Free trial without going to Paypal

The scenario is 15 days free, then an annual subscription using s2m free. I’m confused how the free trial works: if subscribers are charged instantly for the annual sub, how are they getting a free trial? Is the charge delayed by Paypal and somehow only charged if the customer doesn’t cancel?
I’ve read s2m Pro is needed for this functionality, but if that’s the case why does the option to add a free trial even exist in a free s2m installation?

Ok, now on Pro and have set up according to this:
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/free-trial-registration/
Level #1 will represent your free trial Members. Anyone at this Level is in their trial period. They ARE a Member, but only for a short time (1 week).
Level #2 will represent your paid Members. These are members who upgraded during their trial, or after their trial expired. They’ve now moved up to Level #2, a full Member now.
Level #0 will represent your Free Subscribers. These are people who have been demoted back down to Level #0, after having completed their trial period; and perhaps they’ve not paid for additional access yet.

Users shows up as Level 1 which should grant access but still Level 1 users can’t access protected content.

The instructions above of course are wrong (even though they were written by Jason!) because the Level 2 restriction prevents Level 1 users from accessing content during the “trial” period.
Someone may want to edit that post.
As long the EOT works I guess just having a level 1 set up should work?

Hello Matt,

I can see your point, but you can restrict the posts/pages to level 1 and it would work as Jason intended it.

The idea is that you can offer a trial of your product, the different levels are just for the different stages of the trial or membership.

Basically this is meant for when you protect your content to level 1.

– Eduan

Eduan,
I think what Jason proposed would only work if you had multiple subscription levels in place. If you want 1 level – to protect say all posts – and offer a free trial, you can’t use level 1 for the trial and level 2 for subscriptions. The level 2 restriction prevents free trialers (who would be level 1 only following Jason’s suggestion) from accessing “all posts”.
What I did was use a pro free registration form for level 1 with a time limit, and then a Paypal button so users can subscribe if they want.
In this scenario I think this is the only way it could work.

I see. In any case if you find a way that works for you then it’s OK. :)

How did you get access to the pro version though? It shows that you haven’t brought the pro version.

– Eduan