Free Trial vs Paid Trial: Which is Best for Membership Sites

Do you want to know how a free trial vs paid trial compares?

Trial offers are everywhere: from streaming platforms to gyms to membership sites. But have you wondered why this is?

A trial membership creates a win-win opportunity for both you and your prospects. This marketing strategy allows your target audience to test your service at low or no cost while helping you increase sign-ups and conversions.

The goal of this strategy is to encourage long-term commitment from your prospect. To do this, you will need to clear their doubts about your site’s efficiency and get them to trust you.

Merely communicating your benefits in your marketing content is not enough. Some prospects require more than testimonials from your existing members to trust you. Creating a trial membership offer takes this a step further by giving them first-hand experience on the value of your site.

It also helps you reduce members’ unsubscription rates. During the trial period, your prospects also test if your service is a good fit for them long-term. This ensures that only quality leads sign up for full membership. Even if a prospect cancels their accounts after the trial period, you can continue to reach out via email and nurture them to conversion.

This article explores what to consider before offering a trial and the types of trial memberships.

By the end of this article, you will know which type of trial offers fit your membership site.

What to Consider Before Offering Trial Memberships

The success of your trial membership, whether free or paid, depends on certain factors. These include:

1. The duration of your trial period

This plays a controlling role in the success of your offer. The trial period should be long enough to establish interest in your full membership access but not too long that your prospect gets the full value without paying for the membership plans.

The best way to determine the suitable trial duration for your site is to identify how long it takes your members to experience the first benefit of your site after signup. If it takes them an average of 14 days, then your trial period can be between 12 to 16 days.

2. What you include or exclude from the offer

Some trial offers allow the client to access the full benefit of the site but for a limited period, while others create a separate membership plan with features.

If you run an e-learning membership site and the duration of your modules is short, such that your prospect can go through most of your resources within the trial period, then consider creating a separate membership plan for the trial.

What you include or exclude from the offer determines how long it will take for the client to benefit from your site, the trial’s duration, and the strategy’s success.

3. How you measure the success of your trials

The KPIs you monitor during the trial period determine the strategy’s success.

For instance, if you monitor the rate of signups for your trial and leave out the number of signups that led to a paid membership, you will accumulate more trial members than paid members.

To calculate your trial conversion rate, use this formula:

Trial conversion rate = number of trial-to-paid users/number of trial users.

For trial offers that give full access to all features for a limited time, a reasonable conversion rate is 8%-12%, while a great rate is 15%-25%.

For freemium offers that create a free membership plan that runs simultaneously with its paid plans, a good rate is between 5%-7%, while a great rate is between 10%-15%.

The reason for the decrease in the freemium offer compared to the limited trial offer is the sense of urgency the latter creates.

Best Trial Offers for Membership Sites: Free Trial Vs Paid Trial

When exploring trial offers, you can choose two options: a free trial that gives your prospects limited or unlimited access to your membership features for free or a paid trial that gives them access for a reduced free.

Both trial options can improve your signups, but which works best?

How Does Free Trial Work?

The goal of this strategy is to gather as many signups as possible. To do this, you remove the risk of using your service by offering it for free.

There are two ways free trials work;

1. Opt-out free trial: Although the service is free, the client has to provide their payment details before signing up. After the free trial period, the client is automatically upgraded to the paid version and billed for the next month.

To avoid this, the client must manually opt out of the offer just before the end of the trial period. Some subscribers regard this method as predatory, as they are billed if they forget to opt out.

A good opt-out trial conversion rate is 2.5%; this is because even though this method can help you increase the number of paid signups for the first month, the subscribers who forgot to cancel their subscriptions will do so at the earliest time, which will affect your number of long-term members.

2. Opt-in free trial: Unlike the former, opt-in free trial allows prospects to sign up for the trial offer by providing little information. They are only prompted to provide their billing information after the trial period.

A good opt-in trial conversion rate is between 15%-20%. This is because even though this strategy creates a risk-free environment, it is prone to abuse.

If you set the trial to allow email signup, your clients can create multiple emails to bypass your protocol. Although you will record massive signups, only a few are converted to paying members.

Advantages of Free Trials

1. It builds your clients’ trust: Offering a free trial of your service proves your confidence in your brand. It shows your prospect that you are certain the free trial will offer enough value to turn them into paying members.

It also creates a risk-free environment for your prospects to learn about your brand and the benefits they can derive from it. This encourages them to be long-term customers.

2. It lowers client acquisition cost: Free trials are cost-effective compared to other client acquisition methods like advertising.

It increases your brand awareness among prospects looking for a similar service, nurtures them through customer support during the trial period, and leads them to conversion.

It also allows you to collect the email addresses of clients during signup. This helps you keep constant communication during and after the trial period.

3. It increases client retention: Due to the sense of urgency a free trial offer creates, the trial period for most prospects is the time they actively engage with your service. You can use this to your advantage by encouraging engagement through chatbots and emails.

You can also conduct surveys and collect feedback from trial members. This will help you understand your client’s perception of your brand and build your retention strategy.

Disadvantages of Free Trial

1. It is prone to abuse: Most of the free trial offers are prone to abuse.

For instance, if you use the limited free trial offer and enable a single signup with email addresses, your prospects can outsmart this approach by creating multiple email addresses to get more than one trial opportunity. This can be the case even if you use the opt-out free trial approach.

This abuse defeats the purpose of the free trial; instead of increasing your conversion, it will end up growing just the number of signups.

2. It increases the cost of production: The time and resources you spend to create a trial membership affect your cost of production. If the trial strategy results in a trial conversion rate below average, your profit margin will drop significantly.

This is why it is advisable that before you offer a trial, you evaluate the demand for your market, the cost of the features or services you want to include or exclude, and the duration of the trial period.

How Does Paid Trial Work?

A paid trial offer gives your clients access to your site services at a discounted price paid on signup. If your membership plan is priced at $60/month, your paid trial can offer your prospects 50% off for half a month, which is $30/15 days.

This approach reduces the risk of buying from you but does not cut it off completely. Instead of having your clients spend $60 to test if your service is the right fit for them, you allow them to pay half the price for 15 days. This is useful when you want to streamline the type of signups you get on your trial offers.

The paid trial strategy works well with the opt-out and opt-in trial methods, where the prospect provides their billing information during signup. They are billed immediately after the trial period or prompted to opt in just before it elapses.

Advantages of Paid Trial

1. It increases sales: With a paid trial, you make sales regardless of whether your trial members abuse the offer.

For instance, if you did a free 14-day trial for the $60/month plan and have 1000 signups with only 400 moving to a paid membership, you will make $24,000 on your first month. But using the paid trial approach, you will make $30,000 in 15 days regardless of how many signups led to paid membership.

2. It attracts quality leads: Paid trials attract clients looking to make payments but need to trust your service rather than those looking for freebies. Although the number of signups decreases, you can guarantee a higher conversion rate.

Also, your level of customer engagement increases. This is because your clients are more likely to engage with your site to get the value of the money they spend. With more quality engagement, you have a higher chance of increasing customer retention and improving your profit margin.

Disadvantages of Paid Trial

1. It requires strategic planning: If your paid trial offer is to create awareness for your brand, you will have to compete with other brands using free trial membership. This means that you need a strategic approach to attract clients.

You may also spend more on customer acquisition than with a free trial. You will spend on advertisement and other marketing efforts like influencer marketing; consider increasing the duration of the trial period and the services you include in the offer.

2. It’s more difficult to sell: Paid trials do not create a risk-free environment for your prospect. You require them to pay to test your services; this can hinder sales, especially if you are a newbie.

You should offer paid trials if you already built a reputation in your market. If you are new, consider offering free trials before switching to a paid trial membership.

Conclusion: Which Trial is Best for Membership Sites?

The trial strategy you choose depends on your marketing approach and your overall business strategy.

The free trial approach is the best option if you are a newbie and want to increase brand awareness. With it, you can reach a wider audience and get them to test your service. This helps you to increase your client base.

But if you are a leader in your industry or have a track record, you will find this approach exploratory. A better approach is to offer a discount on your trials.

If you are building your membership site on WordPress, check out ProfilePress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin out there. It gives you the tools to sell and grow your membership site.

ProfilePress supports multiple payment gateways, including Stripe and PayPal, with the ability to accept one-time and recurring payments from your subscribers. It also integrates with popular LMS like LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS, and Sensei LMS for user enrollment.