We currently offer a 21 day free trial for all new hosting accounts, but we are thinking of changing to a money back guarantee, ie. 30 or 60 day.

What is everyone offerring to their own customers?

From everyones experience, which is better, what are the pros and cons and which works?

Think of your high school physics class. Inertia and momentum.

It's a whole lot easier for someone to just let things continue the way they are (keep a paid account, or allow the free account to lapse) than it is for them to take action to change things (convert a free account to a paid account, or cancel a paid account).

That's why you never see free issues of magazines that don't come with automatic subscriptions -- which is really just a paid subscription with a short term mney back guarantee. I bet a huge percentage of those become at least year-long subscriptions. But if they were true free trials - get an issue or two and then you have to subscribe to continue - I bet less than 10% of the free trials would convert.

that was a great answer webgusto

were offering free 10 day trials as of now till 2004 just to see if it works. If we get a low retention rate then we will not do it again. We always offer 30 day money back guarantees if the problem lies on our side of the fence. The problem with free trials is alot of people will abuse it, much easier to abuse then a money back guarantee anywho.

In my opinion free trials are terrible! Especially if you allow shell access with them. A Free Trial could allow someone to gain access to your system scope it out then light it on fire!

A money back is a much better since not many free trials would convert. They would try and resignup to get more free ;)

Free trials just allow spammers free spamming without any possible repercussions. At least if you have an address and phone number along with the credit card information you can verify they are who they say they are and you have an address to send the additional billing (charges per occurence for spamming) as outlined in your TOS...;)

I personally have a money-back guarentee. I figure that this was, they're signed up, and if they don't like it, that's fine. However, if you do want to do a free trial, make sure you use cPanel's (assuming you have it) Feature Manager to disable almost everything that could be abused! That way it really is a trial!

Well when someone signs up for a hosting package at our site, they are asked for their credit card details and their card is authorised, but no payment is taken until after the 21 day trial ends. This way, we still get commitment, as the payment will take place, but they can cancel at any time during the trial, without ever having paid a penny.

The only real downside to this, is that we don't receive any money until after the trial. a money back guarantee ensures that you get paid straight away, but you have to refund the customer.

The only real downside to this, is that we don't receive any money until after the trial. a money back guarantee ensures that you get paid straight away, but you have to refund the customer. There is no refund for the customer unless they decide they are not going to stay. A free trial is free hosting time. A money back guarantee simply assures that they will be happy or they can get their money back and go elsewhere, there is no free hosting involved.

At least that is how I view it....

i don't even know any place with a free trial where you don't have to give your CC info upfront. so it's not that much different from a money back.

we do not do either of these. we will try it sometime soon.

Greetings:

We've been offering 30-day money back guarantees for several years now.

While a trial offer is sometimes tempting to offer, we've found through the experiences of others it just leads to spammers getting you black listed; so we never went with a free trial.

Thank you.