Hi guys,

Do ny of you lot have any experience of offering trials on your hosting packages? I've seen a couple of people do it, and it would appear to be a good thing.

Has anyone seen an increase / decrease in sales as a result?

Hey! I only give out trials to people who have talked to me about it and explain why they need a trial. I do not offer this on our site because people sign up and put all kind of illegal material.... been there done that and don't want to go through that mess again. If you do offer trials publically be prepared to cancel a lot of accounts because of spam, porn, and other crap.

I think in offering an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee, that is enough of a trial... that way you only get people that are serious. Just what I think anyway.

actually, my 7-day trial scheme is doing pretty well

We offer 1 month free with all of our hosting packages provided they use the '1mofree' coupon code we've setup within modernbill for a 'trial'. This is certainly acceptable to us, and allows for the customer to have free time to move their sites, so they're not paying for 2 hosts at once.. Also, we require a valid credit card and all that to get the site activated, so that steers away most abuse.

As far as turnover rate we've had with the month free, it's been very low. It hovers around 1% and we've found that most people that do end up cancelling usually do so without contacting us for support.

The last few that we've had do this had reasons like "It said frontpage would work with your service, but does not. Cancel me now - I've already started moving the DNS away to someone else" (They never turned it on within the control panel to work, and never contacted us to figure out how)

Another was "I don't like your control panel - it's not attractive, so cancel me now..."

Those are just the last couple that have cancelled and their reasons... It's probably for the better in these cases - maybe they'll find prettier control panels elsewhere or hosts who have frontpage extentions installed in all accounts by default..

Other than the above cancels, most people genuinely like the month free, and it seems to attract people..

-David

money back guarantee work better.

The hardest part of the business is getting clients...it's far easier to keep them once you have 'em. That's why you see so many upfront offers.

I'd recommend trying a variety of strategies to get clients started with hosting on your system. Once you get them there...give them over the top customer service and they'll stay.

That being said, I'm a fan of the 30 day money back guarantee. Most people like knowing that they can back out if they want.

Trail nah.

For me I think a company that does not offer a trail of sorts, is more then confident knowing that you will enjoy their product 100%.

Of course it can always backfire :)