Reverse Trial
A SaaS pricing pattern where new users start on the full paid plan at a low intro price for a fixed window, then continue at the standard rate. This is how VULK works — every paid plan starts with a 3-day intro.
Reverse Trial
A reverse trial is the inverse of the classic SaaS free tier: instead of giving users the cheap-or-free plan and asking them to upgrade, the user starts on the full paid plan for a fixed introductory window at a low intro price, then continues at the standard rate. The pattern was popularized by Notion, Superhuman, and Linear. It selects for serious intent (the user pays at signup), shows the user the real product (not a stripped-down free tier), and reduces the conversion drop-off because there is nothing to "upgrade to" — they are already on it.
This is how VULK works
Every paid plan starts with a 3-day intro at a reduced price, and then continues at the standard monthly price:
| Plan | 3-day intro | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Builder | €3.99 | €19.99/month — 1,000 credits, all frontier models, backend, deploy, code export, custom domain, video generation |
| Pro | €9.99 | €39.99/month — 2,500 credits, adds 3D Studio, BYOM, GitHub sync |
| Max | €49.99 | €199/month — 10,000 credits, priority generation, included .com domain |
The intro payment is credited in full toward the first month — the user does not pay twice. Team (€79.99/month, 5,000 shared credits) and Business (€299/month, 20,000 credits, SSO/SAML, audit logs) have no intro and start at the standard price.
There is no free plan: creating an account is free and covers project and account management, but generating and building apps requires a paid plan. The 3-day intro is the entry point.
History
VULK previously ran 7-day reverse trials at €1.99 (Builder) and €3.99 (Pro), retired on 2026-05-04. The current 3-day intro above replaced them on 2026-06-23.
See /docs/plans-billing/plans-overview for the full plan comparison and /docs/plans-billing/trial-expiration for how the intro converts.
Multi-tenant PostgreSQL
A database architecture where many customer "tenants" share the same Postgres cluster but are isolated at the schema or row level. VULK uses schema-per-project isolation on AWS RDS PostgreSQL 16 in Frankfurt.
PSD2 Mandate
The EU's Payment Services Directive 2 requires Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) on most card payments inside the EEA. A "mandate" stores the customer's authorized intent so future off-session charges can succeed without re-authenticating.