I like online services as much as the next guy. There are all kinds, offering all sorts of goodies. Language study, streaming content, online classes, etc. It’s hard to imagine life without them.

However, I remember learning the hard way that an online service can change its terms at any time, or even simply die, leaving you with nothing. This happened to me years ago with some language learning platform. I forget the name. It had been free, but then suddenly they wanted more money than I was willing to pay. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think they died off not long afterward.

Walking away, I lost a little progress in my Japanese studies, but the lesson I took away from the experience was priceless: If you depend on online services, you need a contingency plan for losing them.

In my case, I ended up filling the gap by adopting the Anki flashcard software along with some publicly available community decks. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

Anki is Free Software. If it goes in a direction people don’t like, they’re free to fork it, or stick with the last version they did like. It has a free service for syncing user data. However, it’s optional and they provide directions for setting up your own server, should you feel so inclined. Your data is your own, and nobody can take it away from you.

There are plenty of nice services out there that provide guided language study, like duolingo. However, even using them, I’d advise building flashcards in Anki in parallel. While time consuming, it ensures that you won’t miss a step if the service dies or starts demanding a king’s ransom. And the act of doing so will force you to review the material.