Paid Trial > Free Trial

Startups are leaving money on the table.

Often when selling a product, the idea of a free trial seems great.

“People can try out our product!”

“We can get valuable feedback!”

But — offering free trials is one of the biggest mistakes startups make.

There are B2C, B2B, and B2G businesses.

Free trials and free products can work in B2C — but never in B2B or B2G. Why?

In sales, free trials result in a substantial amount of time being wasted.

Marketing, business development, and sales spend time on closing users… just for them to enter a free trial and maybe open their wallets a month later.

That’s valuable time you could be using to generate revenue.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with trials… as long as they are the right type.

The best type of trial to run is a 30-day paid trial.

Meaning users pay upfront and if in the next 30 days they decide they don’t like your product, they can cancel and get their money back.

It seems similar on the surface — in both cases, users can cancel trials for full refunds.

But the difference is revenue generated/money in your pocket, versus nothing.

By charging upfront, you eliminate non-serious users.

If users are not willing to pay upfront with a satisfaction guarantee but want a free trial,

they are not getting value from your product.

These are not users you would want anyway.