I talked today with some company representatives about their new-user pipeline. Their platform has self-serve onboarding with a free trial period (seven days). The team—tracking the pipeline pretty well—noticed customers getting stuck in the last step before converting to paid plans. Digging in a bit, I learned that customers could continue using the product for free after their trial period ended. With little incentive to decide to either buy or pass, many took the easy road and continued their free trials.

This company is very early in its journey. Its leaders want to get as many paying customers as possible. They also want to get feedback so they can make the product better. Allowing users to continue free trials longer than advertised accomplishes neither. The people who get value from the product aren’t paying, so you don’t who they are or how many of them there are—or even if they exist. The people who don’t get enough value from the product to pay for it don’t have to signal that. The founders can’t reach out to investigate the why behind “no” decisions so they can improve the product. Everyone is lumped together in the same bucket.

If you’re an early founder, consider having a hard end date for your free trial. The insights you gain could be invaluable.