In the digital age, there is a constant battle for content monetization. While advertising gives a push, it is not a long-term sustainable solution. Relying solely on advertising often leads to creating low-quality clickbait content that can affect the readers’ trust and overall brand reputation.
Paywalls offer a lifeline, allowing publishers to generate revenue while maintaining quality. But building and managing those paywalls can feel like a Herculean task, unless the publishers have the right tools.
This post explores the paywall solutions that empower publishers to build effective paywalls, boost revenue, and thrive in the digital landscape.
Here is the list of the best paywall solutions for publishers to consider in 2025:
1. Adapty.io
Adapty.io, established in 2019, headquartered in New York, is a relatively young company in the mobile app monetization space. Founded by Vitaly Davydov and Kirill Potekhin, it prioritizes making paywall creation and management accessible to developers with minimum coding knowledge. It has also secured $2.5 million in seed funding to fuel its growth and platform development, with notable investors like 500 Global and Surface Ventures.
Here are some of their core offerings for Paywalls:
No-Code Paywall Builder:
Adapty's intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows developers to build and customize paywalls without writing any code. They also offer a variety of pre-designed templates that cater to different app styles and needs, making the process of building a paywall simple and efficient.
A/B Testing & Personalization:
Adapty allows A/B testing of different paywall variations to understand which designs, messaging, and offers resonate best with users. The analysis of these tests helps developers make informed decisions regarding the paywall performance and thereby maximize conversions.
Paywall Analytics:
Adapty provides performance tracking and detailed analytics on paywall performance, including impressions, conversions, and revenue generated. These analytics empower developers in making data-driven decisions and thereby optimizing their paywall strategy and achieving their revenue goals.
2. Leaky Paywall
Leaky Paywall’s story starts in 2010, when the CEO & Founder Pete Ericson was presented with a challenge by Dartmouth College—they wanted to bring their print magazine, Dartmouth Engineer Magazine, online. This led to the birth of IssueM—a way of presenting digital publications that integrated with email, social media, and search engines. Its easy to manage backend and organized front resulted in 2 Folio design awards.
When IssueM started gaining momentum, a publisher wanted a custom request—they needed a way to restrict articles to only paid subscribers but still have access to search engines and social media. So in 2013, the IssueM team built Leaky Paywall. A metered paywall, it allows casual readers to sample a few articles before the remaining content is restricted to subscribed readers.
Leaky Paywall provides the following solutions:
Flowletter
Leaky Paywall’s seamless WordPress integration allows sending newsletters from WordPress and also fully automates the sending of newsletters using flowletter. Here are a few features of flowletter:
- Logs readers in automatically for quicker access to the content.
- Opt in different categories for content while signing up or later on from the account page.
- Automation of email & SMS using customizable email templates.
- Automated segment management based on the subscriber status.
Reader Rating Insigts
A soon-to-be launched, Leaky Paywall Subscriber Scoring, will enable the publishers to see analytics of who is engaging with the content and how often. This will allow the publishers to send targeted messages.
Unipress Apps
This solution allows publishers to sync WordPress content to the iOS & Android apps. A few features of Unipress Apps are:
- Push advertising and sponsorship.
- Push notifications—in-app opt-in notifications by category selection
- Automatic offline reading
3. MemberGate
MemberGate, launched in 2000 and based out of England, has been simplifying online subscriptions. It is a comprehensive platform designed to handle every aspect of a membership site: content publishing, subscription management, and e-commerce. It has been providing services to 5000+ sites for 24 years.
Here are a few notable features of MemberGate:
All Inclusive
MemberGate helps set up the site quickly and with no coding. It has a fully integrated shopping cart that enables the sale of physical, digital, and downloadable products with instant purchase and checkout. The shopping cart is also integrated with the Affiliate Program, which handles signing up new affiliates, commission recording, income tracking, an extensive affiliate history report, and monthly affiliate reports.
Full of Features
MemberGate package includes:
- Professional graphics team that helps build customized pages for the publisher.
- Auto credit card processing for future renewal and recurring payments
- Different types of member plans—yearly, monthly, quarterly, etc.—as per the publisher requirement along with trial periods
- Adding and auto-formatting of the content along with updates on all required places
- Search Engine Optimization and Google Tracker to keep track of page ranking and searchable archives that link all published articles to search engines.
- Security: In case a member shares their password with a non-member, then the account is locked, thereby preventing unautorized access to member areas and protection of content.
4. Pelcro
Pelcro, a privately held company headquartered in Canada, is a content subscription platform that provides publishers with tools and data to drive subscription revenue from their audience. It empowers content creators to provide subscribers with premium content and the best user experience. It has raised seed funding of US$ 92.5K via Crunchbase.
Some of its features include:
For Marketing & Operations
Pelcro requires no coding in setting up its paywall, making it an effortless option for the publisher’s marketing and operations team to set up a metered paywall and choose content and features that will be protected by the paywall.
Its advanced targeting and personalization option allows the team to show paywalls on certain pages and devices. Its integration with Google Optimize and Optimizely allows A/B testing for a better paywall experience.
For Developers
Pelcro’s prebuilt and customizable ReactJS components, like custom fields, editing terms and conditions, and accommodating all other configurations with data, help save time for developers in creating paywalls and user dashboards. Their server-side integration provides more control over gating.
For End-users
Pelcro shows the end users personalized messaging and content relevant and available in their country, language, and currency. The end users can also join groups automatically using the domain and IP addresses that the group admins can share.
5. Zephr
Zephr, powered by Zuora, offers an advanced, AI-driven paywall solution that allows businesses to tailor paywalls according to each customer's unique needs, helping to maximize conversions, retention, and upsell opportunities.
The key advantage of Zephr lies in its ability to create and experiment with paywalls without the heavy reliance on technical teams. With low-code tools, businesses can swiftly launch, test, and iterate on new paywall designs and subscription offers.
Here are a few key features of this AI-powered paywall:
Personalization
While other paywalls also provide personalization and A/B testing for better insights, Zephyr’s AI paywall self-learns and takes steps on behalf of the publisher. It is designed to fit into existing teck stacks and can leverage AI-powered decision-making to test and iterate paywall strategies based on the data collected and analysed.
Paywall Models & Optimization
Zephr’s AI determines which paywall is best for the publisher and intuitively places that paywall. Below are the paywalls it offers:
Soft Paywall
Limited free premium content/features that can help build a connection with readers and then provide them with an option to subscribe for full access.
Metered Paywall
The users can set the number of articles and time period Allow users a set number of articles within a specific time period, encouraging first-time readers to explore instead of bounce.
Hard Paywall
Helps in targeting repeat visitors and in turning highly engaged users into subscribers.
Dynamic Paywall
Based on the user’s behaviour and content consumption, this paywall used data to personalize the conversion strategy.
Zephyr helps publishers in eliminating guesswork and optimizing the available data for growing revenue. Its low-code tools help build, deploy, and rebuild customer journeys quicker with its AI decisioning—thereby optimizing the paywall in realtime.
Conclusion
The right paywall solution helps publishers to easily gatekeep their valuable content and keeps the revenue ball rolling with relevant personalization and customization. AI is also making a leeway into the paywall industry with F.A.Z. using Google BERT to determine which content to be paywalled.
