I agree with you that if the app was indeed "essentially free", it could have seen all the benefits you suggest. But it wasn't "essentially free". For myself,

I agree with you that if the app was indeed "essentially free", it could have seen all the benefits you suggest. But it wasn't "essentially free". For myself, whenever I encounter a tool I might want to use and it has a limited time trial, I typically skip it unless I'm already fairly certain that I'll keep paying for it after the trial period. I think loss aversion comes in here as well: I'm worried about "wasting" the trial. It's like consumables in a video game: yeah maybe this tool would be useful now, but what if I encounter something later where it would be more useful?