Taplio dark patterns

Published on 26 May 2026 - Author: David Cheal

Ethics

Taplio made me click through eleven screens to delete my account. Here is every dark pattern they used to stop me.

So today, I tried out taplio.com because I was curious to understand how well it worked.

While they offer a Free Trial that auto-converts to a paid plan, I was willing to give it a go and just cancel immediately if need be. Signup was straightforward, and you can quickly see what the service provides.

It didn't do what I wanted, however, so I decided to cancel. And that's when it went bad.

If you haven't heard of it before, a Dark Pattern is where a toxic SaaS provider, makes it as difficult as possible, to exit their service. Sure, you can quit, but they will make you work for it. Note:

There was a big red flag I didn't notice about the product, that I should have before signing up. There is no contact us details on the website, and they don't have a LinkedIn page. Which is odd for a company providing LinkedIn integration.

They got acquired back in 2022 by Lempire, who also owns lemlist, but that's no reason to not have your parent company on the website. Unless of course nobody wants that association to be too obvious? Could it be because they use cookie hijacking to gain authentication to the LinkedIn service?

Back to that Dark Pattern issue. Let's walk through the "delete account" workflow, shall we?

Step 1: Delete my account

The typical process of going to Settings, scroll to the bottom and hit the delete button. So far, so good.

A red 'Permanent actions' panel in Taplio settings warning that deleting your account removes all your data and cannot be undone, with a note to cancel your subscription first in Billing, above an outlined 'Delete my account' button.

Step 2: Confirmation

We certainly want a confirmation # Step here. Otherwise, customers might accidentally close their account. But that's not what we get. They make us go and cancel the subscription.

Now they had no trouble whatsoever automatically creating that subscription via code, but for some reason I have to do this # Step manually?

Strike 1

An error toast with a red cross icon reading 'Can't delete your account, you have an active subscription. Unsubscribe first', blocking deletion until the subscription is cancelled manually.

Step 3: Scary message and downplayed button

So now they try to alarm you with a message about immediately losing access.

They also emphasise the button that cancels the process, while making the action to continue as minimal as possible.

Strike 2

A dialog headed 'You will lose access now' warning that cancelling during the free trial loses access immediately, with the continue option shown as small underlined grey text reading 'Cancel & delete my account' and a prominent blue 'Close' button steering you away from deleting.

Step 4: A Bribe

You didn't get scared off and found the correct button, so next they offer a bribe. Maybe if they offer you another 7 days, you'll keep the account and hopefully forget you have it? That way, they can bill you at least once for the product you'll never use.

Strike 3. You're out.

At this point, it's obvious this company is a piece of shit. They don't give a fuck and are going to do whatever they can to make you not delete this account.

A Taplio modal headed 'Wait, How about a little more time?' offering a 7-day trial extension with a large blue 'Extend Trial By 7 Days' button, and the option to leave reduced to a smaller 'Decline Offer' button beside 'Go Back'.

Step 5: Gaslight you

No Taplio, I am not "Thinking about making a change" I'm trying to delete my fucking account. Just let it go already.

A Taplio cancellation survey headed 'We're sorry you're thinking about making a change.' with radio options Technical Issues, Missing Features, No Longer Needed, Budget and Other, where 'Other' is selected and the free-text box reads 'Do NOT use Dark Patterns to discourage cancellations.'

Step 6: New bribe

A this point, they are obviously getting desperate. So how about 1 month free?

This actually works really well for them if you take it. You're almost certainly not going to use it, but the longer you leave the account active, the more likely you are to forget you have it.

That way, you won't remember it again until you get the first bill. I didn't hit the Accept Offer button, but I'm very confident it would take action that made my position worse.

A Taplio modal headed 'An Exclusive Offer Just For You!' pushing an 'astonishing 99% off' for the upcoming month that applies automatically, with a blue 'Accept This Offer' button and a smaller 'Decline Offer' button next to 'Back'.

Step 7: Delay, delay, delay

They just want to make this hard, so another form to fill in. It serves no purpose except to delay you, and there is no way they are reading these responses.

A second Taplio survey screen headed 'Anything we could have done better?' with a free-text box reading 'Yes, Not implemented this bullshit exit process.' and 'Back' and 'Next' buttons beneath it.

Step 8: A confirmation button?

Have we actually reached a confirmation screen? It looks like one, but that wording is odd. "Confirm and Cancel"? Cancel what?

A Taplio screen headed 'You're all set. Here's what happens next.' stating that once the billing period expires you'll lose access to your data, settings and account history, with a 'Back' button and a dark 'Confirm & Cancel' button whose wording never mentions deletion.

Step 9: Wait, what cancellation?

I didn't ask to cancel my subscription or account. I asked to delete my account. So what is this "cancellation" you speak of?

A Taplio screen headed 'Cancellation confirmed.' saying 'You won't be billed again' with a 'Go to Taplio' button, footed by a 'Cancellation Guaranteed by Churnkey' badge, confirming only a subscription cancellation rather than the account deletion that was requested.

Step 10: My amount still exists... you fucks

So they didn't delete the account. It still exists and there is still a "Delete my account" button at the bottom of settings.

The same red 'Permanent actions' settings panel from the start, still showing the 'Delete my account' button and the warning to cancel your subscription first, proving the account was never deleted.

Step 11: It's like Groundhog Day, but shit.

We are back in the loop. This is very similar to the first delete screen, but different wording.

Thankfully, if you confirm this screen, your account is actually deleted.

A final dialog headed 'Delete your account?' stating all your data will be permanently removed and this cannot be undone, with an underlined 'Cancel' link and a blue 'Confirm' button that actually deletes the account this time.

Deleted, finally

So, after 11 fucking screens, we have finally deleted our account. This sort of bullshit, is what gives the tech industry and SaaS providers a bad name.

I want you to know that none of this was by accident. Companies like Taplio hire professional UI/UX developers to make their product usable. So they know damn well, what makes a friendly and easy user journey. They deliberately made account deletion as hard as possible.

If you are building a SaaS product, don't do this. Just build something your customers want to use, and if they would like to quit, just let them go.