Free Trial with or without asking for the credit card first?
It's easy to implement a trial with Stripe if you're using subscriptions, but it can be complex at first to implement the logic necessary to handle free trials without cards (blocking users without payment info, etc).
What is your opinion about when to ask for the card of the potential user of your SaaS product?
If you are in the early stages and trying to optimise for learning, I would allow a free trial without sign-up just to get more people using your product.
If you are optimising for revenue however, the evidence indicates that companies have higher conversion rates to paid when credit card sign-up is required. [1]
[1] - https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/saas-pricing
I think you should implement the credit card logic first . With this you will get some serious customers . The free users are always looking for free things . They are not serious about buying anything .
Second this.
I read an article somewhere (might have been here at IH, but cannot seem to find it again) that resonated well with me - and it was to charge at least ~$100/month for a B2B service.
The customers that pay less are usually the customers you don't want.
Thats true . But for this you need to make good sales funnel . It also depends on your product , your business policy , your customer retention method . :)
Any trial which asks me for credit card first it's a no-go.
So I would suggest to avoid asking the card for trials
We have been using Free Trial without Credit Card first and have noticed that a lot of users sign up for free but then don't actually use the product.
I find it strange/suspicious to be asked for credit card details for a free trial. It gives me a negative impression about the website/product. You would lose a well amount of potential customers this way. I think the natural way is that customer tries your product and after that if they find your product useful they will anyway buy/subscribe.
For DBacked, I started by asking for the credit card on the register page (it was easier) but I spent some time last week to change this behavior. I'm still testing if this changes the conversion rate.
@Geekuillaume Would you like to check out this? https://onboardflow.com/onboard-summit
Research by SaaS Customer Engagement Platform firm Totango indicates that companies who require a credit card at the time of sign-up experience extremely high conversion rates, with a reported average of 50% trial to paid customer conversions.
Just like the other comments, I'd also suggest asking for the credit card along with the free trial. It's a great way to validate your idea further (that people will be willing to pay for your product), and it also narrows your actual customers (who you want to be focusing on) -- you can spend more time being more personal with your actual customers rather than people who are just browsing through free trials. Yes, credit card signing up is a hassle, but at least it shows you that they're willing to put in the time to sign up for your product.
Salut Guillaume,
I am in the same situation as you. At first we asked on MySocialApp the credit card and then we went on a model where we do not ask it. I am probing if it can better convert and have more feedback but it is not easy.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago