I think the trial period should die..
'm going to say something controversial.
I think the "trial period" should die.
Here's why...
Forcing a 7, 15, or even 30 day trial for software forces the customer in a position of "rush".
They rush through setting things up.
They rush through looking at what the system does.
They rush through features, without asking support.
They assume. They rush more. They miss things because of this.
They become frustrated.
They dont know what to do, where to go because they rush.
Then, they get busy and lose a day or two.
To then come back, and rush more because its LESS time than before.
Is this REALLY helping the company determine if the software is the right tool?
Instead, don't have a trial. If a company can't invest a small monthly fee to test out your software for a period of time that THEY need to help determine if it's the right tool for their business, then, it's probably not the right tool, and they aren't the right customer.
If the tool isn't the right fit after the first month, they can simply cancel their plan. Go on to the next. It's a win-win.
I can’t agree — I think it all depends on the kind of product we’re offering and how long is our Time to Value. If it’s short and the free trial can help our customers reach it — go for a free trial!
In this case I totally agree! If the platform is EASY learning curve, yeah that makes sense. But I would say, a vast majority of platforms like email marketing ones, project management, and really robust platforms should not do a trial. :-)
But what I have seen is that most people first want to see the saas before they spend a single dollar on it.
I've tried an approach where there's no free trial, no freemium, we have a way of getting full refunds for six months after you pay, which has the advantage of finding the right customer and driving adoption in their organization. By using this model the day before yesterday, your customer success and product can be supported
Better to have a free plan than a trial. But it's a style thing. Some businesses love to get into the upsells and hooking that a trial brings to the table. It becomes about that sales copy.
Seems like your style is more like mine - build a great product and ask people to pay for it. I just additionally think you want a free plan in there - so young customers can grow into the paid plan. Grow together.
We tried a free plan too in the MVP, and with our use-case it wasnt even useful to the end user to limit it that much.
The other reason for the kill trial stance, is our platform is SO robust. It isnt possible for a business to truly determine if their business structure fits with our platform in just 15 days, not even 30. So it makes more sense for a robust tool to do that.
For a tool that is SUPER easy to learn, and understand without much of a learning curve, yeah, a freemium or trial version might be a better option to make the sale much easier. :-)
I opted to have a free tier for fabform.io and not a trial. So far its working for us.
But what is your conversion rate from fermium to paid user?