I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of their free tier.

Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow people to tinker around as much as they want? I see no negatives to having an unlimited trial, and then simply charge to remove the '24hr binary' restriction.

As it is, the little free time I had over those 30 days to play with Xamarin equated to around 5 hours, most of which was going through the tutorials and sample apps (which you cant use in the free mode). I certainly haven't experienced enough to commit to a purchase, and now I likely never will.

I spoke with one of your colleagues about this. He offered me 20% discount on the business tier if I purchased iOS and Android (~$1600 'value') within 4 days... All i wanted to do was evaluate the damn thing...

I think what you are doing is great, but please try and apply some common sense to your evaluations.