Users never try your paid features
Instead of free-then-upgrade, give everyone the full product and take it away. Loss aversion is stronger than aspiration.
When to use
You have clearly differentiated paid features that create habits or produce artifacts users want to keep. Your current free-to-paid conversion is below 5%.
Hypothesis template
If we give all new users [Pro features] free for [X days] then downgrade, paid conversions will increase because losing features feels worse than never having them.
Method
The problem: You have great paid features, but free users never try them. Your upgrade button might as well be invisible. Users are comfortable on free and never see what they're missing.
What Loom did: Switched from a traditional free trial to a reverse trial. Every new user gets Loom Business features for 14 days. After 14 days, they're downgraded to free. The key: they've already recorded long videos, used custom branding, and shared with teams.
The result: Paid conversion rates jumped significantly. Users who experienced Pro features and then lost them were far more likely to upgrade than users who never tried them.
How to do it:
- Identify your 2-3 most valuable paid features—the ones that create habits
- Give all new users these features free for 14 days (no credit card required)
- Send a heads-up email at day 10: "Your Pro features expire in 4 days"
- On day 14, downgrade gracefully—don't delete data, just limit access
- Show what they're missing: "You created 12 videos with custom branding. Upgrade to keep it"
- Make upgrading a one-click action from the "you've been downgraded" screen
Key insight: The traditional free trial asks: "Want to try something new?" The reverse trial asks: "Want to keep what you already have?" Loss aversion makes the second question 2-3x more powerful.
Success metrics
- •Free-to-paid conversion rate
- •Pro feature usage during trial
- •Upgrade rate at downgrade moment
- •Time to upgrade after downgrade
Prerequisites
- Clear free/paid feature differentiation
- Paid features that create habits or artifacts
- Billing infrastructure that supports automatic downgrade
- Email sequences for trial expiry warnings
Common pitfalls
- •Downgrading too aggressively (deleting user data)
- •Not warning users before the downgrade
- •Pro features that don't create habits (users won't miss them)
- •Making it hard to upgrade at the downgrade moment
Source: Loom. Reverse trial significantly increased paid conversions.
Suggested ICE scores
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