ATLANTA — As paid streaming services become more expensive by the month, free, ad-supported versions such as Tubi, Freevee and Roku attract tens of millions of viewers.

Eric Tomosunas, CEO of Atlanta-based Swirl Films, and Managing Director Michael Parnes believed there was an opening for a subscription-free streaming service featuring horror and thriller films, as well as true-life crime documentaries , while generating enough revenue through advertising alone. So they recently launched FearPix, a free streaming service for everyone with over 600 options.

“We did a lot of market research,” said Tomosunas, who has run Swirl Films for 24 years and moved it to Atlanta in 2013. “We did our due diligence.”

FearPix is ​​now available on all major platforms such as Amazon, Apple and Roku. Roku is the most popular place for people to watch FearPix so far, Parnes said.

Parnes, who worked at Turner Broadcasting for 20 years, including seven as vice president at Adult Swim, won’t release user data, noting that the service has only been up and running for a few weeks.

“We want hundreds of thousands of users on our platform every day,” Parnes said.

Commercial breaks before a movie starts last 15 seconds, then occur about every 15 minutes, with a maximum of 120 seconds of commercials at a time, he said.

When it initially launched, FearPix didn’t have big cinematic hits like “Saw” or “Scream.” If anything, he’s picked up his fair share of Lifetime films such as “Girl in the Basement” with Judd Nelson and “Big Driver,” based on a Stephen King short story.

The most-watched offering currently is “Menendez: Blood Brothers,” a 2017 Lifetime movie starring Courtney Love and Kitty Menendez. This likely has something to do with the fact that Netflix recently released a documentary and scripted series about the Menendez murders.

Other popular offerings, according to the FearPix homepage, include “Killer Grandma,” “The Devil Came Home” and “Left Behind: The Movie.”

“We acquired titles knowing that horror is the most important genre in terms of genre, but we believe that true crime has its place and that it will expand our audience,” Parnes said, noting that the women are true rabid fans of crime. He said more true crime titles are coming in the coming weeks.

FearPix hopes to have 1,000 titles by the end of the year and plans to create original films and series by 2026.

“We organize and look at everything,” Tomosunas said. “We do not opt ​​for excessive violence and nudity” given that the service is ad-supported.

So far, Parnes has curated different lists of related themed movies for the homepage, such as “31 Days of Halloween”.