Chart: Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate

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To achieve the best insights, use the Trial-to-paid in days filter to measure the percentage of trials that convert into paid subscribers within a defined number of days. For example, compare your 30-day trial-to-paid conversion rate against your 90-day trial-to-paid conversion rate. Learn more in our tutorial on making trial-to-paid conversion rates more meaningful with cohorts.

Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate charts the percentage of customers who start a trial and subsequently subscribe.

Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate chart

ChartMogul automatically imports lead and trial data from a number of our integrations. If your Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate chart appears empty, you may need to set up trial tracking. Learn more.

TL;DR

Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate charts the percentage of leads who start a trial in each report interval and subsequently become subscribers. It’s an essential metric for measuring the efficiency of customer acquisition efforts. The median conversion rate for SaaS companies is 3%.

What insights can I gain from trial-to-paid conversion rate?

Trial-to-paid conversion rate is an essential metric for measuring your success at convincing potential customers to buy once they’ve tried your product/service. It’s a proof-is-in-pudding result — either they buy or don’t.

The higher the conversion rate, the more efficient your customer acquisition is. Fewer resources invested in acquiring new customers generally results in faster, more efficient growth and higher margins (assuming you’re not underselling your product/service and don’t experience higher-than-normal churn after signup).

Conversion rates among SaaS companies vary based on industry category, type of product/ service, and whether you’re selling B2B or B2C. According to First Page Sage, the average trial-to-paid conversion rates for SaaS companies are highly variable across industries — from 18.6% for enterprise software to 29% for CRM platforms. 

Marketers measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by tracking the trial-to-paid conversion rate of each acquisition channel and industry/audience segment. They then optimize their campaigns to achieve better results.

Chart Notes

  • Only customers with a Free trial started at date contribute to this chart.
  • ChartMogul isn’t aware of which plan a customer trials. Therefore, when filtering Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate by a specific plan, the rate is the percentage of customers who signed up for that plan divided by the total number of customers who started a trial (vs. those who trialed the plan) in a given report interval.
  • Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate can change retroactively because it measures the rate at which a cohort of customers (i.e., those who started a trial in a given report interval) eventually subscribe (an activity that can happen at any point in the future). As such, trial-to-paid conversion rates will be most accurate and actionable for intervals that are further in the past than your average sales cycle length.

Calculation

ChartMogul calculates Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate as the number of customers with Free trial started at and Subscriber Since dates in a given report interval divided by the number of customers with Free trial started at dates in that interval.

For example, if ten customers start a trial in May and five become subscribers, the Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate for May would be 50%. Then, if two more customers become subscribers in July, the Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate for May would retroactively change to 70%.

Chart Data

The Chart Data table for Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate works differently than other charts. It provides the following breakdown:

  • Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate — the percentage of customers who started a trial in the report interval and subsequently became subscribers.
  • Change — The increase or decrease from the previous report interval, shown as a percentage.

Select a Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate cell to see the list of customers who started a free trial in the reporting period.

Next Steps

  • Measure the number of free trials with Free Trials.
  • Use segmentation to see which regions, marketing channels, or campaigns generate the highest conversions.
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