Cliniko's free trial is actually free. How innovative!

Joel Friedlaender·

I regularly review our competitors in the healthcare practice management software space. I recently came across a competitor that sells Chiropractic software offering a 1 Year Free Trial. I was impressed, that is showing some confidence in your product (and in your cash flow). Their offer on their website looks like this:

Badge with text that says 1 year free trial - risk free!

I clicked for details, because frankly I couldn’t see how that is a sustainable business model. Once on the free offer page, there are many more “Free Offer” ads:

Sign with text: Trying free for a long period of time is the only way to avoid costly mistakes.
Sign with text: Try platinum system for a full year for free.
Sign with text: Use platinum system software free for one year.

I won’t link to their site, but you can google them if keen to see the full thing.

After reading down a bit further, I found this line:

With Platinum, you can try it for free, only paying for a very reasonable installation cost and our low monthly unlimited support fee.

This is starting to sound less like “FREE” than was claimed. Finally when I reached the bottom of the page, I see this:

High fees of a fake free trial advertisement.

So $500 setup fee, and $99 p/month mandatory service contract. Unless I am mistaken, this is not FREE. What I find shocking is that these aren’t hidden fees. You will see this and be required to pay this before signing up. Do they think people will be tricked by this? It’s not a great start to a new relationship.

I am tired of software vendors giving software a bad name. People come to expect hidden fees, long contracts or other questionable licensing tactics. At Cliniko, we won’t sacrifice integrity for profits. There are no tricks or misleading statements. Our 30-day free trial is just that, a 30-day FREE trial. We don’t require a credit card to sign up for our trial, because we don’t plan to charge you anything.

I hope that more software vendors take a simpler and more honest approach to selling their software. This will make comparing and buying a lot easier for consumers.

Cliniko is amazing practice management software for healthcare businesses. Visit https://www.cliniko.com to see for yourself.

Author information

Joel Friedlaender is the founder of Cliniko. He writes about productivity, team-work, and how we do things differently. Follow him on Twitter at @jfriedlaender.

Never miss an update! Sign up for monthly Cliniko news and tips.

Read Cliniko’s Terms and Privacy policy