A Ten-Day Trial Plan to Evaluate PostToMarket

Most dealership trials fail in the same way: someone creates an account on Monday, imports nothing, clicks around Settings, and on Friday the owner asks "so, did we like it?" There is nothing to like. You cannot evaluate a posting workflow without posting. A ten-day trial plan exists so the 10-day free trial is a structured test, not a tour.

PostToMarket's trial runs through secure Stripe checkout. You can cancel anytime. Starter is one login; Dealership is a team. This article assumes you will pick the plan that matches how many people will actually touch the product during the test. Do not share one login "just for the trial." That teaches the floor a habit you will have to unlearn.

If you need billing mechanics, read PostToMarket billing: trial, upgrades, and cancellation. If you need the extension installed, use the Chrome extension setup guide. What follows is the evaluation calendar.

Before Day One of the Ten-Day Trial Plan: Decide Who Tests and What Success Means

A trial without a scorecard becomes a vibe. Write the scorecard before checkout.

Who should be on the trial

• Admin: owner or GM. Holds Billing.
• One manager if you are on Dealership and someone other than the owner assigns work.
• One sales rep if you have a self-directed poster.
• One associate if you have a junior who should only work assigned units.

If you are a solo seller, it is just you. That is a valid test. It is not valid to invite five people onto one Starter login.

What you will judge on day ten

Stay inside things the product actually does:

• Can we get units from a CSV or Excel file into inventory with an error log we can act on?
• Can a named person queue a vehicle and get it posted one-at-a-time with delays?
• Can we edit AI titles and descriptions and pick photos before submit?
• Can we mark a unit sold and see statuses the whole test team agrees on?
• If we have a team: can a manager assign, can a rep self-queue, can we release a stuck claim?

Do not add "more Marketplace leads than last month" to the scorecard. Ten days is too short, Facebook distribution is not guaranteed, and PostToMarket is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Meta. Judge operations, not miracles.

Days 1–3: Load Real Inventory and Prove the Data Path

Dummy VINs teach you nothing. Use a slice of live inventory.

Day 1 — Account, plan, and a clean file

1. Check out through Stripe and sign in as the admin.
2. Prepare a small CSV or Excel export from your DMS: a handful of available units, not the entire aged disaster in one pass.
3. Import. Use Import and then import history. Read the row-level error log. Fix bad VINs, blank prices, and broken mileage in the file, not in your head.
4. Confirm units show in Inventory with a sensible status (typically draft).

If the file is a mess, the trial is already valuable. You found the data problem before it became a live listing.

Day 2 — Extension and one controlled post

Install the Chrome extension. Sign in with email, no API keys. Post one vehicle you would be willing to stand behind: correct price, decent photos, edited copy. Watch it move through posting to posted or failed. One success beats twenty clicks in Settings.

Day 3 — Copy, photos, and a second unit

Generate AI titles and descriptions from specs. Edit them. Use the Facebook photo picker. Post a second unit. If you buy from auction, capture one wholesale unit into inventory without retyping and run the same checks. You are testing whether intake can keep up with how you actually acquire cars.

Days 4–7: Run the Live Workflow, Not a Demo

This is the middle of the ten-day trial plan, where most stores either get serious or drift.

Day 4 — Queue design

• Solo: build a personal posting queue of what you can finish at a human pace.
• Team: manager assigns a short associate queue; a sales rep self-queues two or three units. Do not load forty cars into one person.

Server-enforced daily post limits and delays will stop a dump even if someone tries. Treat that as a feature of the test, not a bug.

Day 5 — Interruptions

Install the mobile dashboard on a phone home screen. Reorder the queue between customers. A trial that only works at a quiet desk is not a dealership trial.

Day 6 — Hygiene

Mark one unit sold (a real sale or a deliberate test unit you then restore according to your own inventory rules). Archive it. Confirm it is not still being advertised. Then have someone post while another unit is in failed status so you see how the team reacts. Statuses are draft, posting, posted, sold, failed. The trial should touch more than two of them.

Day 7 — Team visibility (Dealership) or a full solo loop (Starter)

Dealership: open the team queue view, release a claim on purpose, reassign. Look at posting analytics by rep and source even if the numbers are small. Open the leads inbox if inquiries have arrived. Starter: run a full day as you would after you pay — import leftovers, queue, post, mark sold, close.

A solo-specific setup path is in PostToMarket solo seller setup. Use it if you are the only tester; do not skip days 4–7 just because setup was fast.

Days 8–10: Stress the Weak Spots and Decide

The last three days are for the problems you have been postponing.

Day 8 — Bad rows and re-import

Upload a file that includes at least one known bad row. Confirm the error log catches it. Re-upload a corrected file. If your store lives on weekly DMS dumps, this day matters more than a pretty posted listing.

Day 9 — People and offboarding

If you have extra testers, remove one person's access and confirm they cannot use the extension. If you only have yourself, at least sign out of a shared desk computer and sign back in. You are testing whether identity is real. Shared sessions will fail this on purpose.

Day 10 — The decision meeting (thirty minutes)

Bring the scorecard from before day one. Answer only with what you observed:

If the answers are yes, stay on the plan that matched headcount. If a role was confusing, fix the mapping; do not declare the product a bad fit because you invited everyone as the same user. If you hated pacing, remember: the limits are there so the account does not look like a bot farm. No tool can guarantee Facebook will distribute every listing.

How PostToMarket Automates This

A ten-day trial plan fails when the store evaluates screens instead of inventory movement. The product is built around that movement, which is why the trial should exercise it.

• Secure Stripe checkout and a 10-day free trial, cancel anytime.
• Bulk CSV and Excel import with import history and a row-level error log.
• Capture from auction and wholesale sites.
• AI titles and descriptions, editable, plus the Facebook photo picker.
• Chrome extension: Marketplace, profile, and groups; one vehicle at a time; human-like delays; server-enforced daily limits; email sign-in.
• Statuses, mark as sold, archive, personal and assigned queues, team queue view, analytics, leads inbox, mobile dashboard.
• Starter vs Dealership as a seats decision you should make on day one of the test, not day ten.

Use the trial to watch a VIN go from file to posted to sold. That is the evaluation. Everything else is tourism.

Spend the Ten-Day Trial Plan on Real Units, Not on the Settings Page

If your last software trial ended with "we didn't have time to use it," you did not have a trial. You had an unused subscription. This ten-day trial plan exists so PostToMarket is judged on posting work you already do.

Unlimited vehicles are on both plans. Starter is $59 per month for a solo seller with one login. Dealership is $299 per month for up to 13 team logins. The trial is the same length either way.

Start your 10-day free trial through secure Stripe checkout. Import a real slice of inventory on day one, post with the extension by day two, and cancel anytime if the workflow does not survive a live floor.