Brett

(Almost) fully functional is critical – I’ve given up seriously thinking about several applications that were crippled long before I’ve decided if they are useful.

I would not worry unduly about “one off users”. So what? They are not going to buy anyway for that one use. At least if they demo it at a conference (referring to post above) somebody in the audience might …

Time limited trails are hackable in addins, but not with compiled code.

How about offering different versions:

1) Free – does one or two things, shows the other options it can do but just says ‘available in paid versions’

2) Personal – does what an end user would want to do mostly

3) Professional or Premium – with all the geeky stuff that looks shiny but is only used occasionally.

30 day warranty sounds good, 90 is better, I don’t expect more.

P.

I have 90-day guarantee, and I don’t give anyone any crap if they want a refund (even in one case beyond 90 days). I haven’t had to refund many purchases, and it’s not worth the hassle to fight it.

The trouble is people are now confused between *trial* (to try the product to decide if they want to buy) and *free use period* (a 30/60/90 day period where you can use the sw to do whatever before deciding if you should pay to *continue*). And lots of people don’t buy during the trial – they wait till the end, or don’t buy at all.

For many utility type stuff 20 mins is probably enough to see if its worth 20/40/60 dollars. Seriously who needs 90 days worth of cost benefit analysis to authorise the capital procurement of a 20 usd/gbp tool?

I totally accept for larger more powerful products different issue apply.

My trials have reduced functionality and the odd nag. These tools therefore always have some value. A time limited trial thats out of time is worthless. And I have ended up with loads of these as I half review something then get pulled onto something else. If its expired by the time I get back to it I just uninstall and move on. In fact I rarely even download them now I’ve been burnt so often.

The instant worksheet password remover (trial) is one of my most popular downloads. The trial has a few nags and can’t be automated – but it shows how fast it removes passwords – the key selling point. Sales are rubbish, but at least every time someone uses the trial they get a little advert for Codematic. (Sales are about 0.5% of trials.)

Mind you, Andy Cotgreave makes a good point over at the Contextures post that data soucre issues can be ironed out with time, and that in the meantime by connecting directly to data in Excel a user can make good use of the trial, by seeing how simple it is to create vizualisations, and the rapid way you can find the story in your data.

Or as he puts it: “Ironing out connections can come later; in the meantime, just hook Tableau to some of your Excel files – I am sure you’ll see the power of Tableau that way.”

A good point.

Tableau is real quick off the line to get using and if you are used to XL then this software is not a stretch. Where the trial period falls short is that it assumes you have all of your source data in good form. I tried hooking directly back to our DB2 but that proved problematic as the query times were way too long. To be efficinet I had to get an Analysis Services cube set up. That took a little while to get done and by the time it was ready the trial period was darn near over. As luck would have it I did see enough potential that on my recommendation the company sprang for a licence but it was tight. I was in the middle of a project where we could get very high pay back if I managed to find a coulple of things (which I did).

The value of tableau is in wading through huge volumes of data. A longer trial period to get your data in order would be appreciated.

What is the right trial period. How much time will it take you to sufficiently kick the tires. If you download it and don’t try it for six months then how interested were you in it in the first place?

Recent developments have caused me to reevaluate this “unlimited features for N days” approach.

One popular add-in is TM Timer for PowerPoint – http://www.tushar-mehta.com/powerpoint/ppt_timer/index.htm One of several different uses is at conferences where the presentations are meant to be time-limited. Someone contacted me a few weeks ago with a series of questions and concerns, all of which I politely answered. I suspected — and sadly, my suspicion was correct — I would not get a sale because she indicated the add-in would be used at a conference “next week.” The last I heard from her was the last of her emails asking for some more clarifications. Since the 30 day trial included the conference apparently she saw no reason to pay for the add-in.

Another popular add-in is TM Randomize Slideshow – http://www.tushar-mehta.com/powerpoint/randomslideshow/. There are customers who use the program on an ongoing basis (Flash Cards for rehab, randomized slides for class quizzes, etc.) but there are also those who want it for a “one off” use like a memorial or a party slideshow. Those in the latter category — including this one person who worked at a museum and at whose request I even added new capability — typically fall in the 30 day trial period and therefore apparently don’t see the need to pay for the add-in.

Someone at the IT department of a law firm contacted me about TM Directory (http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/software/dirlist/index.html) asking about a site license because they wanted to use the add-in on almost all of the computers in the company. Over a few emails we worked out the details and I also clarified questions he had. He indicated the add-in would be deployed starting “tomorrow.” That was the last I heard of it. Either the company found another solution or decided not to pay for the add-in since the 30 day trial covered whatever it wanted to do with the add-in.

I am actively considering modifying the definition of a trial. One option is to use the minimum of N days and/or M uses and/or P hours of use. But none of them will address the “one off” use.

One solution is to add a watermark or a splash screen as might be appropriate.

Another — and if I do anything I am leaning towards this — would be to limit the scope of the add-in. All features would be available simply not on an unlimited basis. For example, the TM Directory add-in would be capped at X files, the TM Randomizer would randomize a maximum of Y slides, and the TM Timer would be active only for the first Z minutes of a slideshow.

I may just leave things the way they are but it is frustrating to know people in a range of organizations are so unscrupulous that they will rip off the work of others on behalf of their organization!

I still do think it is too short. This limit was enough to stop me doing an evaluation when I first encountered Tableau (Andy, was it you telling me at the Excel gig?). It is an expensive prodct for me, no matter what anyone says about RoI I won’t get it directly. It would be something that I would look as part of a solutions package for clients should they need that richness, and also be up for that cost. So, if I am to evaluate it, it is not just like a hex editor, fire it up and see if it works in a manner that I like. I have to be able to play with it, understand how it works, where it works best, what its limitations are, and so on. Trying to earn a living does not make that easy with a complex product (I hope its complex for that price) like Tableau, and I don’t think I can do it in 14 days. As Jeff says, extending it is fine, but turn us on not off, offer more in the first place.

@JKP – not crippled functionality please, as Mike says I don’t even bother with these.

@Andy – you stated that kept extending … ‘when I was trying to get my company to purchase Tableau’ … What made you want to get them to buy it (in other words, without having trialled did, what made you think Tableau was for you)? And what was your company’s criteria for saying yes? Either way, you are arguing for longer trial periods.