Here's a resource for you. Ever wonder if that non-paying client took your words and ran? The Plagiarism Checker, a project of the University of Maryland, will search for your article, for free. Copyscape is another low-cost option. Of course, you could also just plug a unique phrase from your article into Google, and see what comes up!
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I guess using plagiarism detection software means trusting a service, because you should be very careful about giving out your work to someone else. I am a professor of English at the St. Michael’s College and can share my experience of using an online plagiarism detection service. It is called http://www.plagiarismdetection.org. I am using it for over 10 months. I have tried them in many ways. For example, I have scanned one document in Nov., let’s say. Than I forget about it for a couple of months and scan that same document in March. It does not find any relativity to other documents, so I can be 100% sure these guys are not keeping the databases. Everybody heard of scandals with turnitin and I don’t want my students to participate in someone else’s database gathering.
So, I don’t know if it rational to use any free plagiarism detection services, as almost nothing in this life comes for free. You only think you are not paying a fee to use the service, but the service might benefit from you in another way (e.g. sell your uploaded documents).
Turnitin provides faculty the option to index student’s submitted papers or not. While many people express concerns over maintaining a database to deter illicit collaboration and paper sharing, it is seldom mentioned that Turnitin use does not require that submitted papers be indexed for future comparison.