VaultPress Begins Offering 5 Day Free Trials Through Jetpack

VaultPress, the WordPress security monitoring and backup service has created a way for new users to try the service for free. Beginning with VaultPress 1.6.2, you can try VaultPress Lite for five days through a seamless connection with Jetpack. The idea is to make it as easy as possible to get started using the service.

New Users Presented With A Free Trial Offer

Since I already have VaultPress installed and it’s connected to my Jetpack account, the trial offer is not available. Follow these steps in order to take advantage of the offer.

Create a new WP site that hasn’t used VaultPress before

Install/activate/and connect Jetpack on the site with a WordPress.com account

Install the VaultPress plugin and activate it. It will present you with an option to use the WordPress.com account you are connected with in Jetpack

Once connected, you’ll see the following screen letting you know your account is successfully using the free trial. If you don’t add billing information to your VaultPress account, the subscription will be canceled after five days.

Confirmation Of The Free Trial

Leveraging The Self-Hosted WordPress Community

I think the free trial is a great idea. It’s also a good move as it provides a way for VaultPress to tap into Jetpack’s large user base. While Jetpack provides many of the features WordPress.com users enjoy every day, it’s also a strategic business move for Automattic. It enables them to get more paid subscribers to the various services the company operates such as VaultPress.

In an interview with TechCrunch earlier this year, Matt Mullenweg made it clear that Jetpack will be a large focus of the company going forward.

Besides mobile, the company also plans to focus on Jetpack — its tool for bringing cloud-hosted features from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Indeed, he believes that as cloud providers get better, more people will host their own WordPress sites. While WordPress.com hosts 50 percent of all WordPress sites today, he believes that number could be as small as 5 percent in a few years.

It also shows the long-term vision and thinking behind Jetpack when it launched in 2011 and why Automattic has made strategic partnerships with webhosting companies to bundle it with WordPress installations.

In an extended interview with Forbes, Mullenweg explains how Automattic makes most of its revenue. WordAds and the VIP program are each 10% of the total revenue Automattic generates while subscriptions make up 80%. With the majority of paid subscriptions being tied to WordPress.com users, I question how that revenue stream will be replaced if it ends up hosting only 5% of all WordPress sites. Jetpack is one of the answers since it makes available services with paid subscriptions to self-hosted users.

The trial is part of a soft launch beta period and may be extended beyond five days once it’s completed. Will you take advantage of the free trial? Is five days enough time to determine the value of a VaultPress subscription?