Thursday, June 29, 2023

From Free Trial to Paid Trial

Since we launched Receipt-AI.com in May, we initially only offered yearly subscriptions. However, I realized that people might prefer trying it out before committing to a year-long subscription. So I integrated a 7-day free trial with a credit card requirement. Sooner or later, it became evident that some individuals were exploiting Stripe's free trial system by signing up with cards that had insufficient funds or were outright fake.

 
Being a longtime admirer of Pieter Levels and the bootstrapping culture, particularly within the Rails community, I know that Pieter has always been against the idea of offering things for free. Therefore, I decided to change our business model and adjust the pricing a bit. Instead of a free trial, new users can now subscribe to Receipt-AI for a starting price of $29 per month to try it out before deciding whether they want to subscribe for a longer period.

This new approach not only eases my workload but also provides cleaner pricing. More importantly, we've strengthened the security of our customers' accounts based on this strategy.