Learn B2B SaaS Marketing

B2B SaaS Trial Conversion Rate Benchmarks

by 

Lauren O'Bryan

Last updated: September 3rd, 2024

In B2B SaaS, trial conversion rates are key indicators of your product’s appeal and usability. By comparing your rates to industry benchmarks, you can gain valuable insights into how effectively your product converts trial users into paying customers.

In this article, we’ll cover all you need to know about trial conversion rates and the specific trial benchmarks for B2B SaaS. We’ll also explain the factors that influence these rates and offer best practice recommendations for optimization, so let’s get into it.

Understanding Trial Conversion Rates

Within B2B SaaS, there are three types of commonly used trials: free trials, freemium packages, and usage-based trials.

Free trials come in opt-in and opt-out versions and are available for a limited number of days, usually 14 or 30 days.
Freemium packages are free to use for an unlimited amount of time and allow the user to easily upgrade to the paid version.
Usage-based trials are free to use until the user hits a specific usage threshold.

Understanding the different trial options is important because conversion rates will differ depending on the type of trial offered.

How Do You Measure Trial Conversion Rates?

Measuring trial conversion rates in B2B SaaS involves tracking the customer journey from the first point of contact with your product right through to the trial sign-up.

Firstly, you have to define what constitutes a “conversion” for your business, whether it’s the initial sign-up or the progression from a free trial to a paid plan. Then, set up your analytics tools to collect data from your site or landing page. Some of the most commonly used tools include Google Analytics, HubSpot, Mixpanel, and Amplitude.

The metrics you want to focus on include:

• Trial activation rate: the number of users who start the trial after signing up
• Trial engagement rate: the amount of use the platform gets, such as login frequency or time spent using the product
• Trial conversion rate: the percentage of users who upgrade from free to paid subscriptions

When analyzing your data, you can segment it by customer demographic or engagement level to better understand the factors influencing conversion. You should also analyze the trial funnel to identify where in the process users drop off.

Consistently tracking trial conversion rates will help you optimize the customer journey, but what is considered a good conversion rate? Let’s cover that next.

B2B SaaS Trial Benchmarks

It’s quite difficult to provide an average conversion rate across the board for B2B SaaS because of several factors that greatly influence results:

• The variety of SaaS products and value propositions
• The maturity of the business and the market landscape in that niche
• The type of free trial

Nevertheless, having some benchmark numbers is always helpful.

From various examples, we can establish that trial conversion rates above 25% are considered good. That being said, a new SaaS product should modestly expect lower rates, while a more established product with an opt-out trial could set the benchmark as high as 50-75%.

However, if we break down the data a little more and look at the different types of trials, we can set a bit more precise B2B SaaS trial benchmarks.

According to First Page Sage, conversion rates vary significantly between free trials (opt-in and opt-out) and freemium models:

• Visitor to free trial (opt-in): 8.5%
• Free trial to paid (opt-in): 18.2%
• Visitor to free trial (opt-out): 2.5%
• Free trial to paid (opt-out) 48.8%
• Visitor to Freemium: 13.3%
• Freemium to Paid: 2.6%

As you can see, with an opt-out free trial, you can expect far more conversions to a paid account than any other option. One reason is that users must provide credit card details upfront and intentionally opt out if they choose not to continue, leading to a high commitment level and intent to purchase from the start.

Opt-in free trials are easier to sign up for because they don’t require immediate payment information, but this does not necessarily equate to higher conversion rates.

A freemium model is the most attractive option for attracting visitors to sign up and test your platform because the lack of commitment and continual free access is viewed as less of a risk. However, while attracting more sign-ups, freemiums often result in fewer conversions to paid plans due to the sufficiency of free features for many users.

Factors Influencing Trial Conversion Rates

As we’ve seen in the example above, conversion rates for the different types of trials vary quite significantly in some cases. Several key factors contribute to these differences:

• Product value fit: If there is a poor customer-product fit and product-value fit, then the value proposition is unlikely to effectively reach your target market. This means that your product may grab a user’s attention but not enough to draw them in to sign up for a free trial.
• User experience: If your site is difficult to navigate, this can leave a visitor uncertain about the product and unwilling to proceed further.
• Trial offer: Something about the trial offer itself might be unattractive. Perhaps the trial duration is too short or the free trial is offered at the incorrect stage in the customer journey.
• Commitment required: Trials that require users to opt out before the billing period starts (opt-out trials) can deter some users due to the perceived commitment. On the other hand, freemium models are generally more appealing because there is no risk to the user when signing up.

Considering these factors, it’s important to focus on optimization strategies to improve your trial conversion rates.

Best Practices for Optimizing B2B SaaS Trial Benchmarks

When trial conversion rates are not meeting benchmark figures, optimization is the only solution. Start by analyzing the data to see where it’s all going wrong. You may notice users view the trial sign-up page and click away, which could indicate they weren’t satisfied with the information provided.

Here are some commonly used solutions to improving trial conversion rates in B2B SaaS:

• Research your target audience: Make sure you’re providing an offer that appeals to your audience. Target them at the right stage of their journey with personalized content that addresses pain points and answers their questions.
• Go back to the design drawing board: Design your trial sign-up pages to clearly display the value proposition and important details about the offer. Check out these excellent examples of high-converting SaaS trial sign up pages for inspiration.
• Utilize email marketing and retargeting: Get personal with communication and engage with users who showed interest but didn’t convert. To move a customer from a trial to a paid subscription, use email marketing to your advantage. There are several core lifecycle emails we recommend all SaaS businesses develop to be proactive about communication.

When you’re working hard to improve conversion rates, it can be easy to overdo it. Some common mistakes to avoid include:

• Overcomplicating the sign-up form: Avoid asking for too much customer information, as this creates a sign-up form that is too long and time-consuming to complete. Additional customer information can be gathered at a later date.
• Ignoring user feedback: User feedback is a valuable resource for identifying areas of improvement. Regularly collect and analyze feedback to make necessary adjustments and enhancements to your product and trial process.
• Heavy feature restrictions: It can be tempting to encourage a user to upgrade by keeping features behind a paywall. However, by not allowing users to test as many features as possible, you are preventing them from getting to know the full functionality of your product. So, be careful when restricting too many features.
• Lack of customer follow-up: If a user does not upgrade at the end of a trial period, you might feel like this is the end of the relationship – but it doesn’t have to be. Maintaining communication for remarketing purposes and keeping the door open for future conversations can be worthwhile.
• Not providing adequate support: Some users may encounter difficulties using your product. If they don’t receive adequate support in the early stages of testing your product, they are unlikely to access its full potential.

Wrapping Up

Good B2B SaaS trial benchmarks indicate that your business is moving forward and maximizing revenue. This metric shows how effectively you engage customers and convince them to choose your SaaS product.

Another way to see how well your business engages customers is with our SaaS scalability score self-assessment. This assesses how well you attract, engage, and convert customers. It will clearly highlight where your SaaS business stands against the competition and point you in the right direction to make improvements.