Welcome to my world. We're in year 5 and no amount of checking for multiple signups by IP, block/spam/burner email lists, captchas, questionnaires, email confirmation, oauth logins (google, facebook) helps. Multiple signups for free stuff come from students, whole universities (we found our service listed in several curriculum with "just sign up for free") and Fortune 500 companies. Record was a user with 100 accounts. Written warnings works somewhat but also get ignored regularly. After IP blocks our last defense is returning fake data.
While frustrating we see it was daily business to block some users. Overall it costs us time but rarely lost revenue. Those users willing to register 10 accounts don't convert to paid accounts much.
Free trials requiring credit card will help, it's more work to setup and will lower the number of signups.
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Welcome to my world. We're in year 5 and no amount of checking for multiple signups by IP, block/spam/burner email lists, captchas, questionnaires, email confirmation, oauth logins (google, facebook) helps. Multiple signups for free stuff come from students, whole universities (we found our service listed in several curriculum with "just sign up for free") and Fortune 500 companies. Record was a user with 100 accounts. Written warnings works somewhat but also get ignored regularly. After IP blocks our last defense is returning fake data.
While frustrating we see it was daily business to block some users. Overall it costs us time but rarely lost revenue. Those users willing to register 10 accounts don't convert to paid accounts much.
Free trials requiring credit card will help, it's more work to setup and will lower the number of signups.
Well, there are instances in our case who are paid users now.
We are operating the service under 50% margin after op cost - our closest competitor in price, charges 2-5x to ours.
I'm afraid (at least at this point of time) to put the CC requirement upfront. I may eventually go for it, if we bleed more.
Thanks for sharing your experience