SaaS companies have long relied on free trials and freemium tiers to reduce adoption friction and grow faster. They are powerful strategies that allow users to experience value before making a purchase. But until now, it has been difficult to track and analyze these free subscriptions in ChartMogul with the same precision as paid subscriptions. Today we’re introducing major improvements to ChartMogul’s in an effort to help you build better monetization strategies.
We are excited to announce support for free subscriptions and free trials with plans. This new capability gives you the full picture of how free trials and free users behave, when they convert, and how they impact your recurring revenue.
Why this matters
For years, customers have asked us to improve free trial tracking and introduce support for freemium reporting. Hundreds of requests have been made for the ability to slice free trial data by plan, and have visibility into free subscribers. These requests all point to the same challenge: without the full picture, it is hard to understand the role free users play in your business.
Free users often form the top of your funnel. They test features, explore value, and become strong candidates for conversion. By capturing and reporting on them directly in ChartMogul, you can now measure their impact and refine your growth strategy.
“Being able to understand our free trial conversion rate by product is extremely important to us and directly informs key business decisions. ChartMogul implementing this feature was huge for us – it gives us a much clearer picture of what’s happening with our users, the quality of our free trial experience, and helps us quickly pinpoint any issues. It also lets us compare trial behavior versus direct purchase, which has been super helpful for a variety of reasons. As a company that loves to move quickly and test many things, we are very glad to have this in ChartMogul.” – Spencer Rowley, Growth Product Manager @ Topaz Labs
What’s new
Here is what you can expect with this release:
Free trials and free subscriptions with plan data
Free trials and free subscriptions now appear in the subscriptions table on customer profiles, with clear statuses such as active, expired, and cancelled. Subscription history also records free trial and free subscription activities, giving you a complete lifecycle view.
New and updated charts
Two new reports, All Subscribers and All Subscriptions, let you track both free and paid users together. See churn for all subscribers who cancel their subscription(s) in a given period for both paid and free subscribers with the new All Subscriber Churn Rate. Focus only on paid with the Paid Subscriber Churn Rate.
Existing charts like Subscribers and Subscriptions are now renamed Paid Subscribers and Paid Subscriptions for clarity.
The Trial-to-Paid Conversions report has been improved, and a new Trial-to-Free-or-Paid Conversions report has been added. You can filter trials by plan, compare conversion performance, and get a more accurate understanding of funnel performance.
Trials are absolutely critical to our business, so being able to track their performance in ChartMogul is a game-changer. We finally see the complete picture of what’s happening during that make-or-break period, which means we can make smarter decisions about both our product roadmap and business strategy. – Brenna Loury, CRO @ Doist
Read more about that here.
Better data modeling
Free trials and subscriptions are fully integrated into your reporting. Stripe and Recurly are supported out of the box, and conversions from trials to free or paid plans are linked for clean lifecycle tracking. This means you can answer questions such as:
- How many paid customers started as free subscribers?
- How many paying customers downgraded to free plans?
- What is the real conversion rate for specific trial plans?
- How fast are my freemium plans growing vs my paid plans?
Benefits for you
With support for free subscriptions and free trials with plans, you can:
- Get a complete picture of trial-to-paid (or freemium) conversions
- Segment trials by plan to see which products get more trials, and which convert better than others
- See how many customers you’re gaining from free-to-paid upgrades, or how many you’re losing from paid-to-free downgrades
- Report on your freemium subscribers separately from your paying subscribers
This feature removes guesswork and provides reliable data for every stage of the subscriber journey. This feature is available to new accounts today. For existing customers, rollout will begin in October 2025 alongside various other improvements that are tied to this release.
Get started
You do not need to change anything to benefit from these improvements if you are using Stripe or Recurly to track free trials or free subscriptions. Free trials and subscriptions will begin appearing automatically in your account once the feature is enabled on your account.
To learn more, visit our help center or contact our support team. We would love to hear your feedback as you start exploring these new capabilities.
