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Comment by ben509 | Hacker News Reader

I think trials can be improved for services where you can discern whether the user is directly interacting with it. You give them 100 days of usage, and then decrement a counter when they interact with the site the first time each day.

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BeyondCompare does this and I've been slowing decrementing my 30 day usage trial for almost a year. I'm likely going to buy when it gets near zero but I use it so infrequently it just hasn't caused justification to purchase. But if it wasn't for this extended usage decrement counter id have likely just gone with something else after 30 day trial of using it but 1 day

Used beyond compare heavily at a previous company... when I got to amazon I immediately expensed it. I use it about 30-50 times a year but it's definitely worth a buck each time I need it.

(edit, removed indefinite pronoun)

Tangent, but BeyondCompare is one of the few tools I'm proud to have purchased. I use it all the time for file and folder diff. It has been invaluable for me and my work on both Windows and macOS.

This would be ideal for me. I might not need to use your project every day, so only giving me 14 days that count down from my sign up is not ideal.

Also, please don't send multiple "You've only got X-N days left in your plan!" pressure-to-convert emails.

I'm not a big fan of that. You disincentive usage.

Daily quota is the way to go. Amazon free micro instances are a perfect example. Enough to build. Not enough to go to production.

For some things it could work. For something like Asana, Notion or Raindrop.io, I wouldn't invest time on it them...

This would be great. I never bought AudioMulch back in the day because I installed the free trial, forgot about it, then when I was ready to evaluate it it started blaring incredibly loud voice messages saying "It's time to pay." I immediately closed and uninstalled it.

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