[programminggeek]

I'm currently thinking that for my next SAAS project it's going to be pay up front with a 30 day money back guarantee. I've done freemium and 30 day trials and the data I got early made me think that people would convert and they didn't even though they would use the product every day. Maybe my pricing was bad or my sales technique was terrible. I don't know.

What I do know is if you price something up front you'll know right away if your sales pitch works and if your pricing is remotely reasonable.

I know the conversion rate without a free trial won't be maybe as high, but when you are looking to just validate a product and a marketing strategy, you need to know if it will turn into real sales. You don't have to have a free trial to sell a product.

[nkozyra]

If people use it every day and aren't interested in upgrading, I'd look at it and say you offered too much to the free option.

You don't want something completely limiting, but you need a carrot there, and if you offer "enough" to a free user they'll lack an impetus to upgrade.

I don't think there's a lot of risk in changing the freemium terms down the road if that's the case.

[hagbardgroup]

This is a good compromise -- certainly better than the take-your-credit-card free trial that surprises you with a charge. 'Money back guarantee' has worked for a long time, particularly in pre-internet days.

[programminggeek]

What is really funny is when you think about it, we all buy things without trying them every single day. We make assumptions that a product will work or that it can be replaced/refunded when it doesn't.

Surprisingly, in the online world we think everything is different and that nobody buys things without a free trial of some kind, but over and over again I see products and services that sell without a free trial.

I think it's doing early stage products a disservice to assume you have to have a free trial to make money. When you are proving out if a product will sell, you need to know if people will pay you money for it, not if they are casually interested in trying it.

If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense.

[hagbardgroup]

The internet is similar to mail order but faster with a lot of tricky details (in the same way that mail and print have tons of tricky details). People don't change all that much.

'Free' gets you a lot of tire-kickers automatically, whereas a guarantee pre-qualifies the customers to the people who can afford to float you some cash. If they're a tire kicker, at least they're not a totally broke / budgetless tire kicker.

There are other free sweeteners that you can offer that aren't a free trial.