Free trial tactics

Before: monthly and annual shown side by side. Variant: only the annual plan shown up front, with a Blinkist-style timeline above it: Day 1 you get your personalized plan; Day 7 your plan adapts to you; Day 12, before the 14-day free trial ends, 'we'll send you a reminder' and you can cancel anytime. Monthly is reachable via a 'view all plans' link. Price and positioning unchanged; UI-only change.

'Design your trial' soft paywall: two annual plans with different App Store Connect introductory offers, so the choice is the trial, not the plan length. Option A: free trial (3 or 7 days). Option B: 30-day pay-up-front intro offer at $3.99-$5.99 (seen $7.99 work; $2.99 or lower fails). CTA text changes with the selection ('Redeem 3 days for $0' / '30 days for $4.99'); show the renewal annual price (even in the plan selectors, performs just as well); update the timeline for the paid trial; still send a reminder near day 28. Often combined with the multi-page paywall.

Two yearly options on the paywall: yearly at $59.99 with a 7-day free trial, and a paid intro offer of $1.99 for the first 30 days that renews at the $59.99 yearly price, replacing the monthly plan. Steve says it works well for most clients; Resumee uses it too.

Multi-page paywall; first pages constant ('Learn to speak a new language with Pingo. We'll remind you 2 days before your trial ends' + timeline). Test page copy that won: 'Today, you unlock Pingo. In 5 days, you get a reminder and you'll be charged, and try it for free', annual shown with a weekly equivalent. Lost to it: 'Join over 3 million learners' with a real review, ratings and 'No commitment. Cancel anytime'; and a monthly-vs-yearly side-by-side. Intro-offer version: 'one-time offer for 55% off' with the same trial timeline beat the old 'one-time offer' page. Idea borrowed from a Superwall podcast.

A/B tested a priming screen right before the paywall with the mascot bee: 'We want you to try Sunflower for free. We'll remind you before your trial ends,' then shows the paywall. Addresses trial anxiety. Tested a couple of versions of the screen.

Copied from ReciMe. At the end of onboarding: a feature video, then screen 1 'We offer 7 days for free', screen 2 'You'll get a reminder 2 days before your trial ends', then the push-notification permission prompt, then the paywall. Best with a yearly plan defaulted with a 7-day trial; tried on a weekly plan with a 3-day trial and it worked less well.

Anyone who dismisses the onboarding paywall still gets 7 days of premium (widgets, live activities, delay alerts). A post-onboarding flow lets them customize notifications and theme, and a Pro button (top right) offers video tutorials. Day 5: push 'you're on day five of your 7-day trial, tap to learn about the features'. Day 7: final push with a discount (on annual). Works because costs are mostly fixed servers; AI apps with per-user costs may prefer ads to cover free users.

Purchase pages explain the mechanics: 'this is a seven day free trial; on day five we'll send you a notification to see if you still want your subscription.'

Iterated purchase button copy in A/B tests: 'Subscribe' (baseline) -> 'Start my free trial' (big uplift) -> 'Try for free' (better) -> 'Try for $0.00' (best; believed live). Part of ~400 concurrent A/B tests, many on the purchase flow.

Each post centers on a video demo of one feature, wrapped in a problem-solution or story frame: 'me or my friend was facing this problem, so I built this feature to solve it. See, this is how it works. If you want to try, you can try it for 30 days for free. I'm just looking for feedback...'. Show, don't tell; explain the reasoning like talking to adults, no blatant self-promotion. Used to test the new Super Brain feature, whose feedback and feature requests made it the primary feature. Expect hate and bans; keep backup accounts and develop thick skin.

3-screen paywall for a 3-day trial. Screen 1: 'We want you to try Claim for free', with visuals of settlements you could claim. Screen 2: 'We'll send you a reminder before your trial ends', button 'Try for $0'. Screen 3 (main): repeats the reminder, shows a today / reminder / billing timeline, a 'free trial' badge on the plan card. The annual plan is not called annual: the card says 'Try it free' and shows '$59.99 per year, only $1 per week'; the CTA says 'Try for free'. The trial length appears only in the timeline, not on the plan card, to avoid 'I must remember to cancel in 3 days' anxiety. Free is mentioned 5-7 times in total.

Paid ads (with a paywall and RevenueCat) from the first week on the App Store to get a steady ~100 downloads a day. Dropped other goals and focused on one metric: Day 8 ROAS, chosen because the 7-day free trial converts by day 8, so a change shipped Monday is readable 8 days later. Tested with small spend until there was a path to 100%, then scaled. Every week review last week's D8 ROAS: above 100% expand budgets, below 100% cut back until back at 100%. No growth target or marketing budget: revenue reinvested on the 8-day cycle. Started with simple spend this week vs revenue 8 days later; moved to install-week cohorts (D8 and D30) once late conversions skewed numbers.