I spent a few evenings reading through euro IPTV France avis threads before committing to anything, and a pattern showed up fast: the services people actually stick with are the ones that stay stable during live football, not the ones with the longest channel list. Most complaints I saw were about buffering at peak hours and support tickets going unanswered, which tells you where to focus your own trial.
My checklist is simple now. First, confirm the streams hold up on your actual setup during a busy evening, since off-peak tests hide congestion problems. Second, check whether French channels, catch-up and VOD are genuinely included rather than promised as coming soon. Third, test support with one real question before paying; response time predicts everything. A quick skim of how IPTV works technically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV) helped me ask sharper questions about servers and bandwidth.
One angle I had not considered: if you like a provider after testing, becoming a reseller for friends and family can offset your own subscription cost. And since French streaming rules keep tightening, glancing at the regulator's guidance (https://www.arcom.fr/) before signing up is just sensible homework. Pick the trial that survives all four checks.