I had a dramatic experience with one of the costless services 🙁 started with their lowest plans, however, after a while the website appeared in the 3rd page search results 🙂. The strange thing is that they used to post a link to the website with the target keywords in forums that have no rank!!
If they are not spamming in forums then there is no problem if they are targeting keywords through forums.
In current perspect of digital marketing spamming of any things however its link spaming, content spaming or image etc.. strictly prohibited.