What are some techniques SaaS companies use to combat trial abuse / people trialing multiple times?
My advice: Just let it go. At least for now, and probably a very long time.
A lot of things will drive you a bit nuts when you are small:
- Folks that do repeat free trials.
- Folks that share accounts.
- Early customers that got “too good of a deal”.
- Customers that use a cheaper edition they aren’t entitled to.
- Etc. etc.
When you are fighting literally for every dollar, this will irk you. It will get everyone’s dander up.
But as you scale past a few million in ARR, you’ll learn:
- Most folks follow the rules. It’s too much work otherwise.
- A few folks bending the rules won’t matter much. The total revenue lost in theory from this abuse isn’t huge.
- The internal distraction and effort to deal with rule benders isn’t worth it. Too many discussions and too much internal energy consumed around too little revenue. And it takes way too much energy to manage.
So just do your best, and move on.
Let a few folks get too much value for their $299 a month.
