FOR PRINT MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS
Treat print subscribers better. Convert web readers faster.
Built for WordPress. Your print and digital subscribers get one checkout and one login, with your circulation software kept in sync. Behavior tracking shows you who’s ready to subscribe.
Trusted by over 600 publishers
Get all of your systems integrated.
The digital side of most print magazines is three systems that don’t talk: a circulation platform for checkout, a hosted e-edition, and a disconnected website. Readers feel the friction.
Checkout leaves your site
A reader clicks Subscribe and lands on your circ vendor’s website. They create an account there, come back to your site, and can’t log in. Two logins, one subscriber, one support ticket.
Your e-edition lives on someone else’s platform
Hosted flipbook platforms control the URL, the reader experience, and the access rules. You pay a platform fee to serve the one reader in five who wants the magazine as a magazine.
Your articles get rebuilt by hand
The issue goes to print. Then someone copies each article into WordPress, one at a time, and reformats it. Weeks later the website has what print had. Or it never gets there, and the web readers who would have paid never see it.
Concerns we hear from publishers:
“Subscribers can’t log in.”
“Why is checkout on another website?”
“None of my tools talk to each other.”
“How do I get this under one roof?”
Google sends publishers 40% less search traffic than it used to. Your subscribers are the one audience no platform can take from you. Every friction point in their experience costs you renewals.
PRINT + DIGITAL
Sell print and digital subscriptions on your site. Your circulation software stays the system of record.
Readers check out on your website. Your circ system keeps the print record. Leaky Paywall keeps the two in sync.
Reader subscribes on your WordPress site.
Print, digital, or the bundle. One checkout page, your design, your URL.
Leaky Paywall creates the account and logs them in.
One login for the website, the e-edition, and the newsletter. No second account on a vendor’s site.
Our API syncs the subscriber both ways.
Your circulation software fulfills the print copy. Leaky Paywall handles digital access. Update the record on either side and the other side follows.
Works with
SimpleCirc
Darwin CX
Omeda
MagHub
RunMags
Publisher’s Creative Systems
Publishers Service Associates
Interlink
More
Not on the list? Enterprise plans include custom integrations.
Existing print subscribers
Subscriber account lookup. Your current print subscribers log in with the account number on their shipping label, or the email on file if they have one. No new account, and they get the digital access their print subscription already includes.
Payment gateways
Take payments with Stripe, Authorize.net, Nue, WooCommerce (and the hundreds of gateways it supports), or Xendit. More coming.
Stripe
Authorize.net
Nue
WooCommerce
Xendit
More coming
22 paid
in 30 days, from the login page alone
A regional lifestyle magazine on Leaky Paywall tagged its print login page and watched it in Subscriber Insights. 277 conversions and 22 paid in 30 days, just from the login page. Print subscribers were already moving into the digital product. Now you can see it happen.
HOW TO TAKE CONTROL
You have two superpowers. AI can only scrape one.
1. Great content, and 2. your audience. AI can scrape the first. It can’t scrape the second. Your Publisher Flywheel™ turns that second superpower into 2-7x faster list growth than popups, return traffic, and up to 45x higher paid conversions, all in your WordPress dashboard.
ENGAGE
Grow your email list 2-7x faster than popups
Popups ask. Registration walls require. Popups convert 0.9% of readers who see them. Registration walls convert 3.2-6.7%. Small Boats Magazine put its archive behind a registration wall and grew its email list 20% faster, month over month.
NURTURE
Send readers back between issues
Print arrives monthly. Email can go weekly, or more. Small Boats went from a monthly send to at least twice a week, with a three-email welcome series over eight days for every new registration. Your email becomes another product.
CONVERT
Turn readers into subscribers
Registered readers convert to paid at up to 45x the rate of cold traffic. They’re already logged in: no new account, less friction, higher conversion. The offer can be print + digital, digital only, or a single issue.
ACT
Know what’s working. Fix what’s not
Subscriber Insights tracks every logged-in reader: what content converts, which free readers are ready to pay, and which subscribers might cancel. Every week you get an action plan to win new subscribers and keep the ones you have.
The registration wall builds the list. The newsletter activates it. Traffic grows, subscriptions increase, our Insights power what’s next. That’s the whole system.
Host your e-edition in WordPress. Restrict it to subscribers.
Across Leaky Paywall publishers, about 20% of paid readers use the flipbook. Not enough to live on. They’ll cancel without it.
Upload the issue PDF to WordPress. It lives at your URL, as a flipbook and a download. Leaky Paywall restricts it by subscription level: print subscribers get it with their login, digital-only subscribers get it as the product.
No separate platform, no second login, no platform fee.
Turn your print PDF into WordPress draft articles in minutes.
Your digital subscriptions depend on articles. Yours are locked in a PDF.
Our Reissue app takes the issue PDF, splits it into articles, pulls the text and images, formats each article, and sends it to WordPress as a draft post. Your editor reviews and hits publish.
Do it for this issue and every one before it. A dozen articles an issue, multiple issues a year, plus every year in the archive. Every article published on your website as HTML is a magnet for search and social discovery.
One checkout for digital and print.
What you can sell
Print + digital bundle
Digital only
Single issue
Pay-per-article
Gift subscriptions
Group and corporate accounts
Free or paid trials
Coupons and name-your-price
Upgrade checkbox for print or a physical item
Reader access flexibility.
Restrictions: who sees what
Dynamic metered
The news blog. Limited free articles, then the registration wall or paywall.
Free with registration or paid subscription
Your archive.
Subscribers only
Magazine articles and the e-edition.
Set article access by
Category, tag, page, or subscription level.
BREW YOUR OWN
A 30-year print magazine, rebuilt around its website.
Brew Your Own printed for 30 years. Paper, ink, postage, and fulfillment climbed every year. In January 2024 the publisher decided to go digital-only, then spent the year planning every reader touchpoint before the last print issue shipped in early 2025.
What changed: navigation reorganized around what brewers search for (kegging, styles, recipes, troubleshooting). A registration wall on the archive. Lead In previews on the highest-traffic articles. A flipbook replica for the roughly 20% of readers who want the magazine as a magazine. And postcards with QR codes to reach print-only subscribers who never gave the magazine an email address.
Killing print is the scariest decision in publishing. It took a year but digital subscribers have made up for the loss.
20%
of readers on the flipbook
100%
of print subscribers gone with the last print issue
100%
recovered as digital subscribers
Small Boats Magazine
Email signups growing 20% a month.
A regional lifestyle magazine
22 paid conversions in 30 days, just from the print login page.
Olive Press
Tighter paywall, 20% faster registrations. More time spent on site.
We’ve worked with print publishers for over a decade.
We’ve watched platforms squeeze publishers for a decade: search, then social, now AI. Your paywall shouldn’t squeeze you too. It’s why we built Leaky Paywall.
Moving off Piano, Pelcro, Woo or another bolt-on? We migrate everything: subscribers, payment data, active renewals. The Olive Press was launched within days.
Here’s how you start
Map your growth
We start on Zoom with your numbers: traffic, list size, paid subscribers. You leave with a plan for the registration wall, the newsletter, and your first offer.
Handle the setup
We configure every Leaky Paywall touchpoint: registration wall, meter, checkout, newsletter, CRM sync.
Optimize after launch
We watch what converts and tell you what to change next: wall timing, offers, newsletter cadence.
A partner not a helpdesk
Book a call anytime. Between calls, the Paywall Podcast and PublisherRevenue.com carry what’s working for other publishers, so your next move is never a guess.
PETE
CARLO
KATE
TYLER
JEREMY
The questions print publishers ask first.
Does Leaky Paywall replace my circulation software?
No. Your circ system stays the system of record for print. Leaky Paywall handles checkout on your site, digital access, and the sync between the two.
Can print subscribers get digital access without creating a new account?
Yes. They look up their account with the number on their shipping label or the email on file, log in, and get whatever digital access their print subscription includes.
Can I keep my current e-edition platform?
Yes. Leaky Paywall can restrict a link to a hosted flipbook the same way it restricts an article. Most publishers move the flipbook into WordPress once they see the platform fee next to the 20% of readers using it.
Which payment gateways do you support?
Stripe, Authorize.net, Nue, WooCommerce (and the gateways it supports), and Xendit, with more coming.
Print to digital, in detail.
Paywall Podcast
Join Pete and Tyler as they break down what actually drives audience and revenue growth.
Publisher Revenue
See Leaky Paywall in action. Real publisher case studies: audience growth, paid subscriber growth, and the numbers behind them.
Subscription Scorecard
Rate your subscription effectiveness on our Subscription Scorecard.