History Main / ThirtyDayFreeTrial

* Website/{{Crunchyroll}} offers a 14-day free trial for their premium membership - unless you use certain promotional codes provided by [=YouTubers=] who are partnered with them, which bump that free trial up to 30 days. Furthermore, the site offers premium members "Guest Passes" which allow them to gift their friends with 48-hour premium trials.

* UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} frequently has "free weekends". Typically for multiplayer based games (the game in question also tends to be discounted for the same length of time).

* All versions of Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows Windows operating system]] from Windows XP onwards have a 30-day free trial period from the time of installation, after which Windows needs to be activated (by entering a product key purchased from Microsoft) in order to remain fully functional.

* Website/GoAnimate's educational site offered a 30 day free trial, and this was used heavily by members of its fandom who couldn't afford to shell out for a fully paid account. You could make unlimited free trials with it, in fact!

* Netflix has a one-month free trial when you first sign up. Hulu also offers a free trial, as do many streaming services that require ([[{{Freemium}} or recommend]]) a subscription fee.

* America Online's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_AOL#Direct_marketing_of_disks crazy free trial discs they sent out in the early 2000s]]... most people threw them away or collected them for fun. WebVideo/{{Smosh}} made several jokes about them:
--> [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D9p-wmtIJc "Yeah! My new Frisbee!"]]\\

** Much more useful were the floppies AOL (and some of its competitors) used in the 1980s and '90s… which could be erased and used for your own data. Many people never had to buy a diskette of their own even once, thanks to the mountain of them flowing through their mail slot courtesy of AOL.
** Given that AOL kept sending out these trial disks and diskettes with many more hours than most residential homes of that time would typically use [[note]] Due to the limitations of 56K dial-up, which was what was available to most residential homes of that era, it simply was not possible to spend hours and hours on the Internet for most people. And certainly not to do activities that suck up large amounts of bandwidth, such as watching cat videos or loading graphic-intense websites. If you only went online a couple of times a day to look at your email, it would be a ''long'' time before you used up even just one of your trial disks/diskettes. [[/note]], in theory, you could have your Internet service mostly free (apart from the added fees on your phone bill) if you made use of them.

* Netflix has many different avenues of giving new customers 30-day free trials(though they have cancelled it). Hulu and Amazon Prime also both offer them. In the case of Netflix and Hulu, if you cancel and wait long enough, they'll generally even give you a free trial to ''come back''.

* Both SlingTV and DirecTV Now, two services that allow users to watch popular cable/satellite networks (and sometimes even local broadcast channels) without a cable or satellite subscription, have a free one-week trial.

A 30-day free trial gives you access to a game or service for a fixed, limited amount of time without having to pay for it until the time is elapsed. After that, the trial period ends, and you'll have to dish out the dough if you want to continue. If it's a subscription-based service, and they made you given them a credit card to start the trial, you'll often be billed automatically for another month the exact second the trial is over. [[note]]And if you want to cancel your subscription before the trial period expires, it's not unheard of for the vendor to make it difficult to actually cancel the service. They already have your credit card number, and may continue to charge you for services you no longer want until you go through the "proper" procedures (often requiring a precisely worded letter send through the postal service to an easy to screw up address which may not arrive in time and will be ignored if the language is not exactly as described, even though you were able to start the free trial online), or dispute the transaction through the credit card company. Many, however, are kinder - you'll generally be set to auto-renew by default, but all you have to do is go into the settings to cancel.[[/note]]

* Extremely common for free for home use computer security software, you are allowed to start a 30 day free trial that unlocks additional features, such as fully automatic updates, and removes nag screens.

A 30-day free trial gives you access to a game or service for a fixed, limited amount of time without having to pay for it until the time is elapsed. After that, the trial period ends, and you'll have to dish out the dough if you want to continue. If it's a subscription-based service, you'll often be billed automatically for another month once the trial is over.[[note]]And if you want to cancel your subscription before the trial period expires, it's not unheard of for the vendor to make it difficult to actually cancel the service. They already have your credit card number, and may continue to charge you for services you no longer want until you go through the "proper" procedures, or dispute the transaction through the credit card company. Many, however, are kinder - you'll generally be set to auto-renew by default, but all you have to do is go into the settings to cancel.[[/note]]

* Netflix has many different avenues of giving new customers 30-day free trials. Hulu and Amazon Prime also both offer them. In the case of Netflix and Hulu, if you cancel and wait long enough, they'll generally even give you a free trial to ''come back''.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has a free trial for new players who wish to experience the game before buying it and starting a subscription. However, the trial imposes several limitations on free trial players, such as capping their level at 35 and being unable to send friend requests or private messages. This also doubles as a barrier against people who would use the free accounts to send spam to everyone or making dummy accounts for botting. While there was originally a time limit on the free trial, they eventually removed it.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has a free 30 day trial for new players who wish to experience the game before buying it and starting a subscription. However, the trial imposes several limitations on free trial players, such as capping their level at 20 and being unable to send friend requests or private messages. This also doubles as a barrier against people who would use the free accounts to send spam to everyone or making dummy accounts for botting.

* Occasionally (though probably less often now than they used to) premium channels (such as Network/{{HBO}} and Network/{{STARZ}} will unscramble (or partially unscramble) themselves for a weekend, allowing people who don't pay their cable or satellite companies extra for those channels to view the content, the idea being that they'll want to add those networks to their channel lineup and pay the extra fees to do so.

* Netflix has many different avenues of giving new customers 30-day free trials. Hulu and Amazon Prime also both offer them.

* Netflix has a one-month free trial when you first sign up.

* Website/{{Crunchyroll}} offers a 14-day free trial for their premium membership - unless you use certain promotional codes provided by YouTubers who are partnered with them, which bump that free trial up to 30 days. Furthermore, the site offers premium members "Guest Passes" which allow them to gift their friends with 48-hour premium trials.

** Windows 8, Server 2012, and newer no longer start the 30-day trial period when Windows is installed, but one can still turn the free trial using Command Prompt; if Windows isn't activated, it merely disables a few personalisation options and displays a watermark in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.