This is such a big one for me. At my previous workplace it was fairly low friction to try new tools. I'd often just sign up, start a trial, play around with it, and start trying to get people interested. Eventually we might realise it would solve some problems, we'd then start signing people up and getting data into it. But by that point the 15-30 day trial had inevitably expired.
I would often reach out to ask for trial extensions, and was always given these, but that's friction! One thing I loved about Linear was that the trial was pegged to the number of issues you created in it which meant we could take our time and work it into our processes without them dictating a schedule, then only when we were seeing value would we need to start paying.
More services, particularly B2B SaaS companies, need to figure out trials that aren't based on time. Some tools took >1 year to go from first person on the team signing up for a trial, to valuable use.
I've learn't a lot about this for my product[0]. Often teams deploy web apps multiple times a week (or day!) so having a time based trial works. For web extensions, some teams release once a week, others once a month and some a few times a year. When you're at the mercy of a review cycle (Chrome Web Store can take hours to days), it really impacts how rapidly you can release your work.
If I had a 2 week trial - those that submit web extensions to stores rarely wouldn't see the benefit of the product before their trial was over. I made it simple and capped it at 5 successful submissions. Success is important here because you can go through the review cycle 5 times ('5 failed submissions' - this number could change, but it works for now) and then your trial would be over. At the end of the day, regardless of how fast teams work, I want everyone to see the value under the same conditions.
I've worked at places that are focused on time trials because there's no practical way to limit the product in another sense that would give users time to fit in their workflow but also limit their actions enough to convert. Perhaps that's a failure of the scope of the product etc. but it works well enough for them.
Did you test conversion or is it your untested hypothesis that threat of cutting off a trial before so many valuable interactions converts worse than waiting on further use. You have a logic but unclear if it matches reality
Free tiers are hugely impactful for the cases you mention where people onboard is the limiting factor for value not time.
I find the really interesting part about free tiers is balancing both how much of your user base is monetizable and how much value you give in the free tier vs save for your higher tiers.
If you have a product that is valuable to an individual or small team, but only monetize at 5 people, you will miss out on being able to monetize a large percentage of your users.
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
I think this could make a good topic for our next article. Would love to hear others experiences and thoughts on free tiers vs free trials!
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
This is my experience when trying pick a read-it-later/bookmarking app. I’m currently using the free tier of raindrop.io and I don’t plan to upgrade at all. The only features I need is bookmark storage and highlights. I don’t think it’s too valuable, but it’s valuable enough to satisfy all I want from a bookmark manager.
When I used Instapaper and Pocket in the past, because of their limited number of highlights in the free tier, I found myself peeking at the pricing page constantly and pondering whether I should upgrade. I didn’t have enough money to pay for yet another subscription, but the pressure to upgrade is there. I think I even subscribed for a month or two.
My other thought is on the granularity of upgrades. Probably for simplicity, both for the users and developers, upgrades tend to limited to maybe 2-5 tiers with the base tier being free. Raindrop.io, Instapaper, and Pocket’s page on the premium tiers tend to list a lot of features but I find myself skipping through most of them. When I see that list, I know they’re charging me for the whole feature set when I only need one or two. As a result, I’m quite hesitant to subscribe to any of them. The ratio of need vs offered is important to me; if those features were compiled into a checklist and I only check one or two, then I’m out of the premium funnel.
An example of decent intersection between what I need and what is being offered, is Tutanota’s private paid tier. Even though, there are still some features I don’t need, but the price is low enough that I can tolerate the feeling of not utilising my subscription enough. They also offer some other mini-upgrades and I can see why they’re an extension to the paid tier instead of being a part of it.
Comments
This is such a big one for me. At my previous workplace it was fairly low friction to try new tools. I'd often just sign up, start a trial, play around with it, and start trying to get people interested. Eventually we might realise it would solve some problems, we'd then start signing people up and getting data into it. But by that point the 15-30 day trial had inevitably expired.
I would often reach out to ask for trial extensions, and was always given these, but that's friction! One thing I loved about Linear was that the trial was pegged to the number of issues you created in it which meant we could take our time and work it into our processes without them dictating a schedule, then only when we were seeing value would we need to start paying.
More services, particularly B2B SaaS companies, need to figure out trials that aren't based on time. Some tools took >1 year to go from first person on the team signing up for a trial, to valuable use.
I've learn't a lot about this for my product[0]. Often teams deploy web apps multiple times a week (or day!) so having a time based trial works. For web extensions, some teams release once a week, others once a month and some a few times a year. When you're at the mercy of a review cycle (Chrome Web Store can take hours to days), it really impacts how rapidly you can release your work.
If I had a 2 week trial - those that submit web extensions to stores rarely wouldn't see the benefit of the product before their trial was over. I made it simple and capped it at 5 successful submissions. Success is important here because you can go through the review cycle 5 times ('5 failed submissions' - this number could change, but it works for now) and then your trial would be over. At the end of the day, regardless of how fast teams work, I want everyone to see the value under the same conditions.
I've worked at places that are focused on time trials because there's no practical way to limit the product in another sense that would give users time to fit in their workflow but also limit their actions enough to convert. Perhaps that's a failure of the scope of the product etc. but it works well enough for them.
0 - https://atriumapp.dev
Did you test conversion or is it your untested hypothesis that threat of cutting off a trial before so many valuable interactions converts worse than waiting on further use. You have a logic but unclear if it matches reality
I love it. Great product, looks like a good price, and I like the 5 successful submission trial, it makes complete sense.
Just a heads up: typo on your site of "Sumbission times"
Well said Dan!
Free tiers are hugely impactful for the cases you mention where people onboard is the limiting factor for value not time.
I find the really interesting part about free tiers is balancing both how much of your user base is monetizable and how much value you give in the free tier vs save for your higher tiers.
If you have a product that is valuable to an individual or small team, but only monetize at 5 people, you will miss out on being able to monetize a large percentage of your users.
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
I think this could make a good topic for our next article. Would love to hear others experiences and thoughts on free tiers vs free trials!
This is my experience when trying pick a read-it-later/bookmarking app. I’m currently using the free tier of raindrop.io and I don’t plan to upgrade at all. The only features I need is bookmark storage and highlights. I don’t think it’s too valuable, but it’s valuable enough to satisfy all I want from a bookmark manager.
When I used Instapaper and Pocket in the past, because of their limited number of highlights in the free tier, I found myself peeking at the pricing page constantly and pondering whether I should upgrade. I didn’t have enough money to pay for yet another subscription, but the pressure to upgrade is there. I think I even subscribed for a month or two.
My other thought is on the granularity of upgrades. Probably for simplicity, both for the users and developers, upgrades tend to limited to maybe 2-5 tiers with the base tier being free. Raindrop.io, Instapaper, and Pocket’s page on the premium tiers tend to list a lot of features but I find myself skipping through most of them. When I see that list, I know they’re charging me for the whole feature set when I only need one or two. As a result, I’m quite hesitant to subscribe to any of them. The ratio of need vs offered is important to me; if those features were compiled into a checklist and I only check one or two, then I’m out of the premium funnel.
An example of decent intersection between what I need and what is being offered, is Tutanota’s private paid tier. Even though, there are still some features I don’t need, but the price is low enough that I can tolerate the feeling of not utilising my subscription enough. They also offer some other mini-upgrades and I can see why they’re an extension to the paid tier instead of being a part of it.