Reverse Trial

What is a reverse trial? 

A reverse trial is a relatively new pricing model that provides users with complete, unrestricted access to a product’s paid features for a limited amount of time and then downgrades them to a free plan with more limited access. 

It’s like a blend of freemium and a free trial, offering the best of both worlds. See, in a more traditional closed trial, the user will have a time limit to explore and experience a small portion of your product. Once they’ve run out of time, that’s it. No more access for you – unless you buy. 

With a reverse trial, instead of having that access revoked, the user is dropped down from the full, unlimited version of your product to your more restricted free version. This increases the chances of the users staying on your platform, making sure that you maintain a consistent active userbase that you can more easily nurture. 

By allowing users to access your full suite of features, users are seeing all the wow moments right away; the things that make your product special. They learn to love what you offer, and because of that are more likely to continue to use the free version of your product, and even fully convert to paying customers. 

What’s the difference between a reverse trial and freemium?

A reverse trial and freemium are not the same thing – although the process of a reverse trial can lead users to experience your freemium version. 

Freemium is a product pricing model where users can gain access to a product for completely free. No need to part with any cash. The catch is that the features on a freemium version are limited, with more advanced, potentially more important features locked behind a paywall. 

A reverse trial is different because users will first have access to all the features of your product right at the start before being dropped into a freemium experience. The entire toolkit is available to them, for a limited time. 

Essentially, what differentiates these two is the order in which users experience things. Freemium defaults to the free, simple version of your product and gives users the option to upgrade at any time. On a reverse trial, a user will start on the powered-up version, and then downgrade to the free version if they don’t pay by the end of their trial period. 

What are the benefits of a reverse trial?

Reverse trials are becoming very popular, and for good reason – they offer a lot of great benefits that make them a bit of a no-brainer when you compare them to other options. 

Here are some of the main benefits: 

Users see wow moments early on

By offering a reverse trial, you’re creating a really nice way for users to access your entire product, showing them the value of what you offer so that they can reach the wow moment really quickly – quicker than a traditional trial. 

Think about it, when you offer a closed trial that only lets users try a portion of your product, they may never experience a certain part of your product that resonates with them, as it’s locked away behind your paywall. With them having no exposure to this potentially awesome part of your product during the trial, it’s a lot harder to convince them to pay up to experience it for the first time. 

With a reverse trial, they would have had the opportunity to play around with this feature and all your others, helping them reach that wow moment much quicker. This can slash your Time to Value (TTV), especially if you build a product onboarding process that makes showing these features to your users a priority.

Learn how to get the most out of your product onboarding process with a product tour. Click the link below to learn more 👇.

Offers re-nurturing opportunities

One fantastic benefit of the reverse trial is that once users have completed their unlimited period, they’re likely to continue to be users of your free product. This means that you’ve got multiple shots at nurturing them into paying customers. If they don’t bite the first time, you can recast your hook and try again. 

When users operate within your free environment, they’ll be exposed to CTAs, gated features, and potentially even marketing to invite them to upgrade to the premium version that they’ve already tried.  

Once you’ve moved users through the reverse trial, it’s like fishing in an aquarium. Yes, they still may not take the bait and buy, but it’s a lot easier than fishing in the wide open ocean. 

Easier to attract new users

When you run a reverse trial model, it becomes a touch easier to attract new users to your product. This is because you have a more attractive proposition to offer users: a completely free product that’s free forever. 

When you use this model, you can market your tool as free to use, which will encourage more users to try it out, experience the benefits of your tool, and then become so obsessed with it that they need to upgrade back to the full package.

Less friction in your acquisition process

When you use a reverse trial pricing model, your users will experience less friction as they go through the process of becoming customers. Although a reverse trial ends after a set period, they’re not booted off your product. This creates less friction as you try to convert them into paying customers. 

With a regular trial, if you want to convert users who have expired, you’ll have to reach out to them and start the entire process again. The separation they have from your product creates a friction point, making it much harder to convince them to return. Let’s face it, in that gap, they’ve likely looked for alternatives and have found a new tool instead of yours. By having a reverse trial, you prolong the time that users are engaging with your product, creating a smoother user acquisition process. 

User acquisition is one of the five Pirate Metrics, which are crucial for tracking customer lifecycle. By understanding these closely-knit metrics, you’ll be able to pinpoint strengths and opportunities for improvement within your customer onboarding process.  Click below to learn more about them 🔽 . 

Has a proven higher conversion rate 

Time to get nerdy and look at the stats 🤓. Research has found that reverse trials have a much higher conversion rate when compared to alternatives. For the companies that have used them, they’ve seen an increase in performance, meaning that more users have decided to become paying customers. This can help you boost company revenue and increase your active user base, leading to a more successful product. 

Take a peek at this table, with statistics provided by Lenny Rachitsky through his well-renowned newsletter.  It shows what is considered a good and great conversion rate for various pricing models. With the benchmark for reverse trials being higher than others, it demonstrates that you can expect greater numbers with this approach. 

What kind of products are good for a reverse trial?

Now, although there are a lot of magical benefits of the reverse trial, they may not suit every product type. You need to make sure that what you’re creating matches this pricing model. Here’s an overview of the product characteristics to assess yours against to see if it’s suited to the reverse trial.  

SaaS products

If you’re in the SaaS game, especially B2B, congratulations – you’re already in prime territory for a reverse trial. Why? Because your product likely has multiple tiers, pricing models, and value propositions. If you’ve got a tool that has more layers than a good lasagna, a reverse trial is the way to let users taste each section before they commit.

Complex, multi-faceted tools

If your product has lots and lots of features to explore, it’s a perfect candidate for a reverse trial. By showing off the full range of what your tool can do, users can experience the full potential of your product’s capabilities, and once they’ve seen how it can improve their lives or workflows, they won’t want to go back to the basic version.

Products with clear value differentiation between tiers

Here’s where reverse trials really flex their muscles. If the difference between your product’s free and paid versions is as clear as night and day, you’re in prime reverse trial territory. The goal is to create a bit of FOMO—fear of missing out. Once users see the premium features in action, they’ll be itching to keep them.  

How do you implement a reverse trial?

Looking to successfully move to a reverse trial model? I don’t blame you, the potential for success is massive. That said, you really need to do this properly, as it can easily blow up in your face. To improve your chances of getting the reverse trial right, make sure to follow these top tips: 

1. Choose the right features for your free version 

One of the important decisions you have to make when implementing a reverse trial is choosing what features to gate, and what features to allow continuous access to when users drop down to the free trial. This can make or break the success of this model. A baseline feature that doesn’t offer enough can lead to poor user retention when the trial ends, but if it’s too good, there’s little incentive for users to upgrade to the full version. 

When choosing your free version features, try and focus on a centralized feature that naturally links to other parts of your product that you blank out. By doing this, reverse trial users get to continue to engage with your core value proposition once their trial is up, and see how it interacts with your other features, reminding them of the benefits that they’re missing out on. 

2. Focus on your onboarding

To make the most out of the limited time window your users have with your premium version of the product, you need to create an excellent onboarding process that effectively shows them around these features that they’ll lose out on. This will hopefully get them hooked on these tools, making them more interested in upgrading to your full product, as they already understand the value and have achieved user activation by interacting with those features themselves. 

3. Leverage social proof

Nothing drives FOMO like seeing others rave about something you’re about to lose. During your reverse trial, showcase testimonials, case studies, or user reviews from customers who are loving those premium features. Let your current users do the selling for you—after all, people trust other people.

Picture this: Your users are trying out your premium features, and then they see a pop-up saying, “95% of our top users say this feature saved them hours each week.” Suddenly, that premium tier doesn’t just look nice to have—it looks essential. 

Using social proof is a good technique of Product Marketing. Looking to define the difference between Product Marketing and Product Management? We’ve got you covered below ⤵️.

4. Set a tempting countdown clock 

Time is money, and nothing lights a fire under users like a ticking clock. When you kick off your reverse trial, make sure there’s a clear and tempting time limit. A countdown creates urgency, which translates into action—nobody wants to miss out on something awesome, especially when they know it’s going away soon.

Think of it as that “last call” at a bar. Give them just enough time to fall in love with your premium features, but not so much that they get too comfortable. The goal is to make them think, “I need to lock this in before it’s too late!”

5. Create a seamless downgrade experience

When the reverse trial ends, make the transition back to the basic version smooth and seamless. Why? Well if the downgrade feels jarring or disappointing, users might get frustrated and churn. Instead, focus on maintaining a positive experience, even if they don’t upgrade right away.

It’s like offering a luxury vacation, and then making sure the journey home is still comfortable, even if it’s not first-class. By keeping things pleasant, you leave the door open for users to upgrade later—because they’ll remember how good the premium version was without any lingering bitterness from a rough transition.

When to use a reverse trial?

Don’t be too quick to jump at the chance to run a reverse trial model, as for it to be successful, your business and product need to be in the right posture for it. It’s best to move to a reverse trial once you’ve got a good baseline to build from. You want to first achieve a decent level of results through a standard free trial, as that proves that your free version of the product offers enough value to the customers. 

You also want to make sure that you have the right funding model to suit this approach. See, if you’re a business that values a consistent revenue stream, and needs to have a customer base on a paid plan to cover operating costs, then you may not be ready for this option. That’s because when you use reverse trials, you’re playing the long game. You’re working to keep customers onboard for future conversions over a longer period of time – so you could be in trouble if you don’t have the capital to wait for these conversions.

Make sure to do your product discovery to find out about your current performance, and to ensure that you’re ready to shift to this option.

What are the challenges of using a reverse trial? 

There are some difficult things you’ll have to overcome that make implementing a reverse trial not so straightforward. When you look to turn to this method, you need:

• A good nurture flow: When users drop from your premium to your free version, you need a strategy in place to get them upgraded. If not, they’re just going to be sitting on your free version and eventually die off and leave. So if you haven’t got a plan, all these users are useless to you. 

• To move to a modular approach: When using a reverse trial, you need to make sure that your product is built with a modular approach in mind. By having each feature in its own separate box, it’s easier to gate content and build walls around features. If your product is pretty open-ended, then it can be a challenge to redesign things to suit this approach. 

• A plan for created resources: Say a user has been loving a specific feature, only for it to be removed in the free version. What happens to all the data and resources they’ve created? Can they still access it, or will it be lost forever? This can become a technical challenge, as you may need to hold data that will just be sitting there in your product, as your free users may not be able to actively use it. 

• Development time: Creating a reverse trial is a big undertaking, one that’s going to demand development time and resources. It can be a challenge to create your reverse trial environment while still working on improving your product, so you’ll have to plan around this extra demand. 

• To manage user expectations: When users start with everything available to them, they may get a bit too comfortable. Suddenly yanking away those shiny premium features can lead to some grumbles, or worse, customer churn 😦. You’ll need to carefully manage expectations right from the start. Make sure users know that they’re in a trial, not the new normal. The last thing you want is a bunch of disgruntled users who feel like you’ve pulled a bait and switch. 

Flip it and reverse it

The reverse trial is a cracking way to get users to experience your entire product and convince them to move on and become converted customers. It’s one of the best pricing models available, and that’s not just us saying that, the proof is in the pudding.  

But, like any good dessert, it requires the right ingredients and a bit of finesse. Implementing a reverse trial isn’t as simple as flipping a switch – you need to carefully craft an experience that hooks users, guides them through the value of your product, and makes them realize they can’t live without those premium features. Done right, it’s a win-win for both you and your customers.

We’re big fans of the reverse trial, but it’s just one thing to consider when pricing a product. Our CEO, Janna Bastow has had a lot of experience in that field and has shared her thoughts about it right here on ProdPad. You can learn more by clicking the link below 🔽.