Why we built a free trial

Before the trial: no export without a license

Until version 0.15.0, Kirocast worked like this: download it for free, record, edit, try every effect. Then, at the export, a license. Without one, the video stayed in the editor.

It was simple, and it was honest about the price. But it asked people to pay before they had seen the one thing they came for: a finished video. The zooms, the cursor, the captions, the background only really make sense in the file you send to someone.

What our analytics could not tell us

The website counted a few things. How many people clicked Download. How many reached checkout. How many bought. Between the first number and the last, there was nothing.

By October, Plausible showed about 300 download clicks, and we had no way to reach any of those people. Did they install the app? Did they stop at the screen recording permission? Did they record something, hit the license screen at export, and close the app? From where we sat, a person who downloaded Kirocast and gave up looked exactly like a person who never came back.

The app could not tell us either. It reports one thing on its own: that a licensed Mac exported a video, and in which format. A Mac without a license told us nothing at all.

Why we did not add more tracking

The obvious fix would have been more analytics: an SDK in the app, events for every screen, session recordings on the website. We did not want that for a tool that records your screen.

The website uses Plausible, hosted on our own server. It sets no cookies, follows no one across sites, and counts pages, referrers and campaign links in aggregate. The few goals that matter, Download and Purchase, are counted by our server when the request passes through, not by a script in your browser.

There is one exception, and the privacy policy names it. When we run ads on X or LinkedIn, their pixels measure whether an ad led to a download or a purchase. They load only if you choose Accept in the cookie banner, and you can change your answer at the bottom of any page.

So the question was not how to watch people more closely. It was how to hear from them.

How the free trial works

Kirocast now asks for one thing during the welcome: an email address, confirmed with a 6-digit code. As soon as the code is entered, the trial starts, and for three days every export works. Styled MP4 and GIF, Talk mode, Export for AI, the videos your agent makes. No watermark.

We chose three days rather than a number of exports. Talk mode can make five exports in a few minutes, and a trial that ends before you have finished one real video is not a trial. When the three days are over, recording and editing stay free. Exporting needs a license, and Buy a License activates it on that Mac without typing a key.

Here is what the trial tells our server: your email address and whether you want Kirocast updates, your time zone, an identifier for your Mac, hashed twice so we never see the original, the start and end of the trial, the app version, and whether and when you first exported. Not your recordings, not your projects, not your videos.

What your email is for: one question on day three

The reason we wanted to know whether you exported is a single email. Three days after the trial starts, I write to you myself, in plain text, from my own address.

If you exported a video, I ask what works, what is missing, and what got in your way. If you did not, I ask what stopped you: a permission, a bug, something unclear. And if you need more time, you can say so, and I can give your Mac more days.

That one reply says more than a dashboard of events could. It also only happens if you want it to: every email has an unsubscribe link, and answering is entirely up to you.

The trial shipped in Kirocast 0.15.0. If you already tried it, I would love to hear how it went.