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We are, again, not a service you connect to, so you cannot pay us to run our software for you. There are companies that do offer that sort of thing (see the Commercial Support section of https://www.shibboleth.net/support/ ).
The technical support options we make available are a mix of free/open to all and restricted options for members. See https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/consort/Technical+Support+Options for a summary. So it is possible to run it for free, and get free help from the community at times for relatively simple problems.
On the other hand, once you become a deployer of our software, and particularly if it’s for a commercial purpose, you should consider that you’re freeloading by taking what we make and not giving anything back. We only survive as a project because of the money people are willing to give us voluntarily. When that stops, we stop. Open source doesn’t survive when it’s literally unfunded. If you use the software, you should pay for that, and in return you will get some benefit back in the form of access to the developers for help, and a stronger voice in development priorities.
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