Hey there, This topic always pops up from time to time. First, when I started building macOS apps, the extra work of building a trial mechanism was something I wanted to keep for later. Today, my key management backend already supports that, and when a user personally asks for a trial key, I give it to them. But from my experience, when someone has a free trial, 2 thing can happen: 1. Download and never use 2. Use a little bit, stop using it, and leave the app without buying it.

When someone pays for the app, they try it most of the time immediately. He explores the app, finds issues, and, because he paid for it, will be much more involved, which will provide me with much more accurate feedback.

Also, if something is not working well for him, he writes me, and I benefit from these interactions with the users. A lot of my improvements for my apps are based on "Refund talks" Overall, the upsides outweigh the downsides.

I don't have many refunds, but when I do, it really helps me improve the app. I already had users who asked for a refund, and a few versions later, the app improved based on their feedback, and they repurchased it.

I am sure that some users don't buy without trying, And this is why I am super responsive to refund requests and handle them faster and without "playing games" with this topic.

Hope this makes sense in some way

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eps an hour ago | parent [-]

You are leaving a lot of money on the table.

The amount of people who do not want to pay upfront, but would buy after a trial, is not just substantial, but game changing.

You can also add the same pressure to test the app after installing by offering a 14 or even a 7 day trial.

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pugdogdev an hour ago | parent [-]

Maybe, This has a lot of different opinions, In SaaS, I can understand why you would give this trial version. You can improve the onboarding and user progress tracking in the tunnel. Making rapid updates and improving the onboarding process. But for Mac apps that nothing is tracked or sent to my server, I have no idea what the user is doing or not doing with the app, I can't roll out fast updates or even force users to get the newest version So I won't be able to really improve it. Maybe in my future Saas I will have some kind of trial. But for now, I will stay with this model. Anyway, thank you so much for the feedback, Super appreciated!

	▲	eps 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I was speaking from experience selling single-fee end-user Windows apps for about a decade. Trials are basically a must as virtually no one would pre-buy to test. Perhaps on Macs it's different, or maybe it's due to your price point, but still your approach automatically drives away a large swath of potential, but cautious buyers, or those who don't want to be bothered by the refund process. Your pitch is "here is some good stuff, and here are the hurdles if you want to test it".