Setting up a free user without a free trial

James Morgan

We have been using Smartsheet for years to help manage and collaborate with clients on short term projects.

However we have noticed recently that when a client user is invited to edit or review one of our sheets, when they sign up they have to sign up to a 30 day free trial.

Naturally this puts them off signing up which means that they are reluctant to user our planning and monitoring sheets. Which in turn means that our project management efficiency suffers.

Is there a way to get around this ? It does represent a serious problem for us.

The help guides still refer to a free user compared with a free trial user but I cannot see how to establish a free user.

Thanks

James

Paul Newcome

You can have a system admin add them to your account as an unlicensed user.

There may be some challenges with those that have already started the free trial, but support should be able to help you with that.

cbianculli

Hello, I am having the same issue with setting up free users on our company enterprise account and they get a 30-day free trial screen as well. I am a system admin.

I set the user up in our account area:

But when Ariana clicks on the Create One link on the Welcome to Smartsheet sign in screen she gets the following message:

Any ideas?

mabedelfatah

I see this problem here all the time and still don't have a solution.

isa_altium

I am also just beginning to see this issue Smartsheet Support does not have a decent answer to this issue. They simply say "this is by Smartsheet design" - why is this all of a sudden showing up???

@Genevieve P. - please look into this and respond ASAP. This is a serious issue for us and is unacceptable. How do I change the message that our clients are seeing?

Paul Newcome

@isa_altium They changed the process a few months ago. Basically users have to go to the screen to log in and just use the "forgot password" link to reset their password.

I agree that it isn't exactly the most intuitive process and can cause onboarding headaches, but...

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1922206-joining-a-team-business-enterprise-account

Tjlucas

I'm having this issue as well. Many of our users have began the free trial and now we cannot figure out how to get them back into our account even though they are setup as unlicensed users. Any help would be appreciated!

James Morgan

HI TJLucas,

Smartsheet support helped me. You first go into the Admin user section and then set up the user but mark the user as unlicensed.

Then add them as a contact and they don't get the free trial message.

I struggled to do it the other way around but I think that you have to delete the contact, remove them from your sheets and then add as another user but I am not convinced it worked. I shall soon find out.

James