Have you ever paid for an in-app subscription? We often don’t think twice about the dollar or two an app itself may cost, but subscriptions can be a much harder sell. Do I want to keep shelling-out more money, month-in and month-out? Am I even going to think the content is worthwhile? What if I get bored with it and forget to cancel? Google has some new changes ready for its Play Store that may help ease users into their first experiences with subscriptions, giving developers the opportunity to enable limited-time free trials.
Devs can manually set the trial period for subscriptions from one week on up. When users sign-up for one, they’ll still have to authorize a payment, but Google won’t charge them for the duration of that free trial. If you cancel before the trial’s over, your subscriptions ends immediately, and you’re not out a penny. Like what you see, and once the trial’s over, you’ll be billed like normal.
Considering how simple Google has made it for developers to implement trials like these, and the potential benefits afforded to users, we really hope to see a lot of apps start supporting these trial subscriptions. The only thing we might change is the option to shorten that trial window, as some devs may not be comfortable giving away an entire week’s worth of free access; maybe Google might want to think about a minimum length of just a couple days.
