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Free Trial Download Links

Give prospective customers a time-limited free trial of your app without paying anything up front. You share one link, each visitor claims their own trial with their email, and the app runs free until the trial ends. You are only billed when a customer actually buys, so trial distribution costs you nothing.

What it does

  • One reusable link per app that you can post on your website, in an email, or on social media.
  • Each visitor enters their email and downloads your app. Their copy runs free for up to 14 days (you choose the length).
  • On every launch the app shows the customer how many days are left in their trial.
  • When the trial ends, the app shows your purchase link and lets the customer enter a paid license key to keep using it. If they do not buy, the app stops running.
  • No PyLocket fee is charged for a trial. You are billed only when a real purchase happens.

Available on Free and Pro

Trial links work on both plans. Pro developers can issue an unlimited number of trials. Free developers can issue up to 10 trial licenses in total across all their apps; upgrade to Pro for unlimited trials. Either way you need at least one finished build for the app before a link can be created.

  1. In the Developer Portal, open your app and find the Free Trials section.
  2. Check Allow free trials for the app. This turns on the trial download link.
  3. Set the Trial length (1 to 14 days).
  4. Click Generate trial link.
  5. Copy the link and share it anywhere.

You can Regenerate the link at any time (the old link stops working) or Disable it to pause new trials without losing the URL. Re-enable it whenever you want.

Most apps ship a separate build for each platform. Your trial link supports a platform parameter so you can point each download button on your site at the right version. The portal shows a ready-to-copy link for every platform your app builds for, for example:

https://get.pylocket.com/t/your-token?platform=win-amd64
https://get.pylocket.com/t/your-token?platform=macos-arm64

Put the matching link on each platform's "Download" button. Visitors who open the plain link (without a platform) simply see all available downloads and pick their own.

What the customer experiences

  1. They open your link and enter their email.
  2. They download and run your app. It works normally, free of charge.
  3. Every launch shows a short "N days remaining" notice with an option to buy now.
  4. When the trial ends, the app shows your purchase link. The customer can:
  5. buy your app and enter the paid key right in the app to keep using it, or
  6. close the app. Without a paid key it will not run past the trial.

The customer never needs to reinstall. Entering a valid paid key turns their trial copy into a full copy on the spot.

Anti-abuse: one trial per person

To keep trials from being used as a way to run your app for free forever:

  • One trial per email, per app. If the same email claims again, they get their existing trial back rather than a fresh one.
  • One trial per computer, per app. The trial is bound to the machine, not to whoever downloaded it: claiming another trial of the same app under a different email or account on a computer that has already run one is refused at activation, with a message saying the trial has already been used on that computer. Uninstalling, reinstalling, or a support activation reset does not free the machine.
  • You control the per-computer allowance. The default is one trial per computer. If your product warrants more, raise "Free trials per computer" in the Free Trials section of the app page (up to 100).

A customer who buys is never blocked. A paid license runs on the same computer that previously held the trial, so the trial-to-purchase path always works.

Granting a longer trial as an exception. When a customer asks for more time, do not issue a second trial — extend the one they have: find their license on the Licenses page (search by email or key) and edit its expiry date. The customer keeps the same license key, and the app picks the new expiry up at its next launch. Because the extension keeps the same license, the one-per-computer rule never gets in the way.

Tips

  • Pair the trial link with your Stripe purchase link so the "buy" step at the end of the trial is one click. See Sell Your App with Stripe.
  • Watch adoption from the Trial Downloads number on your dashboard and on each app's page. It counts how many trials have been claimed.
  • Trial length is capped at 14 days on every channel: trial links, --type demo / license_type: "trial" on the API, and trial redemption batches. None of them is ever billed. For an evaluation longer than 14 days, issue a regular license with an expiry (for example a redemption code batch with expiry_days); regular licenses are billed like any other license.
  • To pause all trials, uncheck Allow free trials. To resume, check it again.
  • On the Free plan, when your 10-trial allotment is full, new visitors see a friendly notice with your purchase link instead of a fresh trial. Upgrade to Pro for unlimited trials.
Topic Link
Sell your app and collect payment Sell Your App with Stripe
Device limits and expiry Configure Licensing
Helping a customer after the sale Post-Sale Customer Support