Is there a free trial for adobe coldfusion?

Pierre, it's critical that we distinguish CF and CF Builder (CFB). The former is an application server, the latter is an IDE. Since you mention both,a nd may well want to use both, let me clarify things.

First, one could install CFB on its own (and perhaps connect to a CF server on another machine), and one could install CF on its own (and perhaps use some other editor to work with CFML code), but my point is that they are separate. One can of course install BOTH CFB and CF on the same machine, and finally, CFB 2016 and above even offers the OPTION to install CF AS WELL AS CFB (which I've found is more confusing than helpful for most people, as they often end up having TWO CF's on one machine and not realize it, and get confused because they're not sure which they're using, and further confused by various instructions on the web that don't consider this possibilty of the CF within CFB).

Anyway, just clarifying these things to level-set the discussion and because you mention "CF" in the title and your opening sentence.

As for the message you are seeing, that is in fact ONLY about CFB. It has NOTHING to do with CF itself.

To be clear, if you install CFB and don't put in a valid CFB license key, yes you SHOULD get a 60 day trial of CFB.  After those 60 days, if you have not put in a valid CFB license key, it would revert to what they call the Express edition, and yes you'd see that message. 

FWIW, if one installs CF and doesn't put in a valid CF license key, then that gets you a 30 day trial of CF--and after those 30 days if you don't put in a key, it reverst to what is called the Developer edition (and that would be indicated on the CF Admin and in some other places).

So if every one installs either product and sees that they "immediately" get either the Express edition of CFB or the Developer edition of CF, that should mean that a prior installation of either product HAD been on the machine and the trial HAD ended, and so one would NOT be able to "get another trial". I realize you may say "there's no way, no one ever installed CFB on this machine".

But putting all that aside, note that the "error message" is instead just a notice. It doesn't mean you "won't work". Yes, it has limited functionality. Maybe you don't even need it. You mention "remote server and other stuffs needed for evaluation". First, are you SURE that what you want to use ni CFB "won't work"? There ARE aspects of CFB that will work FINE even with a "remote" server in the Express edition of CFB. Try it, before getting too concerned about this situation.

And second, again, note that we are talking about CFB here, not CF. If you had really meant that you were installing "CF" on the machine to evaluate it, you can. NOTHING about CF is in any way limited or affected by the CFB running on the machine, or whether you use CFB to edit or even "run" the code. Again, CF and CFB are entirely separate products.

Let us know if that helps, or if you feel there is still a problem you must overcome.

One other thing: I have not heard of this as a known bug (to have it start immediately in the Express edition", but it could well be a known bug. Have you used the Help menu in CFBuilder to apply any available CFB updates? Try that also, before responding.

Did you put in a serial number? You shouldn't do that if you want the trial version. Did you have a previous version of CF installed already? I don't see why that would cause a problem, but it potentially could I guess.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC