Ask HN: How do you manage fake signups on products with free plans/trials

5 pointsmrkmcknz12y ago3 comments

3 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

dangrossman12y ago· 2 in thread

When taking on a new user requires little to no support: Ignore them. Let people sign up and disappear, it's just extra rows in a database.

When taking on a new user requires expensive onboarding: Require a credit card at signup (do a $0/$1 authorization) that you'll only charge after the trial.

toumhi12y ago

Please don't do that: http://sixteenventures.com/one-dollar-trial

Basically, if you have many "fake signups": 1/ you're attracting the wrong crowd. Fix your acquisition. 2/ these people are not "fake signups" but need more convincing to buy. Fix your onboarding/User Experience.

If you require a credit card at signup, you're turning away a good part of customers away who, at this point in time, don't know or trust you enough to give you payment details.

dangrossman12y ago

I've run both types of signup flows and less friction doesn't always mean better results when you need real customer commitment for them to realize the value of your product/service (i.e. spend time doing integration, either in terms of dev work or business processes). A credit card indicates more serious buy-in (they've gotten payment approval already) and they're more mentally invested in giving the product a real try before the end of the trial. And, as I said before, if you have an expensive onboarding process, taking on more customers than you can handle onboarding just means you lose them when you can't properly serve them. Better to have fewer highly satisfied customers per day/week/month than lots of trials that never end up paying.

You can't boil everything down to a rule that applies to all businesses. Taking a credit card doesn't mean there's a forced continuity scam happening as that post seems to imply. You can make cancellation a one-click process, and send reminders before the trial ends (and should do so either way -- a good series of lifecycle e-mails are critical to converting trials). Lots of companies with pretty pristine reputations offer free trials that require a card, from Netflix to Amazon.

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