I am considering signing up from bravenets professional hosting, and it says that you get 27 free tools. am i supposed to assume these are all the pro-versions or are they the free versions? (ex: would i be able to use the message forum service or the message-service-pro?)

Bravenet sell the pro version of each tool separately. If you want a pro form, a free guestmap, a pro form mail and free hosting then you purchase the two pro services and use the free versions of the others.