Free Trial
A time-limited or usage-limited period of full product access offered to let prospects experience value before paying.
Also known as: Trial period, Free trial offer, Try before you buy
Category: Business & Economics
Tags: businesses, marketing, pricing, products, conversion
Explanation
A free trial removes the risk of buying by letting people use the product first. It differs from freemium, where a limited tier persists indefinitely: a trial ends. The main design decisions are duration, whether a credit card is required upfront, whether the trial is time-limited or usage-limited, and how much hand-holding accompanies it. Requiring a card raises conversion rate among those who start but sharply reduces how many start; the right choice depends on whether your constraint is top-of-funnel volume or downstream quality. Duration should be set by time to value, not by convention. A fourteen-day trial for a product that takes three weeks to configure guarantees failure, while a ninety-day trial for a product that delivers value in an hour mostly delays the decision and lets urgency dissipate. Trials succeed or fail on activation: the measure that matters is not how many sign up but how many reach the moment where the product's value becomes obvious, which makes onboarding design the highest-leverage part of the trial.
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