The thing is, I often get called away from whatever I was trying to do, and just don’t revisit it for a few weeks, a month. I opened the software, but never actually used it. I go back to it later, whoops, free trial expired. I think x free uses is a much better way to do it, and I as a software maker don’t really feel like I need to charge someone who only needs my stuff once or twice, the marginal cost to me is 0. If they’re getting professional value out of it, or it’s a big part of their day to day for some other reason, then I think they should pay. They’re much more likely to make demands of me if they’re in that bucket, as well.

> and I as a software maker don’t really feel like I need to charge someone who only needs my stuff once or twice

A 14-day (or 7, or 30 day) trial is actually perfect for this situation.

But you can't make everyone happy. If someone is starting the trial and then not using the software for a week or month, that's their mistake.

There was a time when nagware software was popular: You got to use it for free, but it would nag you with a popup or delay every once in a while asking you to purchase it. You can still occasionally find software with this model, but most developers quickly learned that the more leeway you give the free trial users, the less likely they are to buy it.

You can say that it’s their mistake, but people not using your software successfully is always a mix of blame for both parties.

Yes, you can probably make more by adding more pressure than nagware did. But you’re doing it at the expense of being pro-user. I do think it’s reasonable to be less friendly than that, if it doesn’t work for you.

You can probably make even more than free trials by getting people into a monthly subscription, making it harder to cancel, and/or making it so it’s easier to forget that they’re being charged, etc. There are many ways to enrich yourself at the expense of others. And many companies seem to have justified each of these to themselves.

> If someone is starting the trial and then not using the software for a week or month, that's their mistake.

No, that's your mistake as a software maker. User behavior is user behavior.

If you're losing potential paying customers because you lock them out of the trial because they didn't come back to it for a week, it's your sales that will suffer.

>If you're losing potential paying customers because you lock them out of the trial because they didn't come back to it for a week, it's your sales that will suffer.

Business are risk averse. They don't care about that as much as the real worst case: you become winRar and you have a lot of paying customers that never convert because you gave away too much of your product. It's really hard to put thst genie back into the bottle.

This makes sense to me. To some people, nothing will be sufficient outside of free. The demand curve predicts this. What is weird is that they're talking as if the problem was with every company trying to get paid (paying the bills? that's for the weak), instead of just simply recognizing that their purchasing power is relatively low.

> But that's exactly what you described yourself as doing. You downloaded the software, used it, found that it satisfied your needs, and were familiar enough with the software to recognize that you needed it again three months later.

That's not what happens. I download it, use some tiny part of it once (like the noise reduction filter of a full audio editing suite), forgot about it, googled noise reduction 3 months later, discovered I'd already installed it 3 months ago, and now can't try it with a different file because the trial expired.

> The real bizarre thing is that someone can blame the software provider for giving away free use of their software, or for "only" allowing them to use it for 30 days for free.

But they deserve the blame, because now I'm going to go download a different audio editing suite to try their noise reduction instead. And if now I keep having to do noise reduction because it's no longer a one-off thing, I'll purchase that competitor. Because the first piece of software stopped letting me try it out so I can't even compare anymore. Even though I'd only used it for 5 minutes.

My whole point is that "30 days for free" is meaningless if I only use it for 5 minutes. It makes much more sense for trials to be usage-metered rather than contiguous calendar days.

If you used the program once during the trial period then came back to it again for some reason or another after the trial expired, the trial worked exactly as intended: You want to use the program again, so it's asking you to pay up.

I don't see the problem here other than "I don't want to pay for software." which isn't the programmer's concern. If you don't want to pay, the programmer likewise couldn't give a damn if you can't use his program.

They lost nothing by you not using their free trial again tho you are the kind of user that we all try to avoid

> why it's so much easier to deal with B2B and Enterprise software: With cheap consumer software, you get people who will complain to the ends of the earth about your $20 software or jump through hoops to avoid paying less than the cost of a couple drinks to purchase software that clearly solves their needs

Someone will drop $20 on lunch from some place with no guarantees to its quality and think nothing of it.

But asking the same amount for software requires a painstakingly thorough evaluation.

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Products like Gmail, Facebook, Dropbox etc have trained consumers that the normal price of software is $0.