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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?

#61

Post by corobo »

3np wrote: post #24
corobo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 missed the quoted line, sorry!

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

#62

Post by js4ever »

mcv wrote: post #59
ushakov wrote: post #47

3 possibilities, learned the hard way: 1) Offer a limited free tier 2) Ask CC before free trial, you don't need customers that are not able to pay you later 3) Make a shared demo account where customers can log in and check out the product without need to commit

Replace #2 with: use a payment system that doesn't require them to give their credit card info to a stranger. Payment shouldn't require that.

We don't collect CC directly, we redirect users to Stripe Checkout page (so not on our website anymore) and we get a webhook from stripe with a token of the CC and no details about the real CC number... It's pretty safe and that way we dont need to be PCI compliant

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

#63

Post by js4ever »

acjacobson wrote: post #45
xxs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

credit card numbers tend to require proper PCI compliance and audit. Storing credit cards is quite the liability, and unless I know I can trust the company entirely, they won't be getting any credit cards.

Most companies shouldn't be storing CC numbers in this day and age but using tokenized cards instead. Let Stripe worry about PCI compliance, and OP can simply advertise which processor they're using so customers feel secure.

Indeed, this is exactly what we are doing with Stripe

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

#64

Post by js4ever »

ackbar03 wrote: post #56
lwhi wrote: post #39

Ask for a phone number for 2 factor authentication.

I think this is the easiest way, not sure why it's so far down on the list. Usually this is enough to prevent casual abuse. If phone number is too troublesome just use Gmail or something, they do a decent job of preventing multiply email registration. I guess the main problem is the bad actors who are determined to misuse your service will still find a way, but then you can just ip block manually

Nop, they are using VPN, so a single bad actor have hundreds of IPs with a $3/month VPN

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

#65

Post by js4ever »

3np wrote: post #24
corobo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's not about the money, it's about KYC! Paying with Crypto is not solving anything for bad actors trying to do DDOS, send spam or host child porn on our servers ...

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

#66

Post by 3np »

js4ever wrote: post #65
3np wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

It's not about the money, it's about KYC! Paying with Crypto is not solving anything for bad actors trying to do DDOS, send spam or host child porn on our servers ...

Part of my point is, demanding a lock up of funds should raise the barrier high enough that you won't need KYC - legitimate users will get their funds back (or use them to continue service) while it will be cost-prohibitive for abusers.

If you want to play it safer, increase the minimum required amount and/or lock-up time accordingly.

If you had a way to get this integrated easily, would it be interesting?

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

#67

Post by 3np »

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…

Judging by downvotes and other comments, people seem to not believe the issue is practical. Anecdotally, a good friend of mine has an Iranian passport and name, and despite otherwise clean records and 15+y living and working elsewhere, he has a legitimate hard time being rejected by banks as well as payment processors (even through his non-Iranian company) when signing up for services. He did manage to sign up for GCP by using a friends' card. Smaller providers often bounce in the sign-up process when using his own credit card and he just won't bother trying to resolve that anymore.

Heard similar anecdotes from of other Iranians and Syrians I've talked to. But not everyone - it does seem arbitrary.

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

#68

Post by johnsmith4739 »

(prescriptive input at the end) I work specifically on improving Trial-to-Paid and here are some pointers:

-> Most companies calculate their T2P churn incorrectly because they combine both the Right_Audience and the Wrong_Audience within the Trial.

-> Get rid of the Wrong_Audience with better customer acquisition Qualification (e.g. if I sell bats to bullies people will get hurt, if I sell bats to sports teams, well... chances are lower for misuses)

-> Get better conversions with the Right_Audience with an Orchestrated Trial

Most trials are just the product but free for a while. This leads to exactly the situation you describe.

An Orchestrated Trial focuses on reducing the Anxiety of your Right_Audience, so that they can decide easier to switch to paying. Full access to the product changes nothing in conversions, people already know what the product does from your description. The point is to reduce specific uncertainties and unblock the subscription decision.

(prescriptive) To do this, the Trial has to be Orchestrated around getting the Right_Audience to say "AHA! This actually does what I want." And if they have the money, the decision is straightforward. No need to give the access to what the solution does, that's for paying users.

Let me know if I can help

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

#69

Post by shantnutiwari »

dmurray wrote: post #46
shoo wrote: post #29

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…

I'd be happy with the money-back guarantee from a trustworthy company, but in practice I'd be worried about them increasing the friction of cancelling/claiming the refund. Most founders are probably well-intentioned here but a few bad apples make it difficult to trust anyone.

agree. there was a post here about someone talking about how they were sick of sending support requests into a blackhole.

My reply would be: Thanks but no thanks.

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