Set Up and Manage Free Trials

A free trial is an optional, popular marketing tactic that lets users try paid features of your app for a limited period. After the trial, users are charged automatically and need to opt out if they don’t want to pay to continue using the paid features of your app.

Apps with stable, recurring fees that are billed monthly or yearly and use the Wix billing system can have free trials fully managed by Wix. This includes:

  • Displaying a free trial’s availability at various touch points on the Wix App Market.
  • Taking payment details when a user opts in for the free trial (this increases conversion).
  • Notifying the user by email when a free trial is purchased, canceled, and about to end.
  • Automatically charging the user when the free trial ends (users can immediately cancel the free trial at any point on their Wix subscriptions page).

Self-managed trials (restricted): Until June 2024, all app developers were required to self- manage free trials. If you meet the criteria we recommend switching to the Wix-managed method by following the steps below. Apps that use external billing, usage-based pricing or offer single purchases still need to manage their own free trial.

Set up a Wix-managed free trial

The following sections explain how to set up a Wix-managed free trial, including how to:

  • Activate and configure a free trial in your app’s dashboard.
  • Detect a user's free trial activity, such as when they start a free trial.
  • Set up UI states within your app to reflect the trial's availability and status.

Important: Free trials don't appear in your payouts dashboard until the trial ends and the user is successfully charged.

Step 1 | Activate and configure a free trial

  1. Go to the Pricing page in your app's dashboard.
  2. Enable Free Trial.
  3. Input the amount of days you want to offer the trial for (up to 30 days).
  4. Click Save.

Note: Free trials are applied to users and existing plans only after submitting, approving, and publishing a new app version.

Step 2 | Detect a user’s free trial activity

To detect if a user is on a free trial, call Get App Instance (REST | SDK). Check the returned instance properties, and activate or deactivate your app's paid features accordingly.

  • isFree: false if a user is on a paid plan or free trial.
  • billing: Only appears if isFree is false. Contains a property freeTrialInfo with status and endDate (to check how many days are left in the trial).
  • freeTrialAvailable: Indicates if a user is eligible for a free trial or not.

You should also subscribe to the following webhooks, but please note that there's currently no explicit indication that the plans returned are free trial plans:

Note for Blocks developers: Free trial fields aren't currently available in the decoded instance and the vendorProductId will be updated once a user upgrades to a free trial plan. We recommend using the REST/SDK instance to receive information on free trials.

Step 3 | Set up UI states within your app

We recommend that you set up the following ‘availability’ states within your app:

  1. When a user adds the app for the first time you can present a CTA to begin the free trial. The app can be fully locked or operate with limited functionality.
  2. When a user cancels a free trial (this can be the same state / message as the above).
  3. When a user tries to install the app again or on another site, because a trial is only available once per Wix account (this can be the same state / message as the above).

State example 1

State example 2

Step 4 | Test your free trial flow

After you've activated a free trial as described in step 1:

  1. Add a recurring pricing plan in your app's dashboard and save it.
  2. Listen to relevant webhooks such as Paid Plan Purchased.
  3. Install the app on your site and check the App Instance: isfree should be true.
  4. Upgrade the app with free trial for the new recurring pricing plan you just created.
  5. Check that you receive the Paid Plan Purchased webhook and the relevant fields in App Instance are updated.

Note: Wix-managed free trials are available to new users only. This means that if you tested your purchase flow, you won't be able to test the Wix-managed free trial flow afterward from the same Wix account for the same app. Create a new test app if necessary.

Transition from a self-managed free trial to a Wix-managed free trial

When your new app version is published with a Wix-managed free trial any users that are currently enrolled in the self-managed free trial will be offered the new free trial as well. Your app can prompt users to move to the new free trial and end their current one.

Set up a self-managed free trial

Important: As of June 01, 2024, this workaround solution is only relevant for apps that use external billing, usage-based pricing or offer single purchases.

When a free trial is activated in the App Dashboard, Wix displays a free trial’s availability in various places on the Wix App Market. However, it’s the app’s responsibility to:

  • Manage the user experience.
  • Notify users when a free trial is purchased, canceled, and about to end.
  • Charge users when the free trial ends.

Step 1 | Activate a free trial in the App Dashboard

  1. Go to the Pricing page in your app’s dashboard.
  2. Enable Free Trial.
  3. Input the amount of days you want to offer the trial for (up to 99 days).
  4. Click Save.
  5. Your app needs to be submitted, approved and published for changes to take place.

Step 2 | Set up UI states within your app

You need to set up the following ‘availability’ states within your app:

  1. App is added, trial started. Usually the app has its features active during the trial days. You can also show a counter of how many days are left.
  2. Trial ended after X days. The app should be locked or minimal.

State example 3

See also

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