
Ask HN: What to do about free trial abuse? - awaythrowhmm
Throwaway account here:<p>I run an SaaS company that is often used for communication between digital agencies and their clients during website development.<p>A (rather large) agency signed up last month, and very quickly started using my service on one of their client&#x27;s sites. They continued this kind of usage through out their free trial.<p>&quot;Huzzah!&quot; thinks me, as that&#x27;s a very good indicator they&#x27;ll convert to paying. Except at the end of last week their trial expired, and they didn&#x27;t start paying.<p>Today they&#x27;ve signed up for another free trial, different email address, but same company, and straight away they start using my service again for the same client!<p>I&#x27;m reluctant to jump in and accuse them of abusing the free trial, but this is a big company, with some very high profile clients. I definitely want to say something, but not sure how to broach it, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.<p>Thanks
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codegeek
First, take a deep breath and remember the rule of internet. If something is
available for free, people WILL find it, use it and abuse it. Don't beat
yourself too much for it.

"I'm reluctant to jump in and accuse them of abusing the free trial"

No, don't be reluctant. Reach out to them with a kind email saying that their
trial period has expired and they need to switch to a paid account.
Alternatively, offer them an extended trial period using same account if you
think they may give you business BUT do not let them abuse the trial system.
Here is how I will do it:

"Hi xyz. We noticed that you created a trial account using username abc for
your company. We wanted to reach out and ask if someone from your company has
created another trial account after the expiry of the first one (This way, you
are not directly accusing but smartly letting them know). We are happy to give
you an extension of trial period if you need but as per our terms and
conditions, you are not allowed to create multiple trial accounts for same
company. If you have any questions on this, I will be happy to assist"

Another way to think about this. Perhaps this client needs more time to
evaluate the product and hence give them the benefit of the doubt at first.
They continue to use the product actively which means they definitely like
something about it. This could be good news for you. Take this opportunity to
reach out to them and have a conversation. You never know what will happen.

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ArekDymalski
> I definitely want to say something, but not sure how to broach it,

This is the key part. What do you _really_ want to achieve?

1\. Win this client - make them love both your product and your company and
turn them into paying customers?

2\. Admonish this client - let them know that they did wrong and that they
should correct their "bad behavior"?

You have already made a good impression - your product is useful for at least
2 people in this company. So you can reinforce this positive experience by
demonstrating that your customer care is as good as the product itself. My
suggestion: grab the phone and call those 2 guys who are already familiar with
the app. Ask them about their experiences and willingness to continue using
it. Diagnose possible barriers, doubts, needs etc. Just show them that you are
awesome.

If they are really abusing you, you can always send them cold, corrective
email later. It actually won't change much, but it will make you feel better.
Good luck!

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saluki
Nice that you have a large agency as a captive audience to close the deal on
for the next 20 days or so.

Step 1: I would start by adding a message at the top of the agency side of the
login.

Sign up for an annual agency plan so all your employees can have their own
account. Click Here To Sign Up. Your Free Trial ends in 20 days. (You can
change the message, track clicks on the sign up button/link, send them to a
custom landing page with their company name)

Step 2: On the portions of the App where their clients login/view pages. Add a
small notice. XYZ company your free trial ends in 20 days. (display this on
the agency pages as well in the same way, on those pages include a link to
upgrade their account, you could even personalize it, make it easy to upgrade,
just the cc info.)

Step 3: Try to reach out to the two email addresses and give them an offer of
a deal on an agency annual plan (Subscribe to our annual agency plan before
the end of your trial and get two months free and all your employees can have
their own login and use our service for unlimited clients.)

Step 4: Depending on how your app works could you show them some metrics on
their dashboard of how often their client is logging in or you've shared XX
documents or they were viewed XX times by your clients, etc to show them the
value of your app)

As others have mentioned it is a good idea to re-visit your terms and
conditions make sure it includes restrictions on multiple free trials for the
same company and/or domain.

Interesting situation. Good luck getting them to sign up. Let us know how it
works out.

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garethsprice
You don't have a large agency signed up, you have an individual at a large
agency. Maybe they're junior and don't have purchase authorization? Maybe they
are evaluating alternative products? Maybe it takes months for them to get a
purchase order approved and they just needed something right away?

Two consecutive trials seems fairly light in terms of abuse. If the service is
useful and they start using it with more clients, it'll quickly become
impossible to continue the trial abuse - they'll either sign up or go away.

If your company is small enough that you notice (and get annoyed by) one user
running two consecutive trials, it's small enough that you can reach out to
the individual(s) involved and try to turn them into evangelists for your
service inside their large agency. Or if they are knowingly abusing the
service, the personal e-mail may put them off.

This is how the agency I'm at discovered and ended up paying for Bitbucket,
BrowserStack, Trello, Slack, DeployHQ, etc. - someone on the dev team finds a
new service, passes it up to his/her tech lead, who convinces management it's
worth investing in the Enterprise plan when it becomes essential to the
functioning of the company.

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rabidonrails
Before anything, you need to figure out why they aren't willing to pay you. Is
this just a matter of a junior dev not having the ability to actually put a
card on file or perhaps they haven't had enough time to actually test out your
product and present it to their paying client.

I'd write an email something like this:

Hi XXXX,

Thanks so much for signing up again! It's normally against our policy to have
two identical trial accounts so I've extended the free trial on your initial
account so that you can continue using our service.

At [your company] we work very hard to provide value to our customers and I'd
love to know what we could do to turn you into a paying customer when your
trial expires.

Thanks, [you]

This gives them the opportunity to 1. make it seem like you're doing them a
favor and 2. to let you know what the limitation on their side is.

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lastofus
Contact them and politely notify them the free trial period is for X days,
their 2nd trial account will be disabled in 5 business days, and that you
would be happy to help transition them to a paid account.

There's no need to "accuse them of abusing the free trial" system, just state
the facts.

Worst case is they don't pay, which is exactly where you are at right now.

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Mz
I agree with everyone saying that you cannot accuse them of abuse. Read your
own fine print, see if you need to close any loopholes. If so, update the
language, send out notifications of the policy change. If not, contact the
company as others have suggested and say "Hey, maybe you don't realize it, you
already used your free trial...etc."

I have seen research and repeatedly seen anecdotal evidence that larger
companies do not hesitate to prey upon smaller ones. Smaller companies often
either do not want to stand firm because they view the large company as a
potential jackpot client and they don't want to offend them and drive them off
or they don't have the expertise, legal team or other necessary power to
successfully stand up to the bigger company and they get outmaneuvered and
crapped on.

Please do not be a doormat. A big company that does not pay is not a customer.
They are a parasite and there is no relationship to preserve. So while you
don't want to be ugly about it and make enemies unnecessarily, you need to be
proactive about finding an effective, diplomatic, enforceable solution. If you
don't, big companies will not hesitate to bleed you and can readily become a
threat to your very survival. So take this seriously as a problem that must be
solved as quickly as possible.

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petervandijck
Step 1: update your terms and conditions to say multiple trial accounts from
the same company are only allowed to run for maximum 2 months total.

Step 2: wait a month

Step 3: if they do the same thing after this one runs out, send them friendly
email.

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gesman
Good thing is that they love your service and using it.

One way companies do free trials is collect full payment information upfront
but won't charge anything until free trial expires. If user won't cancel
proactively - charge starts.

Another way is to charge right away, but offer full 30 days, no questions
asked refund upon request.

Third way is to manually chase free trial "abusers" to gently seduce them into
paying. This may work better for larger accounts that needs special sales
dance.

~~~
gesman
PS: Forth way which is actually quite effective is to offer non-trial, but
limited functionality product. Carefully think about limitation - the approach
that works best is something that allows customer to use all features of
product right away but limitation gradually gets annoying to stimulate
conversion to paid user.

Example: more data come in and non-paid version has limits,

or more sub-users signed up but non-paid version has limit of 5 users.

Quite often after offering this along the 30 days unconditional refund version
will do the trick.

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staunch
Slack's trick is getting companies hooked on their high quality product before
having them pay up big time (eventually). Copy it if you can. It seems to
work.

~~~
wmil
I think that's probably the right move. Often the people using a product don't
have any authority to make a purchase.

In those cases management won't spend a dime until the employees can show the
product is critical.

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antaviana
Don't lose energy chasing dropbeats. Instead, spend time thinking how you can
make your product less prone to people outsmarting you.

Use dropbeats to test new features by forcing them to test them first. If they
work, you will have more assurance when deploying to other paying customers.
If they don't work, the exchange of emails will help you know each other
better, that is employ your dropbeats as free testers.

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warewolf
If you need their business and see potential in having them pitch them a
alternative enterprise price.

If it's causing a headache, time to man up and handle business.

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joeevans1000
Wait for the second trial to finish and the third to start on a new account
before doing anything.

