You're evaluating rich text editors (RTEs), and TinyMCE's 14-day free trial keeps appearing in your research. It is no generic product demo where you click through features and decide if you like the UI. TinyMCE's free trial is a technical validation window for developers who already know they need a production-grade editor and want to confirm it integrates cleanly with their app.
What’s the reality of the free trial? This guide will give you all the info you need to decide if the TinyMCE free trial.
What you get on day one
When you sign up for TinyMCE's 14-day trial, you’ll see dozens of advanced features instantly available. Full access means you can initialize every premium plugin in your code during the trial with your shiny new TinyMCE API key. You’ll also get any personalized support you need when you contact TinyMCE.
Premium TinyMCE features available during the free trial
What features are actually available on day one? Your trial has every one of TinyMCE’s 50+ features enabled. You'll need to add each of these features individually in the TinyMCE init configuration. An example of a basic TinyMCE init for the free trial in HTML could look like this:
<script>
tinymce.init({
selector: 'textarea',
min_height: 550,
plugins: 'lists link table code help wordcount autoresize',
toolbar: 'undo redo | blocks | bold italic | fontfamily fontsize | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | outdent indent'
})
</script>The trial lets you answer whether TinyMCE integrates smoothly with your stack, if it can handle your app’s real-world content, and if it delivers the speed your application needs.
The reality of TinyMCE integration and adding features
If you’re just implementing the basic editor, you probably got the basic WYSIWYG editor up and running. Adding in more complex functionality takes a little longer, but it should still be quick and leave plenty of time for evaluation. Now comes the part that actually determines whether TinyMCE ships in your product: integrating into your application without rewriting your architecture.
Editors are notoriously difficult to integrate cleanly. The editor maintains internal state (the document content), but your application also maintains state (form data, validation, user sessions).
TinyMCE has official integrations for React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, and most major frameworks. No basic npm packages that wrap the vanilla editor; these integrations make your job much easier by maintaining components that respect each framework's lifecycle patterns. For example, in React, the @tinymce/tinymce-react wrapper handles the controlled vs. uncontrolled component dance for you.
Check out the TinyMCE Developer Center for framework-specific resources.
Tables of TinyMCE framework integrations
Here’s a table of frameworks that TinyMCE supports.
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Framework |
Type of integration |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Native support |
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Non-native support |
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Non-native support |
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Non-native support |
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Non-native support |
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Non-native support |
Outside of these common frameworks, TinyMCE also provides non-native support for Wordpress.
What typically "just works" vs. what needs careful wiring
Most TinyMCE features require nothing more than adding a word to the plugins and toolbar arrays in your configuration. Lists, visual font choices, autoresize, and more are available simply by declaring them with a single word in the TinyMCE init and refreshing your app. No additional API calls, no state management complexity, no separate component mounts.
While it may be obvious that more complex features, such as collaboration tools or the AI Assistant, require some additional configuration, it’s worth a reminder. But with the 14-day free trial you’ll get the chance to see how robust features like Suggested Edits get added to your app and what it’s like when you connect it to your data storage. The editor provides clear integration points through callbacks and APIs rather than expecting you to reverse-engineer internal state.
TinyMCE has helped set the standard for rich text editors. Its clean integration into modern stacks comes from years of being in production and learning what to strengthen along the way. The editor’s longevity means the WYSIWYG has been tested in real-world scenarios.
The trial also provides access to the TinyMCE support team, so there is rapid help for any “gotchas” you might encounter. You don’t have to pioneer integration because there are well-worn paths that have already been debugged by the TinyMCE team.
What the trial doesn’t magically solve
While the TinyMCE free trial gives you a working editor with advanced capabilities, you still have architectural decisions to make for your app. No editor can solve challenges like defining your data model, your content governance strategy, or your edge-case handling.
Take Comments as an example. TinyMCE gives you a threaded commenting UI, along with resolve/restore functionality. You decide where comment data lives. How you store comments and retrieve them depends on your application's requirements. Comments does make it easier to integrate your data sources by providing the callback functions you need–available with the TinyMCE API.
By surfacing these edge cases during your trial period you’ll discover everything that TinyMCE can handle out of the box and which features will require custom logic in your application layer. Finding these boundaries early, while you still have trial access, lets you validate whether TinyMCE's architecture aligns with your needs. Your questions have real answers, and the trial period is when you can find them, before committing to a paid plan.
Get full access to support during the free trial
Support during the 14-day free trial is where TinyMCE diverges from typical SaaS trial patterns. You're not relegated only to the docs, although the TinyMCE docs are thorough and have many code examples.
Trial users get direct access to TinyMCE's support team and sales team throughout the 14-day period. The documentation answers generic "how do I enable feature X" queries, but if any questions arise, the team is available. You can ask TinyMCE experts who have seen real-world scenarios with the WYSIWYG editor for years.
What happens on day 15
So what happens when the trial clock expires? Your editor keeps working with core features only and 1,000 monthly editor loads. If you find that you need more editor loads on the Free plan, you can buy them a la carte to suit your needs.
All the core TinyMCE functionality stays the same, although premium features will stop working on day 15. If you want to do more with TinyMCE or take it all the way to production, you’ll need a TinyMCE subscription to get more monthly editor loads and retain access to premium features.
TinyMCE doesn't cripple your editor or inject nagware post-trial. The Free plan is the full-featured Core editor that's also available as open source if you don’t want to use TinyMCE Cloud. If you built workflows dependent on premium features, those features simply stop responding until you purchase a subscription.
How teams typically transition from trial to paid
Most of our customers follow one of four typical paths post-trial:
Path 1: Trial validates, purchase follows
Your team confirms TinyMCE solves their integration challenges. You’ve identified which premium features they need, tested them in their architecture, and validated pricing against expected editor loads. Transition happens before day 15, often while development is still in progress. No disruption.
Path 2: Core features sufficient
Evaluation reveals premium features were interesting but not essential. Your team continues with the Free plan (1,000 editor loads/month, then usage-based pricing). This works for applications with straightforward editing needs and low traffic.
Path 3: Timing mismatch
The trial succeeds technically, but procurement/budget approval takes longer than 14 days. Your team extends their timeline to work within Core feature constraints temporarily. Once you get the go-ahead to use TinyMCE, you’re ready to sign up for the tier that works for you. This is common in enterprise environments where technical and purchasing timelines don't align.
Path 4: TinyMCE isn’t the right fit
Your team realizes during their TinyMCE integration that the editor doesn’t meet all your requirements, you’ve asked the TinyMCE team all your questions, and you still might need a more customizable RTE like CKEditor. You don’t have to do anything at that point, other than move on to testing the next WYSIWYG editor to see if it meets your team’s needs and your requirements.
Transition to a self-service paid plan
Upgrading from trial to paid plan works through TinyMCE's self-service portal:
- You know which plan you need (Essential, Professional, Enterprise).
- Your usage fits standard tier limits.
- You're paying by credit card.
- You only need one domain.
You’ll need to chat with TinyMCE sales for:
- Custom editor load requirements beyond standard tiers (typically enterprise applications).
- Multiple domains or applications under one agreement.
- Self-hosted deployment instead of cloud.
- Volume pricing negotiations, which are available by user volume if editor loads don’t suit your needs.
- Enterprise procurement requirements (POs, custom contracts, security reviews).
The distinction matters for your team because it affects your time to production. Self-service activation happens immediately. Enterprise deals with custom requirements can take time to finalize. If you know during week one of your trial that you'll need custom terms, start the conversation early to save time.
If you’re curious about self-service, check out the TinyMCE Pricing page for more information on paid options.
How teams use the 14 days effectively
Here’s how the majority of teams use the TinyMCE free trial most effectively. This is the easiest way to layer on TinyMCE capabilities and see if it really works for your app.
- Hello, World! Get TinyMCE up and running in a few minutes, no matter what your framework. Integrate TinyMCE with the following guides:
- Integrate basic plugins: Try out the plugins your app needs that are quick and easy to integrate, like Enhanced Code Editor, Full Page HTML, Spell Checker, Autoresize, Autolink, Image, Typography, or Autocorrect.
- Try out the robust features: Implement advanced plugins like Suggested Edits, Revision History, Mentions, Comments, Media Optimizer, or the User Lookup API.
- Explore styling and customization: Make TinyMCE your own, and fit it into your app with UI customization. Create custom UI components. Try out Dark Mode in a few minutes.
- Make a list of the pros and cons you experienced: Write down what worked for you, and what didn’t. If you have any questions at all, contact the TinyMCE team to get answers.
This is the strongest path to getting the information you need about how TinyMCE integrates into your app, and whether or not the WYSIWYG editor meets your needs.
Is the TinyMCE trial enough to make a decision?
The short answer is: Yes. For most development teams, 14 days provides sufficient time to answer the questions that matter:
- Does TinyMCE integrate cleanly with our stack?
- Does it handle our content requirements in a way that works with our app architecture?
- Do the features we need work as documented?
The trial succeeds when you've either confirmed TinyMCE solves your integration challenges or discovered it doesn't. Both of these are valid outcomes that let you move forward with clarity.
If TinyMCE respects your app’s patterns, and the features you need work well during testing, that's a fit. If you discover that TinyMCE can’t support your requirements, that's your signal to walk away without sunk costs. You learned what you needed to know. The TinyMCE trial's job is to make your decision obvious, not pressure you toward a specific outcome.
Start the trial
If you've validated that TinyMCE works cleanly in your framework and delivers the features your application needs, you have transparency on your next step. If you've discovered friction points that don't align with your architecture, that's equally valuable information. And our Developer Relations Manager, Fred Harper is happy to answer your questions during the trial. No matter how you use the free trial, you're making an informed decision based on real integration work.
Ready to start your evaluation? Sign up for the 14-day free trial.
