I clearly remember it being boxed and on a shelf along side Internet Explorer for like $40 at CompUSA. Nearly an entire isle for browsers.

It was never required to pay for it. As was common with software back then, the free download was a fully featured "evaluation" version denoted by an "N" appended to the version number. That didn't last long though and it just stayed free.

There was a "Gold" version they sold at retail for some time that had a WYSIWYG editor in it, until they made it standard as part of the Communicator suite.

I remember it was originally paid for (i vaguely remember seeing an ad in a pc mag) but by 1996 I got it for free