I once worked at a non-tech startup. It was a startup, it was less than 50 people, it catered to film industry rather than tech. What I learned was this -- givi

I once worked at a non-tech startup. It was a startup, it was less than 50 people, it catered to film industry rather than tech. What I learned was this -- giving your software away for free will probably give you bad rep with businesses. In that company, the head of the digital team "understood" tech, obviously. But it took us insane amount of work to convince management to use a free product. They thought of it as a toy, which would cost company time (and hence money) to implement and get used to, and it won't work. And because it's free, probably nobody would come fix it. They were always worried of a 2-person ramen hogging company running away with their data. I also learnt that they paid in name of support, even if we did not need the product. We bought highly expensive Ooyala licenses just to upload videos to Youtube (Ooyala offers a lot more, but we didn't care for that). Yes, I know we can directly upload them, but as Youtube was free, they didn't trust the upload system in case of crisis. With Ooyala, they had someone to call if shit hits the fan during critical and timely upload. Free plans are weird. I would rather try offering companies a demo or pilot. And offer a reasonable money back guarantee. At least with making the customer contact you first for demo, you're in conversation with them. You can gauge if they will ever buy the product. If yes, you have a shot at selling. Automation of demo is awfully lazy for a SaaS startup that's just starting out. Outreach, talk, connect. The lazy free automated trial only helps in case you have a me-too product where the customer is jumping from product to product trying to figure out which one to use. If that's the case, you either don't have a USP or don't know how to use it. Either way, you end up in a spiral to the bottom.