Free trial
free TRY-ul
Time-limited access to a paid product. Users get full features for 7-30 days, then must pay or lose access.
A free trial gives users full access to your paid product for a limited time, typically 7 to 30 days. When the trial ends, they either pay or get downgraded. Unlike freemium, there is no permanent free tier. The clock is ticking from day one.
Trials work because they create urgency. The user invests time setting up, configuring, and building workflows. When the trial ends, switching costs make it easier to pay than to start over somewhere else. This is why enterprise SaaS companies love trials.
The key metric is trial-to-paid conversion rate. A healthy rate is 15-25% for self-serve products and 30-50% for sales-assisted products. If your conversion rate is below 10%, either your product is not delivering value during the trial or your onboarding is broken.
Examples
A 14-day trial for a developer platform.
Vercel offers a 14-day free trial of their Enterprise plan. During those two weeks, the platform team sets up custom domains, configures preview deployments for 50 repos, and connects their CI pipeline. By day 14, migrating away would take weeks. They pay.
A trial with credit card required upfront.
Netflix requires a credit card before the free trial starts. This filters out low-intent users. Trial-to-paid conversion jumps to 60%+ because only serious users sign up. The tradeoff: fewer trials started, but much higher conversion.
A trial without credit card.
Slack lets anyone create a workspace without a credit card. This maximizes trial starts (low friction) but conversion is lower. Slack compensates with aggressive in-app prompts as teams approach the 90-day message history limit on the free plan.
In practice
Read more on the blog
Frequently asked questions
How long should a free trial be?
Long enough for users to experience your core value. Simple tools: 7 days. Complex platforms: 14-30 days. Enterprise products: 30 days or custom. If most conversions happen in the first 3 days of a 30-day trial, shorten it. Dead time after value delivery reduces urgency.
Should I require a credit card for the trial?
Requiring a credit card increases trial-to-paid conversion (40-60% vs 15-25% without) but reduces trial starts by 50-80%. If your product needs time to show value, skip the credit card. If value is instant, require it.
Related terms
A pricing model where the base product is free and revenue comes from paid upgrades. The dominant model in developer tools.
A buying experience where customers sign up, configure, and pay without talking to a salesperson. Credit card in, product out.
A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion, and expansion through self-serve usage.
The amount of time it takes a new user to experience the core value of a product after signing up.
The process of guiding new users from signup to their first experience of product value.
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