Has anyone tested requiring a credit card for free trials vs. completely open access?
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We spent months debating whether to ask for credit card info upfront. When we finally removed the card requirement, our trial sign-ups shot up by 300%, but activated users barely changed.
It turns out lower friction just filled our pipeline with ghost users who never actually set up their account. Adding a bit of friction back actually improved lead quality and reduced support load.
Have you noticed better long term retention with high friction or low-friction onboarding?
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The friction I kept is an email, and I kept it for a reason that has nothing to do with lead quality. There is no anonymous mode in my app: every system I run, purchases, analytics, support, pushes, keys on one user id, and a purchase that arrives with no id cannot be credited to anyone. So sign in comes first, but the pitch comes before it, a short onboarding and a quiz about what the person wants to make, so by the time I ask for an address they know what it buys. The card I do not ask for until there is something to pay for: the first song is free and plays in the app, the price appears after it. That matches your finding from the other side. The ghost users you got were people who paid nothing and got nothing, so they had no reason to come back. A free account that has already received one real result is a different kind of account, even without a card on file.