# No free trial and six paid tiers: LTV per payer $35–40 to $60+

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Paywall (App)
- Elements: Free trials, Plans
- Date shared: 2024-11
- Test run by: [David Vargas](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/david-vargas/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/should-your-app-stop-offering-free-trials/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/anonymized-app-remove-free-trial/

A new subscription app removed its free trial and moved to six paid tiers, and LTV per paying customer rose from $35–40 to over $60 within a month. David Vargas, who managed the app's paid campaigns, ran the change and wrote it up on the RevenueCat blog. It was a before/after switch with new pricing, not a split test.

## Result

**LTV per paying customer $35–40 → over $60 in one month**

- LTV per paying customer: from $35–40 to over $60 in about a month, close to double.
- New trials fell to zero, as expected, and paid campaigns moved from optimizing for trials to optimizing for purchases.
- The author expects cost per acquisition to rise on purchase-optimized campaigns. No CPA or conversion figures were shared.
- Before the change the app had a 15.5% start rate and 37.9% conversion rate.

## Control

A simple paywall with two plans: a yearly plan with no trial and a weekly plan with a free trial. The setup matched competitors in the niche.

## Variant

A paywall with six tiers and no free trial: three monthly and three yearly options that differed by features. The yearly prices were higher than the old yearly plan.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Users ready to pay did so up front, instead of churning out of a weekly trial.
- Monthly tiers were priced to beat four weekly renewals on LTV, and yearly prices went up.
- Ad platforms learned to find buyers rather than trial starters.

## Caveats

A before/after switch over about two months (Nov–Dec 2024), not a split test, and pricing and plan structure changed at the same time. LTV per payer can rise while the number of payers falls, and CPA likely went up.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we remove the free trial and offer feature-based monthly and yearly tiers, then LTV per paying customer will rise because committed users pay sooner on higher-value plans.
- Primary metric: LTV per install (and per paying customer)
- Guardrail: Install-to-paid conversion
- Guardrail: Cost per acquisition
- Guardrail: Refund rate
- Who should test it: Paid-acquisition apps in crowded niches where trials draw many non-payers and you need LTV to cover ad spend. Apps whose value needs time to show, or that grow organically, may lose more payers than they gain.

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Credit: David Vargas ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/anonymized-app-remove-free-trial/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.