[PaulHoule]

I find it is very rare that I actually complete a free trial, particularly for something I use for software development at work.

(1) It takes a lot of effort, maybe one day to one week, to really evaluate a product and know if it is worth it.

(2) That evaluation will feel like wasted time if, at the end, I find the product isn't worthwhile

(3) It will also feel like wasted time if I decide I like it but my employer decides not to pay for it.

If somebody gets paid $100,000 a year and spends a week evaluating something, the "free" trial costs $2000.

Thus I am not a believer in free trials.

[jaclaz]

>If somebody gets paid $100,000 a year and spends a week evaluating something, the "free" trial costs $2000.

But out of curiosity, what is the alternative?

Blindly buying (or subscribing to) something because it looks cool in a 5 minute overview of its features?

And how would you convince your employer to pay for it?

[tgflynn]

If it takes you 40 work hours to evaluate a product then it must be a tool that is central to your workflow, but in that case you're going to have to evaluate it somehow whether, it's free, free trial or paid.

[PaulHoule]

Yes, and that has all sorts of implications for why marketing can be so hard.

Imagine that somebody expects to evaluate 4 products, either because the first 3 won't make the cut, or because they won't feel like they did enough "due diligence".

It may be a safer bet to develop something in house than to spend a lot of time evaluating alternatives. All of the alternative products have a lot more development time in them, but odds are you don't need all the features those products have, UI refinement, etc. You don't have to worry that a vendor will be bought by Google.

[tgflynn]

Ah, yes, I see what you mean. That's probably one reason software developers (at least experienced ones) tend not to make good customers.