A free trial lets customers try your subscription product before the first payment. They get access right away, and the first charge happens only when the trial ends - a proven way to lower the entry barrier for new customers.
How trials work in Easycart
A trial is an option of a subscription price. When you create or edit a subscription variant in Product → Price variants, you can enable a trial period and set how long it lasts.
During checkout with a trial:
- The customer provides their payment details as usual, but nothing is charged yet.
- They get access to the product immediately after completing the checkout.
- The first payment is taken automatically when the trial period ends.
- If the customer cancels before the trial ends, they are not charged at all.
The customer can cancel the subscription during the trial in the Customer portal - the same place where they manage all their purchases.
Important: a trial requires a payment method that supports automatic renewals, so trial checkouts work with card-based payments (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay) - the same as any subscription.
When to use a trial
- Subscriptions to communities, memberships and SaaS products, where customers want to look around before paying.
- Launches of new recurring products - a trial converts undecided visitors into subscribers.