Hi!
We all know the trap of the sister site of downloading everything, getting it to work and testing the crap out of them against competitors. I thought it would be interesting to see what plugins did you maybe "test" and decided that they were so good you want to get them legit - and later didn't regret that decision...

So plugins that you still use after the new plugin hype phase.

For example, I would never use a product which requires an ilok dongle or subscription model. Ilok cloud is OK, and I'm still very happy about the Soundtoys Bundle I got in sale and still use them very often.

 

The regular trial period/free versions has been enough for most of the audio software I've bought. To list the ones that I've used "test" versions of before buying, it would be:

Reaper
Superior Drummer 3 (Death & Darkness, Legacy of Rock, The Progressive Foundry)
Fabfilter Pro bundle (on educational discount for 50% off )
TBProAudio CS5501 & DSEQ
SIR Audio Tools StandardClip
U-he Satin
TDR (Tokyo Dawn Labs) bundle
Klanghelm DC8C & MJUC
Voxengo SPAN Plus
Valhalla DSP VintageVerb
Boz Digital Labs Transgressor 2

Those are the ones I can think of that I used for various amounts of time before I actually bought them. All of my other purchases was done after I trialed them or on intro sales etc.

Don't think I regret buying any of the ones listed here. Maybe Satin, because I don't use it nearly as much as I thought I would, and it was quite expensive. It's still a excellent piece of software though.