Offering a subscription discount too early will hide your real churn rate.

When we first started our software we gave a discount to people who paid for a full year right away. I thought this would help us get money quickly to pay for our marketing tests.

We got the money. It made a big problem for how we built our product. People who bought yearly made a decision on day one so we did not know if they really liked the tool until they had to pay after twelve months.

People who pay monthly have to decide every thirty days if they want to keep using the tool based on how value they get. If the product has problems or bugs they leave away which means we get fast feedback to fix the problems.

We finally took away the option for our first five hundred users. This meant we had to prove our value every month and our product got much better because we could see exactly where people stopped using it.

Money is important. Getting quick feedback about whether people stay with your product is essential when you are still trying to find the right fit with your customers. At what point did you add billing, for your own software product?