Ask HN: What to do about free trial abuse?

First, take a deep breath and remember the rule of internet. If something is available for free, people WILL find it, use it and abuse it. Don't beat yourself too much for it.

"I'm reluctant to jump in and accuse them of abusing the free trial"

No, don't be reluctant. Reach out to them with a kind email saying that their trial period has expired and they need to switch to a paid account. Alternatively, offer them an extended trial period using same account if you think they may give you business BUT do not let them abuse the trial system. Here is how I will do it:

"Hi xyz. We noticed that you created a trial account using username abc for your company. We wanted to reach out and ask if someone from your company has created another trial account after the expiry of the first one (This way, you are not directly accusing but smartly letting them know). We are happy to give you an extension of trial period if you need but as per our terms and conditions, you are not allowed to create multiple trial accounts for same company. If you have any questions on this, I will be happy to assist"

Another way to think about this. Perhaps this client needs more time to evaluate the product and hence give them the benefit of the doubt at first. They continue to use the product actively which means they definitely like something about it. This could be good news for you. Take this opportunity to reach out to them and have a conversation. You never know what will happen.

> I definitely want to say something, but not sure how to broach it,

This is the key part. What do you really want to achieve?

1. Win this client - make them love both your product and your company and turn them into paying customers?

2. Admonish this client - let them know that they did wrong and that they should correct their "bad behavior"?

You have already made a good impression - your product is useful for at least 2 people in this company. So you can reinforce this positive experience by demonstrating that your customer care is as good as the product itself. My suggestion: grab the phone and call those 2 guys who are already familiar with the app. Ask them about their experiences and willingness to continue using it. Diagnose possible barriers, doubts, needs etc. Just show them that you are awesome.

If they are really abusing you, you can always send them cold, corrective email later. It actually won't change much, but it will make you feel better. Good luck!

Nice that you have a large agency as a captive audience to close the deal on for the next 20 days or so.

Step 1: I would start by adding a message at the top of the agency side of the login.

Sign up for an annual agency plan so all your employees can have their own account. Click Here To Sign Up. Your Free Trial ends in 20 days. (You can change the message, track clicks on the sign up button/link, send them to a custom landing page with their company name)

Step 2: On the portions of the App where their clients login/view pages. Add a small notice. XYZ company your free trial ends in 20 days. (display this on the agency pages as well in the same way, on those pages include a link to upgrade their account, you could even personalize it, make it easy to upgrade, just the cc info.)

Step 3: Try to reach out to the two email addresses and give them an offer of a deal on an agency annual plan (Subscribe to our annual agency plan before the end of your trial and get two months free and all your employees can have their own login and use our service for unlimited clients.)

Step 4: Depending on how your app works could you show them some metrics on their dashboard of how often their client is logging in or you've shared XX documents or they were viewed XX times by your clients, etc to show them the value of your app)

As others have mentioned it is a good idea to re-visit your terms and conditions make sure it includes restrictions on multiple free trials for the same company and/or domain.

Interesting situation. Good luck getting them to sign up. Let us know how it works out.

You don't have a large agency signed up, you have an individual at a large agency. Maybe they're junior and don't have purchase authorization? Maybe they are evaluating alternative products? Maybe it takes months for them to get a purchase order approved and they just needed something right away?

Two consecutive trials seems fairly light in terms of abuse. If the service is useful and they start using it with more clients, it'll quickly become impossible to continue the trial abuse - they'll either sign up or go away.

If your company is small enough that you notice (and get annoyed by) one user running two consecutive trials, it's small enough that you can reach out to the individual(s) involved and try to turn them into evangelists for your service inside their large agency. Or if they are knowingly abusing the service, the personal e-mail may put them off.

This is how the agency I'm at discovered and ended up paying for Bitbucket, BrowserStack, Trello, Slack, DeployHQ, etc. - someone on the dev team finds a new service, passes it up to his/her tech lead, who convinces management it's worth investing in the Enterprise plan when it becomes essential to the functioning of the company.

Before anything, you need to figure out why they aren't willing to pay you. Is this just a matter of a junior dev not having the ability to actually put a card on file or perhaps they haven't had enough time to actually test out your product and present it to their paying client.

I'd write an email something like this:

Hi XXXX,

Thanks so much for signing up again! It's normally against our policy to have two identical trial accounts so I've extended the free trial on your initial account so that you can continue using our service.

At [your company] we work very hard to provide value to our customers and I'd love to know what we could do to turn you into a paying customer when your trial expires.

Thanks, [you]

This gives them the opportunity to 1. make it seem like you're doing them a favor and 2. to let you know what the limitation on their side is.

Contact them and politely notify them the free trial period is for X days, their 2nd trial account will be disabled in 5 business days, and that you would be happy to help transition them to a paid account.

There's no need to "accuse them of abusing the free trial" system, just state the facts.

Worst case is they don't pay, which is exactly where you are at right now.

I agree with everyone saying that you cannot accuse them of abuse. Read your own fine print, see if you need to close any loopholes. If so, update the language, send out notifications of the policy change. If not, contact the company as others have suggested and say "Hey, maybe you don't realize it, you already used your free trial...etc."

I have seen research and repeatedly seen anecdotal evidence that larger companies do not hesitate to prey upon smaller ones. Smaller companies often either do not want to stand firm because they view the large company as a potential jackpot client and they don't want to offend them and drive them off or they don't have the expertise, legal team or other necessary power to successfully stand up to the bigger company and they get outmaneuvered and crapped on.

Please do not be a doormat. A big company that does not pay is not a customer. They are a parasite and there is no relationship to preserve. So while you don't want to be ugly about it and make enemies unnecessarily, you need to be proactive about finding an effective, diplomatic, enforceable solution. If you don't, big companies will not hesitate to bleed you and can readily become a threat to your very survival. So take this seriously as a problem that must be solved as quickly as possible.

Step 1: update your terms and conditions to say multiple trial accounts from the same company are only allowed to run for maximum 2 months total.

Step 2: wait a month

Step 3: if they do the same thing after this one runs out, send them friendly email.

Good thing is that they love your service and using it.

One way companies do free trials is collect full payment information upfront but won't charge anything until free trial expires. If user won't cancel proactively - charge starts.

Another way is to charge right away, but offer full 30 days, no questions asked refund upon request.

Third way is to manually chase free trial "abusers" to gently seduce them into paying. This may work better for larger accounts that needs special sales dance.

PS: Forth way which is actually quite effective is to offer non-trial, but limited functionality product. Carefully think about limitation - the approach that works best is something that allows customer to use all features of product right away but limitation gradually gets annoying to stimulate conversion to paid user.

Example: more data come in and non-paid version has limits,

or more sub-users signed up but non-paid version has limit of 5 users.

Quite often after offering this along the 30 days unconditional refund version will do the trick.

Slack's trick is getting companies hooked on their high quality product before having them pay up big time (eventually). Copy it if you can. It seems to work.

I think that's probably the right move. Often the people using a product don't have any authority to make a purchase.

In those cases management won't spend a dime until the employees can show the product is critical.

Don't lose energy chasing dropbeats. Instead, spend time thinking how you can make your product less prone to people outsmarting you.

Use dropbeats to test new features by forcing them to test them first. If they work, you will have more assurance when deploying to other paying customers. If they don't work, the exchange of emails will help you know each other better, that is employ your dropbeats as free testers.

If you need their business and see potential in having them pitch them a alternative enterprise price.

If it's causing a headache, time to man up and handle business.

Wait for the second trial to finish and the third to start on a new account before doing anything.