Does a fully featured trial make sense for freemium?
Need to source the help of the IH community:
Does it make sense if new users get a free 15d trial and at the end they move to the free plan if they don't upgrade.
Or should there only be a free plan and no trial?
I remember listening to an IndieHackers podcast with Jen from Lunch Money, and she mentioned that she decided from the start not to offer freemium version of her product (after experiencing low free to paid conversion rates with a previous startup).
If you offer a freemium plan, you may attract more users, but users that are willing to pay for your product may be better users in the long run because they probably find a lot value in what you've built.
That said, as @zerotousers said, it might make sense to offer a free plan if the buying process is long.
I think a free trial is a clever way to get users in and almost "force" them to make a decision on whether or not they find enough value in your product to pay for it. Could be worth considering a longer trial period if you think users may need more time to decide.
Keep us updated :)
Agreed. I also think that keeping extending their free trial may delay your potential pivot, since your mind will be like: "Oh, I got so many (non-paying, free) users, I'll extend the trial, bother them a bit, maybe they'll pay". False hope is deadly IMO. Better go for the "kill" (i.e. a sale) right away if you want more brutal/honest feedback.
I've read over 500 founder interviews and one of the things I was really interested was freemium vs no freemium...freemium worked for around 2/3 of them and it didn't work for 1/3.
On the other hand, keeping them on a free plan makes sense if you think the purchase process takes longer and/or you want to continue to market them.
On the other hand, maybe your product is so important to them that cutting access may 'force' them to pay.
If possible, do an A/B split test, would be really curious to see what happens.
I'd say this really depends on your product. If you are offering X of something/month and the incremental value of X is low (meaning it's something they will need a lot of to get real value, e.g. "views"), then I think it can make a lot of sense to go freemium. On the other hand, if your offering is something a customer might only need once or temporarily and has real value you're probably going to get a lot of people signing up, using it briefly and then leaving forever.
As an example, I'm offering a free plan for Behold because the pricing is largely based on views/month. There's a natural upgrade path from the free tier as usage increases, and offering a free plan lets users try the service out with zero friction. It's especially important for my project because it's targeted at web developers, and they likely want to see if the service will do what they need before passing the cost off to their client.
Answer these two questions:
If both “yes” than make it paid in the beginning:) if not - no matters which way you choose.
But if I have to choose one of your option I would still be in doubts. Freemium means you get the idea what values are and you still can use it in 10-20%. But if you pay - you get 100% of capabilities or content etc.