Overview

Two stage metered paywalls introduce a more flexible way to balance audience growth and subscription revenue. Instead of showing a single paywall after a set number of free articles, publishers can first prompt readers to register for free, then later invite them to subscribe.

This staged approach lets you capture more registered users, extend their engagement, and improve overall conversion rates, while keeping control over when and how each step appears.

By separating registration and subscription prompts, we aim to increase conversion opportunities, reduce user drop-off, and give customers finer control over access rules.

What is a Two stage paywall?

A two stage paywall allows for at least two distinct access thresholds:

1. Registration wall (Regwall) - shown after X free articles. Prompts anonymous users to register for free (or subscribe).
2. Subscription wall (Paywall) - shown after Y (can be the same value as X) additional articles. Prompts registered users to subscribe.

Each stage can have its own copy and buttons, allowing you to tailor the experience and messaging at every step. The registration step currently shows both Register and Subscribe together. 

You can have as many different configurations of paywall as you like (ie one for registered users, one for lapsed), as long as your auth provider is capable of differentiating the users.

As with existing paywalls, subscribers remain unaffected as does content excluded from any meters.

Upcoming improvements

• Adding the option to theme each paywall and metered paywall banner individually
• Adding the option to disable subscribing via the paywall until a user has registered

Where can it appear?

These paywalls can be applied anywhere metered access is already supported on any paid content. Current examples include:

• Standard metered paywall journeys (anonymous > registered > subscribed)
• Registration-only experiences (anonymous > registered)
• Registration-required experiences (must register before reading any content)

Who can use it?

Two stage paywalls are available to all customers using Bolt iOS 4.14.0 and above. Android support is soon to follow.

They are ideal for publishers who want to:

• Increase registration rates before asking for payment
• Customise user journeys based on authentication state

What is needed to get it live?

To enable a two-stage paywall, we ned a way of identifying users who should be classed as registered. Either your authentication provider must include a new paywall_override key in its verify response, and an additional key to ensure you can see analytics for users in different states. Or it must have a clearly identifiable value that we can map from.

This will then tell the app which paywall stage to show including any meter behaviour and copy differences. For example, switching from the anonymous meter to a registered meter once the user has signed up.

So you will need to do one of:

1. Work with your authentication provider to add the two paywall_override keys to the verify response.
2. Let our team know what value in your auth response should be used to determine whether a user is registered.

And then you will need to:

• Provide separate copy for your registration and subscription steps

<category scheme="http://schema.pugpig.com/paywall_override" term="registered"/>

<category scheme="http://schema.pugpig.com/user/custom_analytics/paywall_override" term="registered"/>