Unlimited duration free trials in SaaS
More SaaS apps should do unlimited-duration, usage-based free trials.
If your product is good, you want to maximize the chance that people actually reach the “aha moment” before they hit a paywall.
The biggest reason to do strict time-based trials is to create a sense of urgency – especially if you have a real sales process.
But many apps would benefit from giving users more of a chance to see value before getting locked out. Especially if their process is fully self-serve.
Usage-based trials do take some care in choosing what to count. For example, Alex MacCaw ran into this while building a usage-based trial for Reflect:
One of the hard parts of doing a usage based trial at Reflect is what to do about imports. As soon as you import your existing notes you blow past the trial limits.
My suggestion was to count real usage rather than raw totals:
Replying to @maccaw
Probably would have the same effect if you did “new notes created via UI” vs total notes. Alternatively: number of days actively writing notes. (Solves issue of people’s trial running out without really trying it much)
And even if you do have a time-based trial, you should automatically give expired trials and canceled customers another chance later. We did this at Close, and it helped a lot. I wrote about it back in 2015:
A common pattern in SaaS apps is to allow a free trial period of 2 weeks or 1 month, and then to require a credit card to use it any longer. Either out of curiosity or out of a…
Phil Freo · August 7, 2015