We Studied 2,995 Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts.

After studying nearly 3,000 paywalls, hundreds of subscription flows on Moby, and talking to someone who's designed over 4,700 paywalls, we found this. Sometimes, an ugly paywall could outperform a beautiful one.

outperform a beautiful one. No matter what I did, the ugly paywall with a ton of text completely over performed anything that I would do. More friction could increase conversions. Multi-page paywalls almost always do better than single-page paywalls. Every paywall today looks the

Every paywall today looks the same. So, I wanted to know what separates a high-performing paywall from an average one. I used to think the decision happens on a paywall, but , users sometimes decide to pay before they even see the paywall.

decide to pay before they even see the paywall. All the different touchpoints are extremely important. The paywall can appear after onboarding, when you unlock a premium feature, inside settings, or even as a win-back offer before you leave. Those paywalls speak more to the user

leave. Those paywalls speak more to the user because they're more personalized. You're constantly trying to get the user to either pay or stay as a subscribing member, and so you have to think about the entire life cycle of the customer. And yes, product is important for being

And yes, product is important for being able to solve a problem, but life cycle monetization and the paywalls, that's the only part of the app that makes money. A paywall isn't just a screen. It's a flow. Before asking for money, Opal spends time selling the outcome, getting 8

time selling the outcome, getting 8 years of your life back. By the time you reach the paywall, it doesn't feel an interruption. By showing users how many years of their life they could save, trial sign-ups went up from 7% to 17%.

Jonathan prefers multi-page paywalls. Multi-page paywalls almost always do better than single-page paywalls. And so, in this paywall, you're at the end of the customer journey and onboarding, and you've just showed the customer that hey, your plan is ready. This is what

hey, your plan is ready. This is what you can expect. You're speaking to them from an emotional perspective. You're telling them they're going to start feeling themselves in 4 weeks or you're going to tell them something that is in line with their actual ideal outcome. Does the paywall already feel part of the experience? if it's an

part of the experience? if it's an onboarding, is it a natural segue to finish the onboarding? A Head takes a similar approach. Information unfolds gradually. It gives users time to process the decision instead of forcing them to absorb everything at once.

everything at once. I think when a paywall works, it doesn't feel you've hit a wall. It feels the product is asking you to take the natural next step. Even if you have a well-designed paywall, if it appears at the wrong moment, it's still a bad paywall.

One example is the one-time offer. If you close it, it's gone. Paired with animation and haptic feedback, this helps to pull the attention of the user the moment that you're considering an upgrade. Even when the timing is , people can still hesitate. Will I forget

people can still hesitate. Will I forget to cancel? Am I making the decision? And that's why some of the best-performing paywalls focus on reducing risk. Blinkist had a problem. Their users complained about free trials because they felt tricked into being

because they felt tricked into being charged. So, they redesigned the paywall screen to show a step-by-step timeline. The result was more trial sign-ups, fewer complaints. Push notification opt-ins also went up, which makes sense because they remind you before your

because they remind you before your trial ends. Tipstop emphasized the free trial, added a discount badge, and made the offer easier to understand. The offer didn't change. The way it was presented did. Direct conversions almost tripled.