totally free. The emphasis on QGIS support suggests that they're hoping to capture "prosumer" and smaller business applications that would get value out of a more professional toolset but aren't in a position to get into the ESRI pricing tier. If you can get people to do their basic looking around in your product for free, you have a way better chance of making some money off of them when they want a more specialized product from time to time.

I'm in that sort of position, I have research projects that I've even paid for custom satellite tasking for (not as expensive as you would think these days!), but I don't have the budget for a costly subscription. It's only in recent years that there are services that appeal to these lower-dollar user types though. The free for the basics, fee for analytics and tasking model is pretty common for newer remote sensing companies and I think the trend will continue.