What to Do During Your Dubsado Free Trial (a Day-by-Day Plan)

The Dubsado free trial gives you 21 days of the full Premier plan, no credit card required, and most people spend it clicking around settings. They change the brand color, open a few templates, close the tab, and come back on day 19 to an account that has never had a single client in it. Then they pay for a tool they still don’t know works for their business.

Here’s the plan I’d give anyone starting a Dubsado free trial today: three weeks, one service, and one real client journey built and tested before the trial ends. You won’t finish your whole system in 21 days, and you shouldn’t try. You’ll finish with proof that it works.

What the Dubsado free trial includes

I checked Dubsado’s help center and pricing page before writing this, because trial terms have changed more than once. Right now a new account gets:

• 21 days of full access to every Premier feature, starting the moment you create the account
• Unlimited clients, contacts and projects (the old 3-client trial is gone)
• Up to 3 team members, plus integrations like QuickBooks, Xero and Zapier
• No credit card to start, and no automatic charge when it ends

That last one matters. When the 21 days are up, nothing gets billed. Your account just stops working for clients: they can’t pay invoices, submit forms, sign contracts or book appointments, emails stop sending, and Flows pause. Your data stays, and you can still log in and export it. If you need more time, Dubsado lets you give yourself a one-time 7-day extension from the “Your trial has ended” window.

So the trial is long enough to build something real. It’s not long enough to build everything, which is why the plan below is about one service.

Before day 1: pick one service

Choose the service you sell most often and build only that one. If you offer three packages, pick the one that brings in the most clients. Everything else waits until this one works.

If you want each setup step broken down as you go, my free course, 21 Ways to Max Out Your Dubsado Free Trial, walks through the settings, packages, forms and schedulers below one step at a time.

A trial spent half-building three services ends with three things that don’t work. A trial spent on one ends with a client journey you can actually send someone through.

Days 1 to 3: the settings clients will see

Start with the pieces that show up on everything else, so you only do them once:

1. Business info, logo and brand colors
2. Your client portal styling and your custom URL
3. Invoice appearance, time zone and calendar connection
4. Your email connection, so messages send from your real address
5. Payments, with Dubsado Payments, Square or PayPal

Don’t agonize over fonts. Get it clean and consistent and move on. You can come back to styling any time, and you will.

Days 4 to 6: packages and payment plans

Build the package for your one service: what’s included, the price, and the description a client will read. Then build the payment plan you actually use. If you take a retainer and the balance later, set that up now with the real due dates and reminders.

This is the step people skip because it feels like admin, and it’s the one that causes the most trouble later. Proposals and invoices pull from your packages, so if the package is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong too.

Days 7 to 10: the forms

Build one of each, for your one service:

• Lead capture form. The inquiry form for your website. Ask only what you need to respond well.
• Proposal. Your package, with the contract and invoice attached, so a client can choose, sign and pay on one page.
• Contract. Your real contract, with smart fields so the client’s name, dates and price fill in on their own.
• Questionnaire. The intake you send after they book.

Use your real copy, even if it’s rough. A form full of placeholder text tells you nothing about whether your process works.

Days 11 to 12: the scheduler and your reusable emails

Set up one scheduler for the call you have with every new lead, usually a discovery or consult call. Connect it to your calendar and set your availability honestly.

Then write the emails you send over and over as templates: the inquiry reply, the “here’s your proposal” email, the welcome email after they book. You’ll use every one of them in the next step.

Days 13 to 16: one Flow, inquiry to booked

Now connect the pieces. Build one Flow that takes a client from inquiry to booked for your one service. Every step needs something that makes it happen without you remembering it:

• The lead capture form starts the Flow, and the first email sends right away
• The email sends your scheduler for the discovery call
• After the call, the proposal goes out
• If the proposal sits unsigned for a few days, a reminder sends
• Once they sign and pay, the welcome email and questionnaire go out

Don’t build onboarding, fulfillment and offboarding yet. Inquiry to booked is the part that makes you money, and it’s enough to tell you whether Dubsado fits the way you work. If you used Dubsado before, my Dubsado 3.0 breakdown covers what changed when workflows became Flows.

Days 17 to 18: test it on yourself

Before you pay for anything, run the journey yourself. Open your lead capture form in a private browser window and fill it out with a personal email address. Then go through the whole journey as your client would: book the call, receive the proposal, sign it, and pay. You can pay a small test invoice or log the payment manually; Dubsado’s Flow triggers respond to manually logged payments too.

Watch your inbox the whole time. Does every email arrive? Does it say what you’d want a client to read? Does anything sit there waiting with nothing telling it to move? Write down every spot where you had to step in, then fix those before day 19.

Days 19 to 21: decide, then subscribe

By now you know whether Dubsado works for your business, because you’ve watched it work. Decide on the plan. If you built a Flow and a scheduler, you need Premier; on Starter you keep invoicing, payment plans, forms and the client portal, but the scheduler and Flows are Premier features.

When you subscribe, use my code XOCAIT for 30% off your first payment. On monthly billing that’s 30% off your first month, and on annual billing it’s 30% off your whole first year, which is why I recommend annual. The full breakdown of plans and discounts is in my Dubsado pricing guide.

Then put your lead capture form on your website, so your next inquiry goes through the Flow you just tested.

What to skip until after the trial

These all matter eventually, and none of them belong in your first 21 days:

• Zapier and accounting integrations
• Workflows for every service and every edge case
• Onboarding, fulfillment and offboarding Flows
• Custom CSS on your forms
• Rewriting every email until it’s perfect

DONE is better than perfect. A system can’t get better until it’s in use, and you’ll learn more from your first real client going through it than from another week of tweaking settings.

If 21 days isn’t enough

Some people get to day 10 and realize they’ve never decided what their client process should be, so every form turns into a decision they can’t make yet. That’s normal, and it’s exactly what a mapping session fixes.

If you want to build it yourself with a plan and someone checking your work, my Done-With-You Dubsado setup maps your process with you and then supports you through the build. If you’d rather hand the whole thing off, that’s my Dubsado setup service.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the Dubsado free trial?

21 days for new accounts, with full access to every Premier feature. Accounts created before Dubsado 3.0 that convert from the old client-based trial get 45 days instead, which is where you may have seen a longer number.

Do I need a credit card for the Dubsado free trial?

No. You can start without one, and Dubsado doesn’t charge you automatically when the trial ends. You have to choose to subscribe.

What happens to my work when the trial ends?

Nothing is deleted. Clients can’t pay, sign, submit forms or book, emails stop sending and Flows pause, but you can still log in and export your data. You can extend once by 7 days yourself, or subscribe at any point.

Can I use a discount code after my free trial?

Yes. Enter XOCAIT when you subscribe for 30% off your first payment: your first month on monthly billing, or your whole first year on annual billing.

Should I try Starter or Premier during the trial?

The trial is Premier, so you can test everything. If your plan uses a scheduler or Flows, you’ll need Premier after the trial.