Free trial setup: 8 items and a 730-day Stripe cap

To align your free trial setup across tools, you must standardize eight specific configuration items. These items ensure consistency and reduce configuration errors during onboarding and billing. The eight items are:

1. Trial duration
2. Billing info
3. Expiration logic
4. Signup flow
5. Invoice handling
6. Reminder timing
7. Product setup
8. Onboarding tracking

Each item requires specific logic rules to function correctly across different billing and onboarding platforms. For example, duration limits vary by provider. This specific limit applies to Stripe subscriptions. Other platforms may have different constraints, so you must verify each tool’s maximum duration separately.

Standardizing these eight items helps customer success managers and product owners manage trials effectively. You should define the trial duration first, ensuring it fits within the provider’s limits. Next, determine whether billing information is required at signup. This decision impacts the signup flow and subsequent invoice handling.

Expiration logic dictates what happens when the trial ends. You must define whether the subscription pauses, converts to a paid plan, or cancels. Invoice handling covers how charges are processed after the trial. Reminder timing specifies when notifications are sent to the customer. Product setup ensures the correct plan is applied. Onboarding tracking monitors customer progress during the trial.

• Stripe’s 730-day trial cap: The trial period must be 730 days (2 years) or less, according to Stripe.
• Reminder timing differs: Emails are sent to trial users 6 days before the trial ends, according to Chargebee.
• Expiring reminders prompt action: The expiring reminder is sent 2-3 days before the trial ends, according to Paddle.
• Standardize your audit: Verify these three specific timing and duration rules against your current platform settings to identify gaps in your 8-item setup checklist.
• Check for consistency: Compare your internal onboarding tracking with these external billing reminders to ensure no customer falls through the cracks during the transition to paid.

The following table summarizes specific trial configuration rules documented by each publisher. Each row cites the source for that publisher’s stated limits and behaviors.

Review these platform-specific constraints when standardizing your internal trial policies. Verify that your chosen duration is 730 days (2 years) or less, the maximum Stripe states for a trial period. Confirm that your billing information requirements match the options available in each platform’s configuration settings. Align your internal reminder schedules with the automatic email timings documented by Chargebee and Paddle to avoid duplicate or conflicting communications. Use this table to identify gaps where your current setup may not match the documented capabilities of your billing tools.

To standardize trial setup, you must define two core variables: the length of the trial period and whether billing information is mandatory at signup. These settings vary significantly across billing platforms, so each must be configured explicitly rather than assumed.

Trial Duration

Duration settings determine when a customer transitions from trial to paid status. According to Lemon Squeezy, you can set the length of your trial from days, weeks, months, and years. This granularity allows for short-term trials measured in days or longer commitments measured in months.

According to Recurly, you configure free trial periods on plans by setting duration in days or months. Recurly’s documentation specifies these two units, distinguishing its configuration options from Lemon Squeezy’s broader range that includes weeks and years.

According to Stripe, the trial period must be 730 days (2 years) or less. This establishes a hard upper limit for trial length on that platform. If your standard trial exceeds this threshold, you cannot configure it directly as a single trial period in Stripe.

Billing Information Requirements

The second critical setting is whether customers must provide payment details before the trial begins. The configuration logic for this choice differs by platform.

According to Recurly, you can choose whether to require billing information when configuring free trial periods on plans. This plan-level setting determines if a card is needed at signup.

Recurly also offers flexibility for hosted checkout scenarios. According to Recurly, if you use Recurly's Checkout or Hosted Payment Pages, you can configure whether billing information is required or optional for subscriptions with free trials. This surfaces the same flexibility as the plan-level setting directly in your hosted checkout flow.

Lemon Squeezy handles this through a product-level toggle. According to Lemon Squeezy, once you’ve selected the “Subscription” product type, you’ll see a toggle called “Subscription has free trial?”. The toggle called “Subscription has free trial?” turns the trial on for that subscription product. Note that free trials are currently supported on all subscription products according to Lemon Squeezy.

Configuration Steps

Open your billing dashboard and verify the trial duration and billing information requirement for your primary subscription plan.

When configuring trial flows, you must distinguish between setups that require payment details and those that do not. Cardless trials operate with a similar structure to card-required trials, but they have a specific technical limitation in how they are initiated. According to Paddle, cardless trials work in a similar way to card-required trials, except that they can only be created using the API — not Paddle.js. This means that if your onboarding stack relies on Paddle.js for client-side trial initiation, you cannot use that method to start a cardless trial. You must route the creation request through the API instead.

The primary benefit of choosing a cardless flow is the reduction of friction at the signup stage. According to Paddle, unlike card-required trials, they don't require a credit card to sign up, making it easier for customers to try your product. This distinction is critical for customer success managers because it changes the data you capture at the start of the relationship. In a card-required flow, you have payment information on file, which can trigger automatic renewal or conversion logic. In a cardless flow, you do not have this data, so your conversion strategy must rely on other triggers, such as in-app prompts or email sequences, to request payment details before the trial ends.

Do not assume that all platforms handle these flows identically. The specific constraint that cardless trials are limited to API creation is a rule stated by Paddle for its own platform. You should verify how your specific billing tool handles the creation of cardless trials, as the interface and API requirements may differ. If you are using Paddle, ensure your engineering team has the necessary API access to create these trials, as the standard JavaScript library will not support this action.

Trial expiration and invoice generation follow distinct rules depending on the billing platform and the specific subscription configuration. Understanding these mechanics prevents unexpected churn or billing errors when a trial concludes.

Recurly expiration rules Recurly defines what happens when a customer lacks billing information at the moment of renewal. According to Recurly, if no billing information is on file at renewal, the subscription expires. However, there is an exception: if the renewal invoice is $0 or the plan fee is $0, the subscription renews without requiring a payment method. This rule is critical for teams offering free tiers or grandfathered plans that transition into paid structures. If your primary plan has a non-zero fee, you must ensure a valid payment method is captured before the trial ends to avoid automatic expiration.

Stripe invoice generation Stripe handles trial invoices differently based on the billing mode of the subscription. According to Stripe, adding items to a subscription with billing_mode=flexible or billing_mode=classic during a trial generates an invoice for those items with an amount of 0. Even though the amount is zero, an immediate invoice is still created. According to Stripe, the Invoice Line descriptions for this immediate invoice include “Free trial” verbiage. The immediate invoice still has an amount of 0, and the Invoice Line descriptions include “Free trial” verbiage.

Classic mode nuances Be aware of a specific nuance in Stripe’s classic billing mode. According to Stripe, for billing_mode=classic, the 0-amount invoice might include items that were previously invoiced. This means that if you are using the classic billing mode, the trial invoice may not be a clean, isolated record of just the trial period items. It may aggregate or reference prior line items. If your accounting process requires strict separation of trial and paid periods, verify how your subscription is configured in Stripe to ensure the invoice structure meets your reporting needs.

Chargebee immediate trial end Sometimes you need to end a trial manually before the scheduled expiration date. According to Chargebee, to end the trial immediately and change the subscription status to Active, use the Update subscription for Items API and set the trial_end parameter to 0. This API action is the specific mechanism for forcing a trial to conclude and activating the paid subscription state instantly. Use this when a customer decides to upgrade early or when you need to align the subscription status with a manual sales action.

Check how your trial configuration aligns with onboarding tracking tools. The eight setup items in the checklist include onboarding tracking, which requires verifying that your progress metrics match the capabilities of your chosen platform. Do not assume that every onboarding tool tracks subscription status; some track guide completion instead.

Note the specific mechanism your onboarding tool uses to record progress. According to UserGuiding, checklists are onboarding content containing organized guides. This definition clarifies that checklists are onboarding content containing organized guides. If your target configuration relies on structured guide completion, ensure your current setup matches this definition.

For teams using Pendo, the tracking logic differs from simple checklists. According to Pendo, the Onboarding module is a checklist module that functions like a guide list, but guide completion is tracked in a checklist element that shows guide progress by step and completion. This means your audit should verify that the checklist element is correctly displaying step-by-step progress, not just a binary complete/incomplete state. If your target configuration requires granular step tracking, confirm that the Pendo module is configured to show this level of detail.

Additionally, verify where you view this progress data. According to Pendo, each time you access the Resource Center, you can see the progress of the onboarding items. Your audit notes should specify that the Resource Center is the location for monitoring this data. If your team currently checks progress in a different dashboard or export, update your target configuration to align with the Resource Center view. This ensures that all team members are looking at the same source of truth for onboarding item progress.

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What happens if a customer has no billing info at renewal?

Recurly states that if no billing information is on file at renewal, the subscription expires. The exception is when the renewal invoice is $0 or the plan fee is $0, in which case the subscription renews without requiring a payment method, according to Recurly.

How long can a Stripe trial period be?

Stripe documentation specifies that the trial period must be 730 days (2 years) or less. This limit applies to free trial periods on subscriptions, according to Stripe.

When does Paddle send trial expiration reminders?

Paddle sends an expiring reminder 2-3 days before the trial ends. This reminder notifies the customer that the trial is ending and prompts them to add payment details or extend the trial period, according to Paddle.

Can cardless trials be created in Paddle.js?

No, cardless trials can only be created using the API, not Paddle.js. While they work similarly to card-required trials, the creation method is restricted to the API, according to Paddle.

How does Chargebee handle immediate trial end?

To end a trial immediately and change the subscription status to Active, use the Update subscription for Items API and set the trial_end parameter to 0. This specific API action manages the trial period termination, according to Chargebee.

This post is general operational information, not legal advice about notice periods or renewal clauses. It does not promise that any method keeps a customer. A review model checked the facts once, and that check can miss errors, so open the sources before you act.