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Offer free trials

Free trials let merchants test your app before committing to a paid plan. You can configure free trial periods when creating any subscription plan, and extend trials for individual merchants from the Dev Dashboard.

Anchor to Configure free trialsConfigure free trials

When creating or editing a plan, you can specify the number of free trial days:

  1. Open App distribution on your Partner Dashboard.
  2. Click the name of the app you want to update pricing for.
  3. Click Distribution.
  4. Beside Shopify App Store listing, click Manage listing.
  5. Under Published languages, click Edit for the locale you want to update.
  6. Under Pricing content, click Manage to open the Pricing index page.
  7. Click on an existing plan or create a new one.
  8. Under Free trial duration, enter the number of days you want to offer.
  9. Click Save.

Anchor to Trial prorationTrial proration

Shopify App Pricing tracks trial days over a 180-day period to prevent merchants from repeatedly reinstalling apps to exploit free trial periods.

Shopify counts trial days using these rules:

  • Trial days are counted in whole UTC calendar days while a plan's trial is running. A plan change on the day a plan starts uses no trial days.
  • Used trial days are shared across all of your app's plans for a store. They are not tracked separately for each plan.
  • Only plans that started in the last 180 days count.
  • Remaining trial days equal the plan's trial length minus the days used. If the merchant's most recent subscription to the same plan had a longer trial, then that longer trial length is used.
  • A merchant on a paid plan who is not in a trial gets no trial days when they downgrade. A downgrade is a move to a lower price, a free plan, or from annual to monthly billing.

For example, a merchant uses 4 days of a 7-day trial on a Basic plan. They then switch to a Pro plan with a 14-day trial. They have 10 trial days left on the Pro plan.

The GraphQL Admin API does not return a merchant's remaining trial days before they select a plan.

Anchor to Extend a trial periodExtend a trial period

You can extend the trial for an individual merchant from your app's install details in the Dev Dashboard. You can only extend a trial that's still active.

  1. In the Dev Dashboard, open your app. On its Overview, in the Installs card, click the install count to open Current installs.
  2. Click the merchant's store to open its app history page.
  3. Open the â‹® menu, and then click Extend free trial.
  4. Under Extra trial days, enter the number of days to add, up to 60.
  5. Click Continue, review the new trial end date, and then click Apply.

You can also extend a trial from the Partner Dashboard: search for the store, click it in the Store column, and then next to Trial extension, click Create. Then select your app and complete the form.

Shopify sends an email to the merchant on your behalf confirming the change. The merchant doesn't need to re-subscribe to the plan. The extension is applied to their subscription automatically.

Anchor to DiscountsDiscounts

In addition to trial extensions, you can give a merchant a discount on their subscription. You can only discount an active paid subscription, and not while its trial is running.

  1. In the Dev Dashboard, open your app. On its Overview, in the Installs card, click the install count to open Current installs.
  2. Click the merchant's store to open its app history page.
  3. Open the â‹® menu, and then click Apply app discount.
  4. Select the type, value, and duration of the discount.
  5. Click Continue, review the discounted charge, and then click Apply discount.

You can also apply a discount from the Partner Dashboard: search for the store, click it in the Store column, and then next to Discount, click Create. Then select your app and complete the form.

The discount is applied to their subscription automatically, starting on the next billing cycle. Shopify emails the merchant their new discounted rate.

Anchor to Test plans on dev storesTest plans on dev stores

On a dev store in the same Partner organization as your app, you can select any available App Pricing plan at no charge. You can also mark individual plans as free to test so that other Partners can test them on their dev stores.

Learn more about testing plans on dev stores, including how Shopify represents no-charge subscriptions.

Anchor to Next stepsNext steps

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