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.

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.

Onboarding order: choose language -> paywall 1 -> onboarding screens -> three trial-explainer screens ('try for free', 'we'll send you a reminder', 'here's how your free trial works') -> paywall 2. Paywall 1: soft paywall, close X delayed 3 seconds, weekly (slightly cheaper) + yearly plans, no trial. Paywall 2: 3-day free trial on the weekly plan, yearly at the same price as paywall 1, social proof at the bottom. Previously there was only one paywall, which carried the trial.

After many A/B tests on price and free trials, landed on a simple soft paywall with minimal onboarding (utility app, no emotional build-up): $59.99 lifetime and $39.99/year with a 3-day free trial.

Tested reducing the free trial from two weeks to seven days in several combinations with how many trials a user is eligible for. Beyond conversion, the shorter trial means experiment readouts come in 7 days instead of 14, so losing tests are killed sooner and more tests run per quarter.

Curiosity Quench originally sold confusing 'Quench credits' in a shop that users had to find themselves. Jack first added a RevenueCat paywall, which he found clunky and hard to customize, then moved to Superwall templates (adding his logo, colors and one asset) with a free-trial option. Over 3-4 months he tested headers, copy and which features to gate, looking at dollars per user.

The app was freemium for a long time. A toggle mistake on New Year's Eve made it a hard paywall for a couple of hours; conversions spiked with few complaints. They then made it trial-first: to use the app you must start a Pro free trial; if you cancel, you get the free version after the trial expires.

Launched a free-for-life plan and put it front and center everywhere, including ads ('free-for-life ads'), to attract very small price-sensitive maid services who may pay later. Everyone goes through the same signup requiring credit card details, even for the free plan, and gets a 14-day trial with all paid features before choosing.

Replaced a single hard paywall with a multi-step paywall: the product is free forever, but users are invited to try the best version free for 7 days, then asked to keep paying for it. Rolled out with other pricing and packaging optimizations. Phil warns it only suits highly retentive products; hard paywall is right for most apps.

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.

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.