Tripwire offers instead of free trials in web2app

TL;DR

• A tripwire is a very cheap first purchase that turns a prospect into a paying customer; selling more to an existing customer is far easier than acquiring a new one¹².
• Size it at roughly $3–10; keep it under ~$50, above which it becomes a “considered purchase”¹².
• Use it to recover ad spend fast: e.g. a $7 entry product lets you target ~$7 cost per purchase to break even, with upsells/renewals as profit².
• Common web forms: intro price that renews at full price ($0.99 first week; ~$20 first month → ~$40; Headway intro → higher after 3 months), or a small one-time unlock³⁴⁵.
• Prefer it over free trials: trial-to-paid averages only ~30–40%⁶.

Details

Examples.

• Amazon’s spring sale bundling 3 months of Audible for $3 — lose money early, earn over a long lifetime⁶.
• Hily (dating app): right after onboarding, before seeing any profiles, a $3 one-time “get seen 10× more” boost — instantly relevant to someone new on a dating app; the subscription itself has no trial⁶⁷.
• Coursiv: ~$20 first month renewing at ~$40 — Steve calls it tripwire, like streaming services’ “3 months for $15”⁴.
• Headway: introductory price (e.g. $19.98) that increases after 3 months; Igor recommends no free trials, at most $0.99 for a week or 3 days⁵.
• One App Masters client’s top-winning plan was a tiny first-week price (99¢ first week renewing at the normal weekly rate)³⁸.

Designing yours. Give a taste without giving everything away, framed in the user’s context: e.g. an AI video generator could sell “$3 unlocks up to 10 minutes of generation in your first week”, then upsell to the normal plan once they’ve used it⁷.

In winback. The same logic justifies very deep discounts (up to 90–95%) in emails: get them to pay something first⁸.

Disagreements / caveats

• Steve “plants a flag” that tripwires are the future for web2app and in-app — it’s a prediction, not proven data⁶.
• Intro prices that auto-renew higher must be disclosed clearly on the paywall (Coursiv states the renewal price) to avoid refunds/chargebacks⁴.

See also

• Web paywall and checkout best practices for web2app, Upsells and downsells in web2app checkout, Winback email sequence for web2app quiz completers

Footnotes

1. The Web2App Playbook: Scale Your App Without App Store Limits @ 21:07 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

2. The Web2App Playbook: Scale Your App Without App Store Limits @ 22:40 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Copy Headway’s $100M+ Web2App Funnel Strategy (That Converts Like Crazy) @ 35:35 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

4. The Web2App Playbook: Scale Your App Without App Store Limits @ 15:56 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Copy Headway’s $100M+ Web2App Funnel Strategy (That Converts Like Crazy) @ 36:25 — Igor Lyubimov ↩ ↩²

6. The Web2App Playbook: Scale Your App Without App Store Limits @ 23:33 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. The Web2App Playbook: Scale Your App Without App Store Limits @ 25:05 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

8. Copy Headway’s $100M+ Web2App Funnel Strategy (That Converts Like Crazy) @ 36:25 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²