30-day premium trial next to a free plan: more paid upgrades
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a 30-day free trial of the premium business plan, alongside the existing unlimited free plan, increased paid conversions with a low cancellation rate. emaze, an online presentation software company, made the change, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study.
No numbers were shared, and this was a before-and-after change described by the company's CMO, not a split test.
- Paid conversions: increased, according to the CMO. No figure was given.
- Cancellation rate on the trial: described as low, also with no figure.
- Treat this as a directional signal only, since it was not a controlled test.
The change
The variant offers a 30-day free trial of the paid plan, not just an upgrade.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
emaze offered an unlimited free plan. To try the premium business features, users had to pay first.
Variant
emaze added a 30-day free trial of the premium business plan next to the free plan, so business users could try the paid features before buying.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Business prospects said they wanted to try the premium features but would not pay just to test them. A free plan with fewer features did not answer that.
- A time-limited trial lets buyers see what the paid plan adds, which a permanent free plan can hide.
- Business users can often pay on a company card as soon as the trial proves its value.
Caveats: No numbers were reported, and the result rests on the CMO's account of a before-and-after change. emaze was also segmenting users and changing its upgrade emails around the same time.
Who ran it
Emaze ran this test and published the results (MarketingSherpa case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Emaze →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we offer a time-limited free trial of our paid plan alongside the free plan, then more business users will upgrade because they can test the premium features before paying.
- Primary metric
- Free-to-paid conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Trial cancellation or refund rate
- Revenue per new account
- Free plan sign-ups
- Who should test it
- Freemium SaaS products where the paid plan's value is hard to judge from the free plan. It may not help if your free plan already shows most of the paid value, or if your buyers need a sales demo anyway.
Questions
Can you offer a free plan and a free trial at the same time?
Yes. emaze kept an unlimited free plan and added a 30-day trial of the paid plan for users who wanted to test premium features.
Is freemium or a free trial better for SaaS?
It depends on how easy it is to see the paid value.
A free plan builds reach, while a trial lets buyers test the features they would pay for. Some products use both.
How long should a SaaS free trial be?
emaze used 30 days. The right length is long enough for a buyer to reach the key value, so test it against your own activation data.