Is Poser 11 free now? or do you still need to pay an activation fee after the trial

No, but it's still listed for $52 at https://www.posersoftware.com/store/products/17

Or right here in the RMP: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/poser-11-for-windows-and-mac/112656/

I know the system requirements say that Win10 is required, but has anyone tried to install and run it under an older OS (Win7 is what I'm still using). Sometimes when a software vendor says Win10, they really mean that it isn't supported under older operating systems but can still run on them.

I contacted the customer support to ask this, but it's been a week and no reply.  I would otherwise look at buying Poser11 but not unless I know it'll run first (if there's a trial version of Poser 11 for download, I'd like to at least try that).

Poser 11 use to run under windows 7 and there is no reason to think that it won't continue to do so.  Windows 10 is the only official version of Windows supported by Microsoft so it is easier to say a program runs on the latest version that way if something does happen to Win7 then they don't have to go back and try to fix it.  Poser 11 came out sometime in 2016 I believe which was 4 years before Windows 7 EOL.  Most of the changes to Poser 11 done by Bondware were to change the owning companies server locations and some minor bug fixes.  

The problem is that there's no way to trial test it on Win7 before I spend the money, and no one from the company bothered to even answer my message so far. 

Their webpage has the download for Poser12 with the ability to test it out for 21 days. No such download exists for Poser 11 from what I could find.

At this point, I may as well continue my slow transition to Blender... the Poser folks don't seem to want my money (grumble, grumble)

Just throwing this out there: have you asked on the Poser 11 Official Technical forum yet? Because users of pose5 11 may be able to answer you definitively. Just a thought.
I used Poser 11 before Poser 12 and it ran on my previous Windows version as well as now on Win10, but I assume you need it from someone who *right now* runs Win 7 and Poser 11 together.

Well You could try poser 12 for 30 days on Windows 7 to see how well it works.  Since Poser 12 is based off o Poser 11 with more fixes if 12 Runs then 11 Should.  The only issue I could see is if a Major security flaw was discovered that would result in Windows 7 being disallowed from using the internet. At this point highly unlikely but still a small possibility.  Which would be the reason they say runs under Windows 10.

Yes it will run just fine under Win7 ....

Thanks for the replies everyone.  @Rhia474 - thanks for pointing out the Poser 11 official technical forum, I just posted my question over there and am hoping for a reply soon before the sale ends.

@Richards60, that's also a good idea, I may try that next and see if Poser 12 would run on Win7 too.  I could've sworn that there was a service release where the notes said that after the patch, that Poser 12 would definitely only run on Win10, so it has been something that I just assumed would not run on an older OS.   Poser 11 is the only one that I would want anyway, given that the GameDev features were removed from Poser 12 (for reasons that I still don't understand... decimation is a very much needed feature if I want to fill a scene with a few M4s and V4s).

@Cascade777: thank you, are you running Poser 11 with all of the latest service releases applied?

Small update: I just made my purchase and wanted again to thank the community for their help, including those that emailed me directly.  And now to start some "posering" in version 11...  just gotta find that "Make Art" button in the user interface... (kidding)

Small update: I just made my purchase and wanted again to thank the community for their help, including those that emailed me directly.  And now to start some "posering" in version 11...  just gotta find that "Make Art" button in the user interface... (kidding)