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Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

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Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#21

Post by js4ever »

anatolinicolae wrote: post #17
cube00 wrote: post #5

Limit their outgoing connections until they provide a CC number. Most software can be initially tested without needing to connect to the wider internet. Throw in plenty of /examples directories for the different applications you offer. You could provide some approved outgoing connections to trusted plugin/package repos. If you want to get stricter only allow incoming connections from the trial user's IP to stop them…

> If you want to get stricter only allow incoming connections from the trial user's IP to stop them hosting scam landing pages. This could actually be the easiest way to deal with it. You can technically remove the block via system firewall, but I guess the abuse is only for cloud VMs that Elest.io provides and not the BYOVM ones, so you can use provider firewall rules to enforce the limit.

Indeed, no issues at all with BYOVM, and for other VM we have full control on the firewall from the cloud providers and we can block outgoing traffic and limit incoming traffic to the tester IP, I will definitely investigate this!

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#22

Post by splatzone »

humanistbot wrote: post #10
pid-1 wrote: post #3

- trigger warning - Allow the whole onboarding process to be done without a CC, don't even mention that. But when a user is doing their first deploy, tell them they need a CC to complete this step. Thanks to the sunken cost fallacy, users will be more likely to proceed.

This is a dark pattern and will infuriate both your abusers and legitimate users.

I think I’d only consider it dark if my card was going to be charged. If the app admitted it was just to verify that I’m a real person, for security reasons, I’d be fine with it.

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#24

Post by 3np »

corobo wrote: post #13
3np wrote: post #6

What do you think about offering locking up some minimum amount of cryptocurrency (say, Bitcoin), which would withdrawable at the end of the trial but also being usable as payment for continued service? One could utilize HTLCs so that the coins are locked for a predefined amount of time - so you wouldn't need to take custody of the coins during the trial but still be able to them if you decide there was abuse. If you…

So instead of supplying a credit card, which already causes people to bounce, ask them to learn and use crypto? At that point just factor being abused into your prices honestly

> As a complement and alternative for CC

That is, allow either. As an alternative to credit card, not instead of.

Again, I'm pretty sure that a majority of legitimate users who can't or won't link a credit card will already be familiar with, or at least open to, cryptocurrencies.

Just make the minimum amount large enough that abusers would have better payoff from directly using it as payment for compute/IP elsewhere. I'd guess that even 10$ equivalent would suffice for that - there is no shortage of places that will rent you a month of decent resources for less than that.

Consider also that more and more SaaSes require an increasing amount of PII for new sign-ups (no doubt related to solving for abuse, fraud, and spam) while an increasing number of individuals either reject surveillance capitalism and won't participate, or simply can't due to being flagged as false positives by the arbitrary ML and rules at payment providers. Solving for them will give you goodwill and leads from an underserved market segment.

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#25

Post by gwd »

jrumbut wrote: post #12

Just something that occurred to me: You could make a link allowing them to explain by email their need for a no-CC-required trial. That way you make a little speedbump and get a an email you know they use to market to (with opt-in). In reality though, I suspect that most of the users who won't put in a card for a trial won't put in a card to pay either.

> In reality though, I suspect that most of the users who won't put in a card for a trial won't put in a card to pay either.

I suspect this is true; however, they may mention the service to other people who will.

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

sokoloff wrote: post #7

Anyone who won’t give you a credit card for the free trial isn’t likely to give you a credit card later to become a customer*. In this space, giving a credit card seems perfectly normal and serves as a vetting function of seriousness for you. * I can concoct exceptions of course: worker who wants to try it for work but doesn’t have their own company card being one. But if you’re targeting cloud users, “doing whatever…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#27

Post by eb0la »

pid-1 wrote: post #3

- trigger warning - Allow the whole onboarding process to be done without a CC, don't even mention that. But when a user is doing their first deploy, tell them they need a CC to complete this step. Thanks to the sunken cost fallacy, users will be more likely to proceed.

Makes sense to me, but I believe you should A/B test that (not just against signups, but MRR).

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#29

Post by shoo »

one alternative idea to free trials from Jason Cohen's ancient 2013 microconf talk, 21:00 minute mark

> another hack: lotta people have free trials. 15 day free trial, 30 day free trial. makes sense. customers want to test us out first, no one trusts anyone, that's fine. but i hate free trials actually, especially for bootstrapped companies, because you never get the money back. most people that sign up with a credit card will stay. if that's not true, by the way, something is incredibly poisonous, fix that part [...]. but if that's true, most of the time they give you their credit card, you're giving them 15 or 30 days for nothing and you're never going to charge them, so you just lost the money, and that sucks. so i don't like trials. you have to give them something.

> so we switched to a 60 day money back guarantee instead of a 15 day free trial. but in both cases we take the credit card. originally in one case we say we won't charge you until the trial is over, in the other one we just charge them anyway. but we'll give you a refund and much more time.

> and sales went up. and people would email us and say "you know, 15 days didn't seem like enough time, now that i have 60 days, i decided to sign up".

> but i'm charging you more, don't you understand?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw

Re: Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?

#30

Post by xxs »

sokoloff wrote: post #7

Anyone who won’t give you a credit card for the free trial isn’t likely to give you a credit card later to become a customer*. In this space, giving a credit card seems perfectly normal and serves as a vetting function of seriousness for you. * I can concoct exceptions of course: worker who wants to try it for work but doesn’t have their own company card being one. But if you’re targeting cloud users, “doing whatever…

>Anyone who won’t give you a credit card for the free trial isn’t likely to give you a credit card later to become a customer

This is extremely weird. It's a B2B - I won't ever use my own credit card just to try some service, heck - I won't provide my credit card to an unknown entity that may lack PIC compliance, either. Asking for the company/budget/contract review/etc. for trial, etc. is a massive hassle as well.

>doing whatever AWS does to gate accounts” is perfectly reasonable.

Not really, Amazon is beyond well known and massive, and it has all the policies in place. This a small unknown startup.

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