# Free Trial Management for Streaming Services | Vodlix **Source:** https://vodlix.com/features/trial-management **Summary:** Run trials of any length on any package, converting to a paid term automatically at a price the viewer agreed to up front, with several trials running at once. **Publisher:** Vodlix --- Run free trials of any length, on any plan, converting to a paid term automatically at a price the viewer already agreed to. - **Feature Plan:** 2 - back-end - core-platform ## A Trial Is a Promise About What Happens on Day Fourteen Set a trial length on any package and it converts to a paid term on its own. The viewer sees the trial period and the price that follows before they confirm, which is what keeps chargebacks down and complaints rare. ### The Free Part Is Not the Hard Part Giving something away for two weeks is easy. What decides whether a trial is a growth mechanism or an expensive habit is entirely what happens at the end of it, and there are only two designs. Either the trial rolls into a paid term automatically, or it stops and asks the viewer to decide again. The second one feels more polite and converts far worse, because you have taken somebody who was happily watching and handed them a moment to reconsider. The first only works if you were honest at the start, which is why the trial length and the price that follows are shown before anybody confirms. Being clear at signup is not a courtesy, it is what makes automatic conversion defensible. #### Any length, any plan A trial is a property of the package rather than a platform wide setting, so a seven day trial on one tier and thirty days on another can run at the same time. #### It rolls, it does not ask At the end of the trial the plan becomes a paid term automatically at the agreed price, rather than stopping and inviting a second decision you will lose people at. #### Stated before they confirm The viewer sees the trial period and what they will be charged afterwards at the point of signing up, which is the single biggest factor in whether the charge is later disputed. ### A Trial Is Its Own Package, Not a Flag This sounds like an implementation detail and it decides what you can do commercially. When a trial is a package in its own right, you can run several at once with different lengths, aimed at different campaigns, and retire one without touching the others. You can offer a longer trial through a partner and a shorter one on your own site, and the two do not interfere. When a trial is instead a checkbox on a paid plan, every one of those becomes a change to the plan itself, which means changing it affects everybody already on it. Because a trial is a package, it also shows up in the same list, carries the same status field, and can be made inactive the same way. How packages are defined is covered under [packages and subscriptions](/features/packages-subscriptions). ### The Uncomfortable Part Is the Part That Works Taking card details at the start of a free trial converts fewer signups and produces far better subscribers, and it is worth being clear eyed about that trade rather than pretending it does not exist. A trial without a card gets more people through the door and most of them evaporate, because there is nothing to convert. A trial with a card asks more of somebody at the outset and delivers a paying customer at the end without a second conversation. Vodlix supports the mechanics either way, and the reason the default presentation shows the price and the date so prominently is that the version of this which goes wrong is always the one where somebody was surprised. Everything that happens after the first charge is described under the [subscriptions system](/features/subscriptions-system), and who is currently on what under the [subscribers manager](/features/subscribers-manager). ### Watch the First Week, Not the Last Day By the time a trial ends, the outcome was decided some days earlier. Somebody who opened the app twice in the first week and finished nothing is not going to be rescued by a reminder on day thirteen. What that means practically is that the useful question is not how many trials converted but what the people who converted did differently in their first few days, and that is a question about viewing rather than billing. Trials, watch behaviour and conversions all sit against the same accounts, so the two halves can be read together through [reports and analytics](/features/reports-and-analytics) and the [sales dashboard](/features/sales-dashboard) rather than being reconciled between two systems. **Q: How long can a free trial be?** Whatever length you set. The trial is a property of the package rather than a fixed platform setting, so seven days on one tier and thirty on another can run at the same time without interfering with each other. **Q: What happens when the trial ends?** It converts to a paid term automatically at the price the viewer already agreed to. That is deliberate. Stopping and asking somebody to decide again takes a person who was happily watching and hands them a reason to stop. **Q: Does the viewer know what they will be charged?** Yes, the trial period and the price that follows are shown before they confirm anything. That is what makes automatic conversion defensible, and in practice it is the single biggest factor in whether a charge is later disputed. **Q: Can I run more than one trial at once?** You can, because each trial is its own package. That lets you offer a longer trial through a partner and a shorter one on your own site, or run a campaign specific trial and retire it afterwards without touching anything else. **Q: Should I ask for card details up front?** It converts fewer signups and produces better subscribers, and that is a genuine trade rather than a trick question. Without a card there is nothing to convert at the end. With one, the trial ends in a paying customer rather than in another conversation. **Q: Can a viewer cancel during the trial?** Yes, and they should be able to easily. A trial somebody cannot get out of generates chargebacks and complaints that cost more than the subscription was worth, and it is the fastest way to make an automatic conversion look like a trap. **Q: How do I tell whether my trial is working?** Look at what people did in the first week rather than at the conversion number alone. Because trials, viewing and payments all sit against the same accounts, you can read behaviour and outcome together instead of reconciling two systems. **Q: Can I stop offering a trial without affecting people on one?** Yes. Because the trial is a package, setting it inactive stops new people starting it and leaves everybody currently in one exactly where they are, running to its normal end.