14-day trial vs 7-day: more trial starts, fewer paid users
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA wellness app tested a 14-day free trial against its 7-day trial and got slightly more trial starts but fewer paid conversions, so it went back to 7 days.
Daphne Tideman ran the A/B test and wrote about it on the RevenueCat blog. No numbers were shared.
- Trial starts: slightly higher with 14 days.
- Paid conversions: lower with 14 days. This is the metric that decided the test, and the longer trial lost.
- Activation did not improve: users did not watch more content, they put it off.
- No figures, sample size or duration were shared.
The change
Same paywall, 7-day trial vs 14-day trial
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
A 7-day free trial.
Variant
A 14-day free trial, chosen to match the app's activation window: users who watched two long-form pieces (about 45 minutes each) within 14 days tended to retain.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A longer trial made it easy to delay, so users postponed the content that predicts retention.
- The deadline of a 7-day trial likely pushed people to act sooner.
- Lining the trial up with the activation window only helps if users actually use the extra time.
Caveats: No numbers, sample size or duration were given.
Who ran it
Daphne Tideman ran this test. Source: RevenueCat blog. The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
How to run this test on your app
- Hypothesis
- If we extend the trial from 7 to 14 days to match our activation window, then more users will activate and convert because they have time to experience the core value.
- Primary metric
- Trial-to-paid conversion and revenue per trial start
- Guardrails
- Activation rate during the trial
- Retention after first renewal
- Trial start rate
- Who should test it
- Apps whose value takes more than a week to show, such as weekly-cadence or long-content products. Apps where users tend to procrastinate may see what happened here; a short trial with a clear goal could work better.
Questions
Should trial length match the activation window?
It's a sensible starting idea, but test it.
In this app the longer trial didn't raise activation, because users delayed instead.
Why can more trial starts be a bad sign?
Trial starts are a leading metric. If those extra trials don't convert, you've added users who were never going to pay, and fewer of the rest paid too.
What should decide a trial-length test?
Revenue per user over time, retention and engagement, not trial start rate.