How to offer a free trial on a paid plan

Set the trial

1. Open Packs in your dashboard and pick the pack.
2. On the tier you want to offer, fill in "Free trial, days". Whole days, from 1 to 90. Leave it at 0 for no trial. A free tier cannot have one, because it is free already.
3. Press Save. The tier shows a "14 day free trial" badge, and the storefront shows the trial on that tier from the next page load.

The trial is per tier, so a pack can have one tier with a trial and another without. Monthly and annual plans on the same tier get the same number of days.

What the buyer sees

1. On the pricing card the tier reads "New subscribers: first 14 days free, then $49 a month. Card charged when the trial ends", and the button says Start free trial.
2. They enter the email the subscription belongs to and press Continue to checkout.
3. The payment page shows $0 due today, asks for a card, and the consent line reads "My first 14 days are free, then my subscription renews at $49 every month until I cancel". They tick the box and press Start trial.
4. They land on the confirmation page and add the pack to their AI app the usual way. Access starts at once.

On your side the organization shows on Subscribers as trialing, and the Revenue page lists a $0 sale for the trial start. Nothing is owed to you yet.

When the trial ends

When the trial ends, Stripe charges the card for the first full period and the subscription becomes active. That payment books as a sale on your Revenue page and goes to your Stripe account like any other. If the card fails, the subscription goes past due and Stripe retries. The buyer keeps access for up to 21 days while it retries, the same grace a missed renewal gets, and access ends if the retries fail. So a buyer whose card never pays can have up to 21 days on top of the trial, and none of it is charged.

A buyer who does not want to continue cancels from their organization page under Manage billing before the trial ends. Access runs to the end of the trial and no charge is made.

Trials and discount codes

Not on the same tier. A code is applied to the first invoice, which with a trial is the $0 one, so a buyer would type a code and still pay full price when the trial ends. For that reason the payment page for a tier with a trial has no code box. A free first month is a 30 day trial, no code needed. A discount that lasts is a code on a tier without a trial: how to make a discount code.

Things to know

• Stripe can email the buyer a few days before a trial ends. That is a setting on the ProvenSkills Stripe account, not on your shop, so ask us if you want it on.
• One trial per buyer per pack. An email that has held a subscription on the pack before pays from day one. The card says the trial is for new subscribers, and for that buyer the payment page shows the full amount due today and the consent line has no trial in it. A second trial under a different email is possible. If that becomes a problem, tell us and we will look at it.
• Changing the trial days on a tier affects new subscriptions only. Trials already running keep their dates.
• Your packs stay listed on the marketplace with or without a trial.