Just wanted to chime in: free plans are for venture businesses that benefit from network affinity (the classic example being dropbox).
I'd also like to note two things:
1) if you want to charge more, tell a better story
2) if you want to charge more, take features out of your product
Those two axioms are usually true and apply pretty generally to SaaS businesses.
At 2600hz we started with free plans and then realized the headache, now we mostly do paid support (there's a lot of free-ness because we're open-source anyways).
Generally though, I'd recommend against free trials. They just waste a lot of your time with tire kickers.
I'd also like to note two things:
1) if you want to charge more, tell a better story
2) if you want to charge more, take features out of your product
Those two axioms are usually true and apply pretty generally to SaaS businesses.
At 2600hz we started with free plans and then realized the headache, now we mostly do paid support (there's a lot of free-ness because we're open-source anyways).
Generally though, I'd recommend against free trials. They just waste a lot of your time with tire kickers.