Hype has recently pivoted and turned their attention to serving social media content creators rather than the needs of news and magazine publishers.
We understand there is a burgeoning number of content publishers starting up, but their needs are different than more traditional news and magazine publishers. Hype may be a good solution for these creators, but they are no longer focusing on the specific needs of publishers.
Leaky Paywall is focused on growing the publisher’s audience, paid subscriptions, and adding new revenue streams. The approach hinges on engaging and providing a seamless website experience for the reader. Social media is an important source of new readers and the key for publishers is to capture and nurture these visitors into loyal paying subscribers.
Subscription alternatives
There are many solutions that the publisher can go with to sell content access and create subscription revenue. They are amazingly different in their approaches.
Native WordPress membership plugins are available to restrict content such as Restrict Content Pro and MemberPress but they are focused on a different type of member specific audience.
Third party SaaS paywall solutions are also available such as Piano, Evolok, Pelcro, Memberful and many others. The biggest issue with these solutions is they are not native to WordPress and tend to control your data structure and access. Even simply verifying a subscriber login to your website is handled on a 3rd party server which can cause issues with content access.
Let’s dive into specifics that separate Leaky Paywall from Hype (formerly Pico).
If you haven’t noticed by now, we are focused on serving publishers specific needs. This means that we not only provide an integrated and dynamic content restriction platform but also provide in-depth strategy and analysis to help our publishers meet their subscription goals. We show you how to grow your audience and subscription revenues.
Here are the main differences between Leaky Paywall and Pico/Hype:
- Leaky Paywall is natively WordPress-based. This means that you are in control of your customer data since it resides in your WordPress dashboard and not in a centralized SaaS application.
- With Leaky Paywall, we don’t charge revenue share/transaction fees. We also offer a seamless migration that remove the Pico/Hype fee.
- Our paywall can be PHP/javascript cookie-based or IP-based. We are the only paywall solution that is guaranteed to work with server caching.
- If you want to lock down content and prevent incognito browsing/browser switching, our IP-based paywall has got you covered. It also helps increase revenue.
- We provide mobile apps for iOS and Android that integrates with your Leaky Paywall installation. Restrict content in your mobile apps and manage everything from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.
- We integrate with more than a dozen different CRM/fulfillment platforms keeping your subscriptions in sync across multiple systems.
- Offer traditional flipbooks/pdfs to your customers and prevent link sharing by requiring readers to log in to view content.
- You can offer your readers additional upsells: sell individual articles or content, offen an ad-free plan, sell group access, checkout add-ons, archive access, and more.
| Feature | Leaky Paywall | Pico/Hype |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher focused | ✓ | ✕ |
| No transaction fees | ✓ | Monthly fee + 2-5% |
| IP-based paywall | ✓ | ? |
| WordPress focused | ✓ | ✕ |
| Integrated mobile apps | ✓ | ✕ |
| CRM/fulfillment integrations | ✓ | ✕ |
| Ad management | ✓ | ✕ |
If you’re looking for a quick drop-in solution that doesn’t require further integration with existing subscription systems, and you’re okay with a 5% transaction fee, Pico/Hype may be a great fit. If you’re looking for more functionality designed specifically for news and magazine publishers, Leaky Paywall is the way to go. Here are 15 revenue generating tactics that Leaky Paywall provides.
Perhaps this may sound biased coming from a blog post on this website—you’re not wrong, however, after trying virtually every solution out there for my own news publisher clients, I joined the Leaky Paywall team because I fell in love with their product.
Tyler Channell
Morgantown, WV
Tyler helps publishers succeed with Leaky Paywall and runs PaywallProject, focused on providing affordable turnkey subscriptions sites for local news publishers.
