Built for evaluators who want to try the product before talking to a rep
A CRM free trial should let you touch the actual product, not a demo environment.
Most CRM free trials gate features behind "contact sales" buttons. Strkr's free trial unlocks forecasting, automations, enrichment, AI assist, and the full API for 14 days. No credit card to start. No sales call to unlock the real surfaces. The decision gets made on the product.
Buyers evaluating CRM software run into the same six-stage trial friction every time. Sign up form asks for company size, phone, use case. Email confirms sign-up with a scheduled call before the trial unlocks. The product shows a watermarked demo environment with sample data. The real features sit behind a "contact your account executive" button. The free trial ends and the sales call pressure starts. Below are six trial failure modes we see across the CRM category, and what Strkr does differently.
The "schedule a demo first" wall
The sign-up form hides the free trial.
Many CRM vendors (Salesforce, HubSpot higher tiers, Zoho premium, Microsoft Dynamics) default the primary CTA to "schedule a demo" rather than "start free trial." The free trial exists but requires finding the small-text link below the fold. The buyer who wants to touch the product first is pushed into a sales call before the evaluation starts. Strkr's primary CTA is start free trial, no credit card, no scheduled call required.
Watermarked demo environments
The trial loads 500 fake contacts you cannot delete.
Some trials load a demo environment with sample data (contacts named "Jane Smith at Acme Inc," opportunities worth exactly 50,000 dollars, a dashboard that looks finished). The sample data is impossible to delete cleanly, and the trial never shows what the product looks like with the buyer's actual data. Strkr's trial starts empty with the option to seed sample data if the evaluator wants to see a populated view.
Feature-gated trials
The real features are hidden behind "contact sales."
The common pattern is a trial that unlocks the basic record screen (contacts, deals, activities) and gates the features that actually matter (forecasting, automations, lead scoring, enrichment, API access, custom fields). The buyer never evaluates the surfaces that drive the decision. Strkr's trial unlocks every feature on every tier for 14 days, including the enterprise-tier capabilities.
The "trial expiration" lockout
Day 15 locks the data and forces the sales call.
When a trial expires, the common pattern is to lock the data behind a payment gate and only release it after a sales call. The evaluator feels pressured. Data they want to export is held hostage. Strkr's trial expiration converts to a free-tier downgrade: the data remains accessible, the paid features turn off, and the buyer can continue evaluating on the free tier or upgrade when they are ready.
Trial-to-paid pricing surprises
The published price is for marketing contacts, not sales users.
The pricing page says "starting at 25 dollars per user per month." The actual trial-to-paid conversion surfaces per-contact charges, module add-ons, premium support fees, and professional services that double or triple the quoted price. Strkr publishes a flat per-seat price that is the price the buyer pays, with every feature included at every tier.
Sales call pressure during the trial
Three emails and two phone calls in the first week.
The common trial follow-up motion is three "check-in" emails and two phone calls in the first week. The pressure signals that the vendor is more interested in a signed contract than a product fit. Strkr's trial outreach is one email on day 1 (quickstart resources) and one on day 10 (invitation to a technical call if the buyer wants deeper exploration). The buyer runs the pace.
What the Strkr 14-day trial unlocks
Every feature on every tier, no credit card to start.
The capability cards below are the specific surfaces available during the Strkr free trial. The intent is to let the buyer evaluate the product on the surfaces that actually drive the decision, not a watermarked subset.
The core CRM record layer runs identically on trial and paid. Contacts, accounts, opportunities, activities, and custom objects. Field customization, picklist editing, custom validation rules. The trial loads empty by default; the buyer imports their own data or seeds sample data on request.
The forecasting layer (weekly commit submission with reason-coded slippage, pipeline-review view with per-deal field changes week over week, forecast accuracy tracking per rep) is enabled on trial. The buyer evaluates the forecast motion against their current pipeline rather than a demo environment.
Automation flows
Lead routing, scoring, cadence, stage criteria, workflow actions.
Native automation (lead routing with territory and round-robin, lead scoring with configurable rules, cadence enrollment with activity awareness, stage exit criteria, workflow actions on stage change) runs on trial. The buyer wires their own automation and sees how it feels on actual data.
AI assist
Strkr AI drafts, enrichment inference, pre-call briefings.
Strkr AI (pre-call briefings on request, follow-up draft on recent call, enrichment inference for fields the data provider missed, next-step suggestions on stuck deals) runs on trial without a token meter. The buyer evaluates whether the AI surfaces earn their keep in the actual workflow.
Enrichment and intent
Firmographic, contact, technographic enrichment on write.
The enrichment layer (firmographic enrichment on account creation, contact-level enrichment with LinkedIn and verified email, technographic data, first-party intent capture, third-party intent blend) runs on trial. The buyer tests coverage against their actual target segments.
The full API (OpenAPI 3.1 spec, TypeScript/Python/Go/Ruby SDKs, OAuth 2.0 client credentials grant, webhook delivery with DLQ) runs on trial. The buyer tests the integration surface against their actual engineering stack rather than reading documentation.
Reporting and dashboards
Pipeline velocity, cohort retention, conversion by stage.
The reporting layer (pipeline velocity, weighted conversion, forecast accuracy, cohort retention, CAC payback by segment, hygiene dashboard) runs on trial. The buyer evaluates whether the metrics the product computes match the metrics their team actually uses.
Permissions and roles
Role-based access, field-level permissions, SSO.
The permissions layer (role-based access control, field-level permissions, SSO via SAML and OIDC) runs on trial. The buyer tests the configuration against their actual team structure, which is where enterprise evaluations usually unlock or stall.
HIPAA posture
BAA coverage available during the trial.
Teams in healthcare, insurance, or regulated adjacent industries can request BAA coverage during the trial for HIPAA-sensitive evaluation. Strkr is HIPAA compliant with BAA; the trial accommodates the compliance evaluation without requiring a signed contract first.
Why the Strkr trial is structured this way
The buying motion we actually believe in.
The structure of a free trial communicates how the vendor views the buyer. A gated trial with sales-call pressure says "we think you need us to tell you if the product fits." A full-featured trial with no credit card says "we think you can decide if the product fits." The cards below are the specific principles behind the Strkr trial design.
The buyer should touch the real product
No demo environments or watermarked trials.
The trial starts empty by default. The buyer imports their own data or seeds sample data on request. The surfaces the buyer evaluates are the surfaces that will run production on day 15. The common pattern of "the demo looked great but production felt different" cannot happen because the trial and production are the same thing.
The decision happens on the product
Every feature on every tier, no gating.
Every feature on every tier is unlocked for 14 days. The buyer evaluates forecasting, automations, enrichment, AI, and the API without hitting a "contact sales" wall. The vendor cannot hide the surfaces that would lose the decision, and the buyer cannot be surprised by features they discover after signing.
The buyer sets the pace
One email day 1, one email day 10.
The trial outreach is minimal: a quickstart email on day 1 with resources, and a day-10 invitation to a technical conversation if the buyer wants deeper exploration. The vendor does not call the buyer in week 1. The common pattern of "three check-in emails and two phone calls" that signals sales pressure is absent by design.
Expiration is a soft downgrade
Day 15 converts to free tier, data stays accessible.
When the 14-day trial ends, paid features turn off but the data remains accessible on the free tier. The buyer continues evaluating or upgrades when ready. Data is never held hostage behind a payment gate. The common pattern of "trial expiration locks everything" that forces a rushed decision does not apply.
Pricing is published
The per-seat price is the price.
Strkr publishes a flat per-seat price. No per-contact charges, no module add-ons, no premium support fees. The price the buyer sees is the price they pay. The common pattern of "published price is bait, real price is 3x after add-ons" cannot happen because the add-ons do not exist.
Technical evaluation runs on real data
API, webhooks, HIPAA, SSO all enabled on trial.
The surfaces that enterprise evaluators actually test (API, webhook delivery, HIPAA posture, SSO configuration, custom field extension) all run on the trial. Teams can evaluate the integration surface against their actual engineering stack rather than reading promises. The decision happens on evidence.
How evaluators actually use the Strkr trial
The three motions we see work in 14 days.
The 14-day trial is enough time to evaluate the product against the actual decision criteria. The three motions below are the ones we see produce clean evaluations: product-led self-eval, assisted technical eval, and parallel-run against incumbent CRM.
Product-led self-evaluation
Sign up, import, run the week.
The evaluator signs up, imports their current pipeline (CSV from the incumbent CRM or API sync), and runs their actual sales motion through Strkr for a week. The evaluation runs on real data, real stakeholders, real activity. By day 7 the evaluator knows whether the product fits because they used it.
Assisted technical evaluation
Day 10 technical call to go deeper on API or workflow.
For evaluators with specific integration or workflow questions (data migration, custom API usage, SSO configuration, HIPAA setup), the day-10 technical call is the surface for deeper exploration. The call is scheduled on the evaluator's request rather than pushed by sales. The conversation runs on the specific blockers rather than a generic product demo.
Parallel-run against incumbent
Run Strkr and the current CRM for 14 days.
Teams on an incumbent CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) often run Strkr in parallel for the trial period: new leads enter both systems, the team runs the Monday pipeline review on both, the forecast submit happens on both. The parallel run surfaces the actual workflow differences. The common pattern of "we moved tools and now nothing works" cannot happen because the parallel run exposed the gaps before cutover.
HIPAA-sensitive evaluation with BAA
Healthcare teams run the trial under BAA from day 1.
Healthcare or insurance teams requiring HIPAA compliance request BAA coverage during the trial. The evaluation runs on PHI-covered data (with appropriate test or de-identified data for the trial scope) under the BAA, which lets the compliance team evaluate the audit trail, access controls, and data handling against the actual regulatory requirement.
Multi-stakeholder evaluation
Sales ops, engineering, security evaluate in parallel.
Enterprise evaluations typically run across sales ops (does the workflow work), engineering (does the API hold up), and security (does the compliance posture satisfy requirements). The Strkr trial accommodates each evaluator in their native surface: sales ops in the admin UI, engineering in the API docs, security in the audit log and SSO config. Each stakeholder reaches a conclusion in their own time.
Trial-to-production cutover
When the decision lands, the data is already there.
If the trial converts to paid, the data from the trial becomes the production data. No separate "set up your production environment" step. The team continues from day 15 with the pipeline, automations, and configuration they built during the trial. The cutover is a billing event rather than a data migration event.
Head-to-head
Strkr free trial vs the typical CRM free trial.
Free trials across the CRM category differ meaningfully in what gets unlocked, what gets gated, and how the buyer experiences the evaluation. Head-to-head on the specific surfaces that matter.
The pattern across teams that run clean evaluations: they treat the trial as a parallel-run experiment rather than a product demo. The playbooks below are three motions live on customer accounts right now, with the specific evaluation structure and the outcome.
Series A SaaS, 6 reps
Decision in 10 days running parallel against HubSpot.
A Series A SaaS team ran Strkr in parallel against their incumbent HubSpot setup for 10 days. The team imported the current pipeline into Strkr via CSV, ran Monday pipeline review on both, and submitted forecast on both. By day 10 the sales manager had evidence: the Strkr pipeline-review view surfaced three stuck deals the HubSpot view had missed, the forecast submit discipline produced a tighter commit number, and the AI pre-call briefing cut rep prep time from 10 minutes to 2. The team cutover on day 14.
22-rep mid-market team
Technical evaluation unlocked the engineering buy-in.
A 22-rep mid-market team had a sales ops lead who wanted to move off Salesforce but needed engineering sign-off because of a custom integration with their product analytics platform. The engineering lead evaluated the Strkr API during the trial with the OpenAPI spec, the TypeScript SDK, and the webhook delivery dashboard. The specific concern (webhook reliability under burst traffic) got addressed in a 45-minute technical call on day 10 with the Strkr engineering team walking through the DLQ pattern and retry semantics. The engineering lead signed off on day 11 and the sales ops conversion followed.
Healthcare SaaS, 14 reps
HIPAA BAA on trial accelerated the compliance review.
A healthcare SaaS team required HIPAA compliance for CRM evaluation and typically faced 90-day enterprise contract cycles with incumbents before BAA coverage. Strkr executed a BAA on day 2 of the trial, which let the compliance officer evaluate audit logs, access controls, and PHI handling against the actual regulatory checklist during the 14-day window. The compliance review completed on day 11, the sales team signed off on day 12, and the team converted on day 14 with a signed BAA already in place.
B2B SaaS Series C, 45 reps
Multi-stakeholder evaluation closed in 14 days.
A Series C B2B SaaS team ran a multi-stakeholder evaluation: sales ops evaluated workflow, engineering evaluated API, security evaluated compliance, and finance evaluated pricing. Each stakeholder worked in their native surface during the trial. The common blocker (one stakeholder stalls the whole eval) did not happen because the surfaces were unlocked for each role. The team converged on a decision on day 13 and converted on day 14. The internal evaluation documentation (which they shared with us as a reference) ran to 22 pages across the four stakeholder perspectives.
Agency with 8 account managers
Parallel-run surfaced the automation gap.
An 8-AM agency team on Pipedrive ran a 14-day parallel evaluation. The specific comparison that drove the decision: Strkr automation (native lead routing, cadence with activity awareness, workflow actions on stage change) versus Pipedrive-plus-Zapier (middleware routing, external cadence tool, Zapier workflow actions). The parallel run exposed that the Pipedrive-plus-Zapier stack dropped 11 leads during the trial window (bugs in two Zapier flows) while the Strkr native automation delivered zero drops. The team converted on day 13.
Touch the actual product. Decide on evidence.
Start your 14-day free trial with every feature unlocked, no credit card required. Run your pipeline, test the API, evaluate the AI, and compare to your current CRM. The decision happens on the product.
No. The sign-up form asks for work email, team size, and primary use case. No credit card is required to start the 14-day trial. The trial converts to a free-tier downgrade on day 15 unless the buyer upgrades, so there is no risk of surprise charges. The decision to upgrade happens on the buyer's schedule rather than at the point of trial sign-up.
What features are unlocked during the 14-day trial?
Every feature on every tier. Forecasting, automations, enrichment, AI assist, full API, webhook delivery dashboard, HIPAA BAA availability, SSO, custom fields, role-based access, and reporting. The intent is that the buyer can evaluate against their actual decision criteria rather than hit a "contact sales" wall on the surfaces that would drive the choice. The common CRM pattern of gating advanced features during the trial does not apply.
What happens when the 14-day trial ends?
The trial converts to a free-tier downgrade: paid features turn off, data remains accessible, and the buyer can continue evaluating or upgrade when ready. Data is never held hostage behind a payment gate. The buyer can export data at any time, extend the trial by request if they need more evaluation time, or upgrade to the paid tier that fits their team size and feature needs. The common pattern of "trial expiration locks everything and forces a sales call" does not happen.
Can we migrate data from our current CRM during the trial?
Yes. Strkr's migration tooling supports contact, account, deal, activity, and attachment imports from Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Freshworks CRM, Close, Copper, and most other CRMs via CSV or native API integration. For teams on an incumbent CRM, running the migration during the trial is the typical evaluation pattern: the pipeline from the current system appears in Strkr by day 2 or 3, and the team runs their actual motion against the migrated data for the remaining 11 days.
Does the free trial include access to Strkr AI?
Yes. Strkr AI (pre-call briefings, follow-up draft on recent call, enrichment inference for fields the data provider missed, next-step suggestions on stuck deals, pipeline-health analysis) runs on the trial without a token meter. The intent is that the buyer evaluates whether the AI surfaces earn their keep in the actual workflow. We teach around AI landscape externally with vendor-specific references (Claude, GPT, Gemini) but inside Strkr the AI is labeled Strkr AI because the model routing happens behind the scenes to keep unit cost predictable at scale.
What does Strkr cost after the free trial converts to paid?
Strkr runs on a flat per-seat price published on the pricing page. No per-contact charges, no module add-ons, no premium support fees, no professional services requirements for implementation. The price the buyer sees on the pricing page is the price they pay. For teams over roughly 50 seats, the enterprise plan includes dedicated support and SSO SAML as standard; the per-seat rate is similar with a volume commitment conversation that happens on the call rather than in a tier matrix. The common CRM pattern of a published starter price that triples after add-ons does not apply because the add-ons do not exist.
No sales call, no migration consultant, no four-month implementation. Enter your card, get 14 days of the full Pro tier, cancel any time before day 14 with zero charge. Spin up a workspace, import your CSV, and have something useful before lunch.
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