Announcing trial cooldown periods for paid apps

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
June 3, 2025 | June 2, 2025 | June 30, 2025

Zendesk is excited to announce the availability of a trial cooldown period feature for paid apps, designed to make the app trial experience more robust. This feature ensures a waiting period between free trial sessions, protecting app developers’ revenue. After a trial expires, a customer can only start a new trial once the cooldown period has elapsed.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

With the addition of the trial cooldown period, developers have the option of setting a customizable waiting time—ranging from 1 to 999 days—before a customer can retry a free trial. This change applies to public apps with paid recurring subscriptions and applies to trials across different plans and multi-instance apps.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

By enabling a trial cooldown period, the system ensures that while customers retain trial benefits when switching plans, a controlled and fair approach is maintained. This change aims to support a healthier ecosystem for both developers and customers.

What do I need to do?

If you have a public app with a paid recurring subscription, you can choose to enable this feature. Existing setups remain unchanged unless you decide to activate the cooldown period.

This feature does not affect free apps or those with one-time payments. Coupon management will continue as before.

If a customer uninstalls and then re-installs an app during the trial period, any remaining trial days will be retained. However, once the trial expires and the cooldown period is active, the customer can only start a new trial once the cooldown period has elapsed.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our the Zendesk community where we collect and manage feedback. For general assistance, contact Zendesk customer support.

For the updated instructions, see Submit your app in the developer documentation.