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Trial and trial emails (self-hosting notes)

Every new workspace starts a 14-day Pro trial automatically (Company::TRIAL_LENGTH). A daily TrialEmailsJob sends the trial lifecycle sequence to workspace owners and admins: a getting-started email on day 2, a Pro-features email on day 5, and upgrade reminders 7, 2, and 1 days before the trial ends.

What a release upgrade requires​

  • Run rails db:migrate (adds companies.trial_email_last_sent_on).
  • Restart the Solid Queue dispatcher/worker process so it picks up the new trial_emails recurring task from config/solid_queue.yml.
  • APP_BASE_URL must be set for the email CTA links (already required by other mailers).

Self-hosted instances​

Trial emails only send when Stripe billing is configured. If none of STRIPE_PLAN_PAGE_URL, STRIPE_SUBSCRIPTION_PRICE_ID, STRIPE_SUBSCRIPTION_PRICE_ID_MONTHLY, or STRIPE_SUBSCRIPTION_PRICE_ID_YEARLY is set, TrialEmailsJob is a no-op — self-hosted instances without a checkout path never receive upgrade emails.

To exempt workspaces from trials and billing entirely (full Pro access, no emails):

# rails console
Company.update_all(billing_exempt: true)

Operational levers​

  • TRIAL_EMAILS_CRON overrides the send schedule (default 0 9 * * *, UTC) in production.
  • Trial day math runs in each company's timezone; the send stamp is companies.trial_email_last_sent_on (one email per company per day, reminders take precedence over onboarding emails, missed reminder runs catch up on the next run).
  • Each send is logged: TrialEmailsJob: sent=<email> company=<id> user=<id> days_remaining=<n>.
  • Users who unsubscribed from all emails (notification_preferences.unsubscribed_from_all) are skipped.