[bigblind]

The company I work for does it this way: you sign up without a CC, and you get access to an environment that has all the features, but you're not allowed to use it in prod, and it shows a "you're using this product in test mode" banner on the widget. Maybe that's something you could consider.

[fengjiabo2400]

Thanks for the suggestion - think it might be a valid approach for us.

I saw that "...works 100% identical in production and development mode, except that we don't backup the data from development apps nearly as often" - so does this mean you don't really prevent users from using it in prod if they want to, but just warm them that this may result in loss of data and therefore is not recommended?

[bigblind]

Well, we do actively say that you're not allowed to use it in production, and we have the banner to try and discourage it, but we also actively look for suspicious usage patterns on dev accounts.

[fengjiabo2400]

Aha that makes sense. Thanks for sharing this tip!