# 30-day money-back guarantee instead of a free trial: higher LTV

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Paywall (App)
- Elements: Free trials
- Date shared: 2025-05
- Test run by: [Teaching.com](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/teaching-com/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/teaching-com-tim-dikun-sub-club-podcast/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/teaching-com-money-back-guarantee-vs-trial/

Teaching.com replaced the free trial in its web funnel with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and revenue and LTV went up even though conversion dipped slightly. COO Tim Dikun shared the result on the Sub Club podcast, published on the RevenueCat blog. No figures were given.

## Result

**Slightly lower conversion; higher revenue and LTV**

- Conversion rate: slightly lower. This is a negative on the top-line metric.
- Revenue and LTV: higher, so the drop in conversion was more than made up for.
- Refunds: few users asked for one.
- No exact figures were shared for any of these.

## Control

The web funnel offered a free trial before the first charge.

## Variant

No free trial. Users paid up front, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Every buyer pays on day one, so there is no trial-to-paid drop-off.
- Tim Dikun's view: sending only paid conversions back to ad networks lets their algorithms find more high-intent users.
- Those buyers were higher quality and stayed longer, which raised LTV.

## Caveats

No figures, sample size or duration were shared. The test ran in a web funnel, so in-app results may differ.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we replace the free trial with a 30-day money-back guarantee, then revenue per user will rise because every buyer pays up front and ad networks learn from paying users.
- Primary metric: Revenue or LTV per visitor
- Guardrail: Conversion to purchase
- Guardrail: Refund rate
- Guardrail: Chargebacks
- Who should test it: Apps that sell through a web funnel with paid ads and a trusted brand. It may not suit apps where users need to try the product before they believe it works.

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Credit: Teaching.com ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/teaching-com-money-back-guarantee-vs-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.