See what’s new with Leaky Paywall 5.0, explore our latest extension releases, and learn how The Moss Report triggered a 30% spike in registrations.
It’s been a massive month for the Leaky Paywall community. While we’ve been hard at work refining our ecosystem, the big news remains the official rollout of Leaky Paywall 5.0.
If you haven't made the jump yet, 5.0 is a game-changer for how you manage your audience and grow your revenue. Here are the heavy hitters:
Stripe Power-Ups: Billing address updates now apply across all attached payment methods. We also added a trigger to update emails in Stripe automatically if a subscriber changes their email in WordPress.
The List Builder Evolution: We’ve introduced a new upgrade modal for logged-in free subscribers who hit your paywall. You can now independently toggle this on and customize the heading, subheading, and button text to perfectly match your brand’s voice.
Subscriber Insights & UTM Capture: To help you understand exactly where your best subscribers are coming from, we've added UTM capture to Insights. Plus, List Builder data is now integrated directly into your dashboard for a clearer view of your funnel.
Extension Updates
Beyond the core, we’ve pushed updates to several key extensions to improve automation, security, and the subscriber experience.
Recurring Payments (v1.5.6)
Seamless Reactivation: Deactivated or expired subscribers with a stored plan can now restart their subscription just by updating their card. This creates a new Stripe subscription and reactivates the account instantly.
Frictionless Billing: Past due subscribers now see contextual notices and the card form immediately, removing the extra click to "Manage Billing."
Status Access: Users with a "past_due" status are now permitted to access the payment update form to settle their accounts.
Group Accounts (v1.7.0 & 1.7.1)
API Expansion: We’ve added REST API endpoints for group lookup, seat management, and group account creation.
Flexible Memberships: You can now allow free subscribers to be added as members of a group account.
Improved Management: We added group account info to the admin subscriber detail page and fixed issues with duplicate group creation during subscription updates.
Mailchimp (v2.1.0)
Retention Tools: New expired subscriber handling allows for configurable Mailchimp actions when a subscription ends.
Transparency: Added user-friendly Mailchimp status messages directly on the transaction screen.
Security & List Building
Bot Protection: Both Recaptcha and Turnstile now integrate directly with the List Builder.
Spam Fighting: We added a honeypot and email verification filters to the List Builder to keep your list clean.
Verified Growth: Double Opt-In now includes a specific email setting for the verification message sent to subscribers.
Quick Hits & Fixes
Trials: You can now limit trials to one per email address at the level settings and sync trial end dates on the account page.
Basic Shipping: Updated the layout for shipping fields in the admin and added front-end styling.
Quick Register: Fully updated to handle restriction handling for Leaky Paywall 5.0.
SimpleCirc: Improved webhook processing and added styling to admin fields.
What happens when a 50-year-old brand built on independent journalism moves to a digital subscription model? In this episode, Pete sits down with Ben Moss, CEO of The Moss Report, to discuss how he traded a standard metered paywall for a high-value "Essentials" strategy.
A niche digital publication grew their email list to 62,754 registered readers, more than double comparable publishers, with one registration wall built around a single word.
One regional news publisher doubled their free-to-paid conversion rate without changing their content or pricing. Here's the three-part system behind it.
As always, we’re here to help you grow your audience and your revenue.
We'd also love to hear from you. How are you liking Leaky Paywall 5.0 so far? If you have any feedback on the new features or want to learn more about how they can work for your publication, just hit reply.
