Free trials are great and a wonderful way to experience a service before committing. In this article you can learn more about free trials and discover some of the best options available (in particular for travellers, photographers and bloggers). We’ve split these into different categories too from entertainment, online privacy, photography and shopping. We hope you like them and remember to set a reminder before the trial is up so as to make a decision to either continue or cancel the service.
Disclosure: If you sign up for a free trial, or continue with the service after the trial we will sometimes get a commission at no extra cost to you. To avoid a trial costing you anything please read below as well as the official terms of the service on how to cancel. Also note that the trials mentioned below can sometimes change or be discontinued so please check the details if you sign up.
What interests you?
What Are Free Trials?
Free trials allow you to sign up to a subscription service and allow you to experience what’s offered before making a decision on whether you want to commit or not. They are a great way to try something which might ultimately be a great resource, tool or entertainment service, which you may wish you’d always had.
Free trials can be for various things, such as music and video streaming, VPNs, or design and editing tools such as for photography and graphic design (to name just a few).
Different Kinds of Free Trials
Free trials can vary and sometimes require you to provide payment details in advance as well as your email address. This will allow the provider to prevent issues such as abuse and duplicate signups. For the best free trials, you won’t have to pay anything until your trial is over (we prefer these).
Other types of trials might be for a very reduced fee, such as try 7 days for £7 (for a more premium product). Or even money-back guarantees where you do have to pay upfront for the service but should you not be happy then you can cancel after trying it and then get a refund. We personally don’t prefer these as much, however, they do provide a way for you to try a service technically for free (after the refund) should you not be happy and not want to continue.
How to Cancel a Free Trial
To cancel free trials you should set yourself a reminder a few days or even a week before it ends. You should then have a good think about whether you are getting what you wanted from the service and if it’s something you’d then like to commit to.
As well as this we would recommend reading the terms and conditions of the service when signing up, or FAQs on exactly how to cancel should you not be happy and not want to continue. We have actually signed up to free trials in the past where we liked the service and product but didn’t need it just yet. However, we might come back to it in the future should we then need it.
Top Free Trials and Freebies to Try Now
Here are various free trial you might like to try. The features and terms and conditions may have changed (including the option of a free trial) since publishing this article, so please always check the official website when signing up.
Blogging and Design
- Dreamstime (one-week trial) – Dreamstime are a stock agency and a great place to get images, illustrations, graphics and other media that you can then use for your projects. We often use Dreamstime now to illustrate our articles or add other images to our website to improve the user experience. Dreamstime often offer a one week deal on a select download plan so you can try out the service. Head to the “Prices and download plans” box to see what options they have available. See more stock agencies for photography and video downloads.
- Semrush (7-day trial) – Semrush provides tools that will allow you to optimize your website for search engines. Including helping you with keyword research, technical website issues and more so as to help you get the best ranking possible. After the trial you’ll have the option to choose various plans including a Free, Pro or Guru plan. Each of these come with various benefits and features.
- Canva (Free plan) – Canva is a fantastic online design tool allowing you to use various tools to create social posts, business cards, banners and other graphics. They have both free and premium plans with the free plan offering 8000+ templates and the premium plan over 420,000+ plus stock images and more. We’d recommend starting with the free plan first and seeing how you get on and then upgrade to the pro plan if necessary.
- Tailwind (No time limit) – Tailwind is a useful resource allowing you to schedule Pinterest posts and also submit your blog pins to Tailwind Communities. This in turn can help you get traffic. They also offer Instagram scheduling too, as well as hashtag insights. With their free trial you’ll be able to schedule up to 100 pins on Pinterest and 30 posts on Instagram.
Entertainment
- Prime Video (30-day trial) – Included with Amazon Prime and a fantastic benefit. You’ll get access to thousands of TV shows and movies and can also download for offline watching.
- Amazon Music Unlimited (30-day trial) – Giving you access to 60 million songs – ad-free. Including offline listening – perfect for when travelling without access to the internet.
- Spotify (1-month free trial) – A fantastic place to listen to singles, albums, podcasts and more from your favourite artists or genres.
Currently not available for free trials
Although not currently available for free trials you may also like the below. If we discover they do start offering free trials again we’ll be sure to let you know.
- Kindle Unlimited (1-month trial) – (Note: This one may currently be unavailable) Providing access to 1 million titles, including select magazine subscriptions and audiobooks. You can also use non-Kindle devices to use.
- Disney+ – Home of all your favourite Disney shows and movies. Including content by Marvel, Pixar and of course Disney. A few shows or movies you’ll find include Home Alone, Frozen, Avengers and Star Wars.
- Netflix – Our favourite platform for streaming movies and tv shows. Also, see our The Best Shows on Netflix for Travel and Inspiration.
Photography
- Fixthepphoto FREE Presets – Through our partner Fixthephoto you can access both free and premium presets for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. As mentioned there are FREE presets too, so head over by using our link above to download and enjoy. You can also read about premium travel presents here.
- Adobe Lightroom 7-day trial – Creative Cloud is a service by Adobe that includes various creative software applications and is a great tool for photographers, bloggers and others in the creative fields. The one that we highly recommend for photographers is Adobe Lightroom which offers a vast amount of features to help edit your pictures. Read more about Adobe Lightroom.
- Smugmug – 14-day trial – Smugmug is a service that allows you to easily and quickly build a beautiful photography portfolio. We have been using Smugmug for years and highly recommend them. They offer a range of plans starting for as low as $8 per month (even cheaper if you pay annually). A few features we love about Smugmug include the drag and drop building blocks, password-protected galleries, the ability to use a custom domain, and unlimited uploads. Read more about why we recommend Smugmug for photographers.
- Fotor 7-day trial – Sign up to Fotor and you can often get a 7-day free trial of the pro version. The pro version offers some advanced features, hundreds of photos effects, design templates and other features. Should you not like the pro version then just cancel within the 7-days and revert back to the free version which still allows you to edit and add basic effects. Note that you may have to click the link on mobile to see this offer.
- Luminar (30-day money-back guarantee) – Luminar by Skylum is another fantastic photo editing platform and is a great alternative to Adobe. They come with some really cool features such as Portrait Enhancer, Orton Effect and AI Sky Replacement. The software can also be used as a standalone application, as well as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. We’d recommend giving them a go and seeing how you get on and then should you not be happy then be sure to cancel within that 30 days to get your money back. Note that this product isn’t subscription-based but rather a one-off purchase. However, we think it’s good to learn of other photography tools, rather than just supporting Adobe.
Online Privacy/Security
- NordVPN 30-day free trial – If you’re travelling a lot, or using public WiFis then a VPN service (Virtual Private Network) such as NordVPN might be a good choice for you. They help you to protect your connection and browsing by adding extra layers of security and creating a tunnel between you and the server/website you’re trying to connect to. Note that NordVPN often have great deals where you can save lots of money on their service (such as up to 70% off), therefore we’d also recommend keeping an eye out for those too. Read more about NordVPN.
Self-Development/Learning
- Skillshare 2-week free trial – Skillshare is an online platform offering over 30,000 classes which allow you to learn creative and other skills. You’ll find courses on photography, video, music, blogging and much more available. The free trial includes 2-weeks Premium access allowing you to experience the classes and hopefully get you on the road to learning some new skills. Note that they used to offer a 2-month trial but this has since been changed.
- Udemy (FREE options) – Udemy is a top provider of courses designed by experts in different fields. Many of the courses are premium, but they do also offer some free courses too. Head over to our link to discover some of the options available.
Shopping
- Amazon Prime 30-day free trial – Amazon Prime is a fantastic subscription package which includes a bundle of features. Including free delivery on millions of products, as well as access to movies and TV shows on Prime Video, books on Kindle, as well as Prime Music. Read more about Prime and why we recommend it.
Summary
Free trials are a fantastic way to try a product before you commit and buy. Depending on the terms you could also think of it as getting a couple of weeks, or a month in advance for free. We personally use free trials whenever possible to try out products before buying and have used (and still use) many of the suggestions above.
Disclaimer: We try our best to ensure accuracy in our articles and to keep them up to date. Sometimes however the features, trials, as well as terms and conditions can change, therefore please check these on the official websites when signing up or making a purchase.