
The 30 day free trial is mostly broken - cmadan
http://blog.clinchpad.com/post/48920850979/the-30-day-free-trial-is-mostly-broken
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patio11
Test against your own audience, but I would bet heavily against the conclusion
"Usage limited trials outperform free trials" for the majority of SaaS apps.
Dropbox's case is different with a capital D because the trial/invite mechanic
is code to their viral adoption.

One powerful reason why you generally want to avoid having a meter running is
you are really making two related but distinct sales: you are trying to
convince them to pay, yes, but you are also trying to convince them to use
your thing versus their existing way of doing business. That is often the
harder sale. Putting a marginal cost, even in free quota, for using your thing
puts friction in the adoption process, which you KEENLY do not want.

While it may be the case as a bootstrapped entrepreneur that your business has
not yet spent the sum of $600 on everything put together, the overwhelming
majority of businesses are not like you. Many businesses will spend $600
_today_ on one line item, for instance virtually any company which employs 3
or more college graduates. Many of these businesses also have habits with
regards to buying software which are more beneficial to SaaS companies than
your habits are, for example a) having predictable positive ROI on integration
costs and b) never attempting to optimize for $150 expenses by switching
providers on a whim.

~~~
andrewflnr
How much better is a free trial for making that harder sale? If I know that
any work I put into switching to your thing might get destroyed after thirty
days, I'm less likely to bother at all. Whereas if it's a partially-free-
forever thing like Dropbox, I don't have to commit as much to either the new
way or old way. If I hate it, I don't have to rush to get out before the trial
ends, I can just wait until I can't take it anymore.

Partly it depends whether I actually need the "full version" just to evaluate,
or if I can get by on the free version, for now at least. Didn't you have a
similar issue with BCC, where people would get all they needed from the free
trial? I don't remember how you resolved that.

~~~
monkeyspaw
Not speaking for patio11, but I would guess the free trial allows businesses
to evaluate whether the software meets their requirements.

Companies have budgets to pay for what they need. Their concern is that the
software meets those goals, then they are willing to break out the checkbook.
They know they have a problem, they have a budget to solve it, and they just
need to know your software solves it.

Consumers, OTOH, may need to have value proven over time. Thus, the dropbox
usage limits make a lot more sense.

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chaz
Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start
right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is
almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and
explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration,
setup, training, or data import.

I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's
not always the right solution.

~~~
crazygringo
Yeah -- I really thought about providing a "4 hours of actual usage" trial
instead of a 14-day trial for a product of mine -- thinking that they could
sign up _immediately_ , not worrying that they don't need to fully try it
within the next 14 days.

But the problem is, users don't understand it. The think it's 4 hours from
when you sign up. The amount of text it takes to explain that it's actual
cumulative usage, is so much that they don't read it. They just see 4-hour
trial, and think, that's weird, and I don't have time for that right now.

~~~
gsharma
Here is an idea - Pause/freeze the trial period. Initially give a 14 day trial
period. If the user does not come back after 2-3 days, send them an email that
you have paused their trial for now and it will start running again when they
login next time.

~~~
jevanish
The problem with this is that we're all in the business of making money. You
want to put constraints on your customers to give them urgency to complete
their trial, so they can then become paying customers...thus keeping you in
business.

With any business that requires configuration (like setting up tracking on
your site or entering candidates in a CRM), you need to push your users to get
over that initial hurdle. A short time constraint forces them to act quickly
to try to get value out of your product. They can always sign up for the trial
at another time if they're not ready to really commit to setting it up and
using it right now.

The added benefit of all of this is your sales team then works with more
qualified leads and spends less time talking to people that would fit into
your "paused" category, which can often become a deadpool of unactivated
users.

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programminggeek
It sounds like the author is complaining that some products aren't priced
right for people who aren't willing to pay for them. If you don't have much
money, you can't afford nice things. The 30 day free trial isn't broken just
because you can't afford the end product.

That's like saying a free test drive on a Ferrari is broken because you can't
afford it. You knew you couldn't afford it when you took the test drive. Would
it be better if they never let you have the test drive simply because you
couldn't afford it?

~~~
hobs
I don't think he is complaining as much as saying you can get a greater
conversion rate if you give the person more time, but limit based on usage
when it is used effectively as a non-trial.

A ferrari is too extreme of an example, because they are trying out a few
services, potentially developing some business with that service.

A better car analogy would be to let you drive around any cab of a truck to
get the look and feel and how everything works at your own pace, and then when
you want to hook up the trailer they start charging.

~~~
FollowSteph3
But he's still asking to get something more than he can afford for free until
he can afford it.

As an analogy you don't get to have a free Ice cream truck for a few months
until you can get your ice cream business going and are dependent on it. You
have to pay for it or get something cheaper you can afford such as a push bike
ice cream cart. The ice cream truck company is not in the business of funding
new ice cream companies hoping one day you'll be able to make it

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antidaily
I couldn't disagree more. I've done 30 day trials and unlimited Free plans.
Free plans convert much less often and require much more user support time.

Now, do I think a bootstrapped startup should seek out free plans and betas?
Of course. Just dont do that with your app.

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olegp
A survey we ran at <https://starthq.com> confirms the points the post brings
up. We are looking to add pricing and trial duration info to our SaaS
directory, but I was wondering: what does everyone think would be the best way
to display this information & how should we go about collecting this data?

When it comes to displaying the info, I was thinking of using two sets of
tags, one for the pricing model, i.e. "Free", "Freemium" or "Trial" and the
other for the starting price per month once you do start paying: "<$5",
"<$10", "<$20" etc. perhaps with an option to say that you pay per use such as
when sending transaction emails or infrastructure.

As for collecting the data: the only thing I can think of is that we either do
it ourselves, which would be time consuming for the 700+ apps we've got in the
directory, or get the SaaS providers to register and do it themselves. Perhaps
there's some way to automate this or crowd source it, but I can't seem to
think of anything sensible.

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PaulHoule
I find myself in two conditions.

One is that I really need the product RIGHT NOW in which case I am going to
pull out the credit card.

The other is that it's one of the many things I'd like to evaluate someday and
sure let's start that 30 day trial but there are so many other things I need
to do RIGHT NOW that I never get around to finishing it.

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ysapir
A usage-based trial is really just the same thing as a time-based trial. There
is a certain pace at which users are going to use up their usage quota, and
that translates to a time period. Generally, though, you want the time period
to end after the user has seen the benefits and before they have exhausted
their initial enthusiasm or encountered any bugs. Giving a user four months to
make their choice probably puts you on the wrong end of all those
considerations.

After the time-based trial, there are going to be different packages based on
different usage quotas anyway. KISSmetrics is probably catering to very
different and more established customers than the author, and their pricing
model is structured accordingly.

~~~
cooperadymas
Slightly tangential, but the KissMetrics 14 day trial makes little sense to me
regardless of their target customer base. With an Analytics package you need
time to set it up, then time to gather data, then time to analyze it to see
how beneficial it is. 14 days just isn't enough to do anything of the sort.
That said, I am a satisfied user of KissMetrics. Both their sales and their
support team are incredibly helpful and responsive.

The author compared KissMetrics to MixPanel, two services that offer
relatively the same thing. MixPanel gives a free account up to 25000 events
instead of a 14 day trial. This is a much, much more useful way of introducing
the product to a new user.

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pbreit
30 day trials are prospect-hostile because they force customers onto the
service provider's timeline, not the prospects. That said, I'm sure time-
limited trials do force the decisioning process in a way freemium does not.

My opinion on SaaS plans is that the no/low-cost plan should be more or less
fully functioning, without even some sort of limit such as number of leads
(ex: Yammer, Zendesk, Eventbrite). When companies really start using your
product, the features that make up a paid tier will become obvious and said
companies will be more than willing to pay up.

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cyberpanther
I definitely agree that you should have some kind of usage limitation so that
if the person doesn't decide in 30 days they can come back and try the product
still. However, what I've done for my product is given away the full product
for 3 weeks and then limit usage after that. What I've seen, is more people
buy my pro version instead of just the basic because they can test out all the
features. They can also still come back and test the product and aren't shut
out if they miss the time trial window.

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FollowSteph3
I look as the difference in your example that one suction cost $600 at the
initial stages. Which to me indicates that you're very price sensitive. Maybe
this is how the other company weeds out people who want to pay as little as
possible. They basically don't want to fund startups. It's just a different
business model.

Too many times I hear here people saying startups should charge more, get paid
for your efforts. But then if you do you're critized for being too expensive
for startups. So what's the option then?

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jimmaswell
I was expecting this to refer to how easily most software trials are bypassed.
Some simply by changing your clock, others require uninstallation and
reinstallation or change registry settings (I have yet to come across trial
software on linux), and some even go so far as to have rootkit behavior,
modifying your boot sector. For website services like this, it's trivial to
just use multiple accounts. Not that I'd want to do this, I just think it's an
interesting subject.

~~~
chc
If $20 is worth more to you than the hassle of creating a new account and
having to re-enter all your data every single month till the end of time, you
are probably not somebody the provider should be optimizing their sales
process for.

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rhapsodyv
I think the very big problem with trials is that the majority is not by day of
usage, but days in a row. So, when I really need to use, the trial has
expired.

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kaliblack
This is a good reminder to think creatively about trials. Would be great to
know what testing was done to show the 100 leads trial was the best.

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anthonyarroyo
The ____ is broken headline is broken.

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camus

        > However, more SaaS applications should also consider a usage limited trial.
    

it depends on the product , but for Saas that makes more sense. Even if the
offer is really limited. However , what i dont like is services that has a
free limited offer , but the first paid offer is just too expensive for those
who want an entry level but paid service.

