Is Bitdefender Free really free?

I used to love BitDefender - it was super lightweight, and offered good protection. I loved it so much I decided to install the free edition on my other computers and those of my family members.

Since around Jan 2018 though, either the service stops (on all computers), or installs break. The thing is not uninstallable short of searching all folders and registry entries and removing everything...Then it becomes impossible to install it again. When it does install, I cannot sign-in to the account to activate because the sign-in button won't do anything. At thos point I think Bitdefender is treating Free users like QA (not beta testers, just external QA)...I am sorry, but if you want us to QA your product, send you logs, answer emails back and forth, etc. then you either need to pay us, or your product needs to work "most" of the time. This is getting really frustrating.