The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

Test against your own audience, but I would bet heavily against the conclusion "Usage limited trials outperform free trials" for the majority of SaaS apps. Dropbox's case is different with a capital D because the trial/invite mechanic is code to their viral adoption.

One powerful reason why you generally want to avoid having a meter running is you are really making two related but distinct sales: you are trying to convince them to pay, yes, but you are also trying to convince them to use your thing versus their existing way of doing business. That is often the harder sale. Putting a marginal cost, even in free quota, for using your thing puts friction in the adoption process, which you KEENLY do not want.

While it may be the case as a bootstrapped entrepreneur that your business has not yet spent the sum of $600 on everything put together, the overwhelming majority of businesses are not like you. Many businesses will spend $600 today on one line item, for instance virtually any company which employs 3 or more college graduates. Many of these businesses also have habits with regards to buying software which are more beneficial to SaaS companies than your habits are, for example a) having predictable positive ROI on integration costs and b) never attempting to optimize for $150 expenses by switching providers on a whim.

Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration, setup, training, or data import.

I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's not always the right solution.

It sounds like the author is complaining that some products aren't priced right for people who aren't willing to pay for them. If you don't have much money, you can't afford nice things. The 30 day free trial isn't broken just because you can't afford the end product.

That's like saying a free test drive on a Ferrari is broken because you can't afford it. You knew you couldn't afford it when you took the test drive. Would it be better if they never let you have the test drive simply because you couldn't afford it?

I couldn't disagree more. I've done 30 day trials and unlimited Free plans. Free plans convert much less often and require much more user support time.

Now, do I think a bootstrapped startup should seek out free plans and betas? Of course. Just dont do that with your app.

A survey we ran at https://starthq.com confirms the points the post brings up. We are looking to add pricing and trial duration info to our SaaS directory, but I was wondering: what does everyone think would be the best way to display this information & how should we go about collecting this data?

When it comes to displaying the info, I was thinking of using two sets of tags, one for the pricing model, i.e. "Free", "Freemium" or "Trial" and the other for the starting price per month once you do start paying: "<$5", "<$10", "<$20" etc. perhaps with an option to say that you pay per use such as when sending transaction emails or infrastructure.

As for collecting the data: the only thing I can think of is that we either do it ourselves, which would be time consuming for the 700+ apps we've got in the directory, or get the SaaS providers to register and do it themselves. Perhaps there's some way to automate this or crowd source it, but I can't seem to think of anything sensible.

I find myself in two conditions.

One is that I really need the product RIGHT NOW in which case I am going to pull out the credit card.

The other is that it's one of the many things I'd like to evaluate someday and sure let's start that 30 day trial but there are so many other things I need to do RIGHT NOW that I never get around to finishing it.

A usage-based trial is really just the same thing as a time-based trial. There is a certain pace at which users are going to use up their usage quota, and that translates to a time period. Generally, though, you want the time period to end after the user has seen the benefits and before they have exhausted their initial enthusiasm or encountered any bugs. Giving a user four months to make their choice probably puts you on the wrong end of all those considerations.

After the time-based trial, there are going to be different packages based on different usage quotas anyway. KISSmetrics is probably catering to very different and more established customers than the author, and their pricing model is structured accordingly.

30 day trials are prospect-hostile because they force customers onto the service provider's timeline, not the prospects. That said, I'm sure time-limited trials do force the decisioning process in a way freemium does not.

My opinion on SaaS plans is that the no/low-cost plan should be more or less fully functioning, without even some sort of limit such as number of leads (ex: Yammer, Zendesk, Eventbrite). When companies really start using your product, the features that make up a paid tier will become obvious and said companies will be more than willing to pay up.

I definitely agree that you should have some kind of usage limitation so that if the person doesn't decide in 30 days they can come back and try the product still. However, what I've done for my product is given away the full product for 3 weeks and then limit usage after that. What I've seen, is more people buy my pro version instead of just the basic because they can test out all the features. They can also still come back and test the product and aren't shut out if they miss the time trial window.

I look as the difference in your example that one suction cost $600 at the initial stages. Which to me indicates that you're very price sensitive. Maybe this is how the other company weeds out people who want to pay as little as possible. They basically don't want to fund startups. It's just a different business model.

Too many times I hear here people saying startups should charge more, get paid for your efforts. But then if you do you're critized for being too expensive for startups. So what's the option then?

I was expecting this to refer to how easily most software trials are bypassed. Some simply by changing your clock, others require uninstallation and reinstallation or change registry settings (I have yet to come across trial software on linux), and some even go so far as to have rootkit behavior, modifying your boot sector. For website services like this, it's trivial to just use multiple accounts. Not that I'd want to do this, I just think it's an interesting subject.

I think the very big problem with trials is that the majority is not by day of usage, but days in a row. So, when I really need to use, the trial has expired.

This is a good reminder to think creatively about trials. Would be great to know what testing was done to show the 100 leads trial was the best.

The ____ is broken headline is broken.

    > However, more SaaS applications should also consider a usage limited trial.

it depends on the product , but for Saas that makes more sense. Even if the offer is really limited. However , what i dont like is services that has a free limited offer , but the first paid offer is just too expensive for those who want an entry level but paid service.