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Free-plan or Software Trials Who comes out on top?

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    Free trials, a thing of the past?

    We all love a bargain, and what’s more of a bargain than free? Yes, the word that instantly ignites that warm and fuzzy feeling in your gut. Nowadays consumers are overwhelmed with millions of product offerings on the market, so how do we get a piece of the pie?

    1. Free Demo
    2. Free 15-day trial
    3. Free 30-day trial
    4. Free-plan account (but with catches – you can’t do this, you can’t do that…. basically and upsell fest!!!!!)
    5. Genuine Free-plan account where smaller companies can actually use it forever and larger ones can test with it to ensure this is the right product for them before they buy or commit!)

     

    Which of the above 5 models is the most superior model?

    Which of these delivers the most value to the consumer/client?

     

    The following points will hopefully instill some commercial cynicism and awareness in you, so you can make the best decision for your business when you’re trying to evaluate purchasing a new software in general and in particular a new Recruitment Software.

     

    Free trials vs Free plans

    A free trial or demo is a great and effective strategy to convince new consumers to try your product. Some of the largest tech companies utilize some form of a free trial or free demo to advertise their product.

    Free trials are the perfect marketing tool to reach consumers, but do they really offer any favors to the product in the long run? Free trials generally run for a 2-4 week period where the tester can experience the software in its entirety. But how often do consumers actually make the move to the premium version after they’ve taken advantage of the trial?

    Free plans utilize the same ‘giveaway’ model as trials or demos but are usually more sophisticated in their execution. Free plans such as MyRecruitment+’s free recruitment platform is a perfect example of leveraging a premium product with ongoing consumer loyalty. More on that topic later!

     

    But, is there a catch with free trials?

     

    Exhibit A Free trials/demos with time limitations 

    These trials usually have unrestricted access to the product features because there’s a clock ticking on your trial. Unless you feel like creating multiple email accounts to bypass this, you’re limited to skimming the surface of the product trial or rushing into buying the full version even if you’re not yet sold on it. More often than not, the time limitation set for these products isn’t merely enough time to allow the user to complete their User Acceptance Testing in full.
    I’m talking about you Adobe!

    Times are indeed changing and software products need to start breaking away from the free trial mantra. Consumers are getting fed up with the time constraints of these trials. It first started with 3-month trials and now we’re beginning to see 1 week long trials. What’s next,  1 day free trials? What’s the point!

    MyRecruitment+ has been at the forefront of this topical issue for a while now and we’re proud to continue being industry leaders in this space. Our free-plan is free for forever, we have nothing to lose by offering this free product because we consider the longevity of our client base. Small businesses continue using our free-plan because their account remains free for life and our product remains in circulation for that duration of time. As for larger companies looking to make the change to a modern recruitment platform, they can test and experiment with their free MyRecruitment+ account at their own pace and within their own time constraints.

    What puts the MyRecruitment+ free account ahead of competing for recruitment software is the fact that testers can make real-world actions and executive decisions through their free account. The flexibility and professionalism of our free account mean our software testers can definitively create workflow actions from the job posting, all the way through to candidate recruitment.

    When testing a software trial, on the other hand, users are hesitant to use the software in a real-world scenario.  They might scroll through the features and skim past the processes, but at the end of the day can they say they’ve completed a full testing if they fail to recruit candidates at the end of their trial?

     

    Exhibit B – Free trials/demos riddled with ads

    Usually, these trials are free for life and allow unrestricted access to all features, sounds great right? Wrong! Software companies can afford to release free-for-life plans because they’re being sponsored by ads. If you have the tolerance for the ads in free versions then terrific! However, people by nature are impatience consumers. If the product is indeed good enough, the user may be persuaded to upgrade to the premium version purely to avoid the paid advertising. Clever or devious?

    The free account platform from MyRecruitment+ doesn’t have a paid advertisement in sight. You can use the free platform in all it’s glory without those pesky pop-up ads.  We believe if the product is strong enough, we shouldn’t cheapen it with paid sponsors and ads.

     

    Exhibit C – Free trials/demos that come with unwanted advances

    As soon as you plug your email address and phone number into your trial account you’re opening a Pandora’s box full of sales calls and email spam. There’s nothing worse than a busy day at work and getting sales calls every day because you signed up to a free trial that one time. Have you managed to master the art of dodging sales callers? Not to worry, they can reach you by email too! Not only are you battling with time limitations and ads, but now you have to fend off sales reps? Do you even get a chance to complete your User Acceptance Testing at the end of your 2 week trial given these extra factors? 

    MyRecruitment+ don’t use these methods to gain client loyalty. We understand our potential clients need time and patience to experience our free account platform in its entirety. We wait for you to contact us if you choose to progress further into your company software implementation, or even if you have general inquiries. You can recruit and on-board within 48 hours of creating your free account, and continue using your free account for long as you need to feel satisfied with the product.

     

    One last time…

    Very rarely you’ll find a software product that offers a free-plan without the above catches. Sounds too good to be true right? Believe it or not, there are products out there that don’t need those sales gimmicks to attract new customers. We believe if your product is amazing and intelligently solves a problem, then it can sell itself.

    Currently, we’re the only recruitment software who offer a completely free platform. No trials, ads or time limits – MyRecruitment+ continually prove to be industry leaders time and time again. Our free-plan offers users a completely risk-free way of trialing our product before deciding to upgrade to one of our premium packages. You can explore the features and functions at your own pace, in your own time and not have to worry about annoying sales reps calling you every day! If you need any help along the way, you can contact our helpful sales and product team to guide you through your plan.


    Anwar Khalil

    Author

    Anwar Khalil

    CEO

    MyRecruitment+ Recruitment & onboarding software platform
    Learn more about MyRecruitment+