Trial expiration emails: templates split by what each user did

A trial expiration email tells someone that their free trial is about to end, or just has, and what happens to their account and their work when it does. Most products send one version to everyone: a countdown and a pricing link. The ones that work are split by what each person did during the trial. The user who built something real needs a way to keep it, the user who got stuck needs help or more time, and the user who never came back needs one honest question, not a sales pitch.

This page is the set of templates for the end of a trial. For the whole trial, from the first login to the upgrade, see trial-to-paid emails. Both are a kind of behavioral email for SaaS: what the person did decides what they get.

Which trial users need which expiration email?

Sort trial users by what they did, not by how many days they have left. The days-left number goes in every email; nothing else should be shared.

The split matters most for the second group. Someone who logged in every day but never finished setup is often one step from paying, and a countdown that only links to pricing skips that step. For users who visited pricing more than once, the question is usually which plan, not whether to buy.

When should a trial expiration email go out?

Three days ahead gives someone time to get a manager’s approval or a company card; one day doesn’t. With a card on file, that same email has to work as a charge notice, so lead with the date, the amount and how to cancel, and check whether the places you sell require such a reminder by law. And if the first charge after the trial is declined, it’s no longer a trial email: it is the start of the path for when a first payment fails.

What should every trial expiration email include?

• The date, not just “soon”. “Your trial ends on Friday the 17th” stays true when someone opens the email a day late; “in 3 days” doesn’t.
• What happens to their work. Saved, read-only, deleted after 30 days: whatever your policy is, say it in one line, without threats.
• One thing they did. The report they sent, the eight clients they set up. It shows the trial wasn’t wasted, and it is the part a countdown can’t say.
• One next step that fits their group. A plan for the active, more time for the stuck, a question for the quiet.
• A sender who answers. “Can I get another week?” is a buying signal. Make it easy to ask.

Trial expiration email templates

These are for Signpost, a made-up client-reporting tool for marketing agencies. The trial lasts 14 days, and activation is the first report sent to a client.

Trial expiration email mistakes to avoid

• Sending the countdown to people who already paid. Check right before each email sends that the person hasn’t upgraded since it was scheduled. A “your trial ends Friday” email after someone paid on Wednesday makes the whole product look careless.
• Hiding the charge. With a card on file, the date and the amount belong in the subject or the first line, not under a paragraph about features. A customer surprised by a charge is more likely to dispute it than to stay.
• Two reminders about one charge. If your billing provider sends its own reminder, decide which one goes. Stripe, for example, sends its hosted trial reminder 7 days before a trial ends when its customer emails are turned on, which is four days before a three-day email of your own.
• Extending every trial automatically. More time helps someone who was active and stuck. Given to everyone, it only moves the decision a week later for people who had already made it.
• Stopping at the end date. The email a day or two after the trial ends can reach the busy user who meant to pay and missed the deadline. Send it once, then stop.

How to measure trial expiration emails

Judge these emails by what trial users do next, group by group, rather than by how many people opened them.

• Upgrades, by group. Count how many people in each group paid before or soon after the end. If the stuck group almost never converts, the help in its email isn’t landing, and the step it points to may need fixing in the product.
• Extensions that turn into payments. Track how many people who took extra time paid at the end of it. That tells you whether the offer of more time is worth making, and to whom.
• Replies from the quiet group. Their answers to “what did you want it to do?” are some of the cheapest product research you’ll get, even when they don’t convert.
• Disputes and refund requests after the first charge. For trials with a card on file, a clear charge notice exists to keep these rare. If they rise, the notice isn’t clear enough.
• Opens last, if at all. Apple Mail downloads remote content in the background by default, whether or not the person engages with the email, so an open says little about who saw the date.

For a sense of scale, ChartMogul’s SaaS Conversion Report, published in February 2026 from a study of 200 software products, found a median free-to-paid conversion rate of 8% within six months across all products, and 30% for free trials that required a credit card. Compare your groups with your own numbers from before the change, not with someone else’s average.

How to send trial expiration emails in Behavly

Behavly can’t know when your trial ends, so your server tells it: send a trial_ending event three days before the end. If you bill with Stripe, its customer.subscription.trial_will_end webhook arrives three days before a trial ends (Stripe’s docs), and your handler can relay it.

1. 1Make the trigger. In Triggers, click New trigger and name it Trial ending; the key follows (trial_ending). Under Payload, add ends_on (text, such as “Friday the 17th”) and plan (text).
2. 2Send it from your server with a key that has Send events only access, from Settings → API. Send your activation event and upgraded with behavly.track from your web app, so Behavly knows who got value and who paid.
3. 3Start the campaign. Create an Agent, on the trigger’s page, opens a Trigger Campaign that starts on it. If it happens again stays on Once per person, the default for things that happen once, like a trial.
4. 4Write the first email from what they did. Add a Plain text by Behavly Agent step, and use Instructions for Behavly Agent to say what each group should hear: what they built if they reached your activation event, more time if they were active but stuck, one question if they went quiet. Each email is written for that person from their own activity.
5. 5Branch on what they do next. After the first email, Branch on visited a page (Starts with /pricing) within 2 days to answer the people weighing plans, or on logged in to your site to separate the active from the quiet.
6. 6Put the date in exactly. For the reminder the day before, use an Email step with a template, where {{event.ends_on|soon}} reads “Friday the 17th” from the event that started the path, or “soon” if the field was empty.
7. 7Stop at the upgrade. Under Goal, pick upgraded and turn on They reach the goal under Leave when, so anyone who pays leaves the path at once. Skip if they already did it leaves an email out for anyone who already did the action it is about.
8. 8Read before it sends. Preview writes the step for a real trial user, and with Hold Behavly-written emails for approval on, you approve each email before it goes out.

When someone answers the quiet-user question, the reply arrives in the Unibox with their trial activity beside it, filed under a status such as High-intent or Follow up. Trigger Campaigns work on every plan, Free included.