[Last updated May 17, 2023]

Full disclosure: Our company, Sabramedia, develops the Pigeon Subscription Management and Paywall solution listed below. We created this list because our solution may not fit your needs. It's important to make an educated decision on a paid content solution for your business. Our goal with this list is to help you make that decision easier by reducing your discovery time. May you find the solution that fits your business the best. Happy hunting!

We used the following criteria to develop the profile for each vendor:

• Plugin solution - Some vendors require your to use their full content publishing solution.  In other words they don't have a solution that seamlessly integrates with your current CMS.
• Fees published - Some solutions publish fees, others require you to contact them. Or fees seems to be vague and incomplete based on our research.
• Description - We include the company's mission statement or small snippet from their about page or equivalent.

Disclaimer: We don't guarantee all information is 100% current. We try to keep this updated, but vendor policies may be different than listed below, please follow through to the vendor's website for current information.

Find a company not in the list? Or information is not accurate? Please contact us here and let us know.

Paywall and Subscription Management

Leaky Paywall

Plugin solution: yes, WordPress

Fees published: free with add-ons for sale

Description

Leaky Paywall has been engineered to meet the specific needs of news and magazine publishers. It's designed to promote 100% of your articles in search and on social platforms...which explodes the traditional approach to marketing content. Publishers using Leaky Paywall are enjoying immediate visitor growth and new subscription profits.

The core Leaky Paywall plugin is free on the WordPress.org repo. They have add-ons for sale that add additional functionality.

MediaPass

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: no

Description:

Wasn't able to find their fees on their website, but an article back in 2010 alluded to a 35% transaction rate (link). They handle customer support for this as well.

MemberGate

Plugin solution: no, requires their full CMS platform

Fees published: yes

Mocono

Plugin solution: yes (WordPress only)

Fees published: yes

Description

MPP Global Solutions

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: no

Description

We deliver the market leading cloud Identity Management, CRM and eCommerce platform, eSuite, designed for the media and entertainment industry to power paid content strategies.

Our mission is to deliver the leading CRM & eCommerce platform to the world's most powerful media & entertainment companies.

Pelcro

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: yes

Description

Perfect for Publishers, Blogs & Sites

Piano Media

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: no or unclear

Description

We help the world’s biggest media companies build dedicated audiences and increase revenues.

Pico

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: Click here to see their fees

Description

Pico delivers best-in-class conversion rates for both free signups and payments. From newsletters and memberships to virtual events and donations, you can finally manage it all in one integrated platform.

Pigeon

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: yes

Description

Pigeon makes setting up and maintaining your paid-content solution easy. Our goal is to provide tools that help companies better monetize their digital content and engage their customers.

Pigeon is a paywall plugin that works with your existing website. Pigeon offers you a pain-free way to setup a paywall and offer paid access to your premium content. Pigeon is flexible and built with a wide variety of paywall types in mind. It provides your customers with a simple, beautifully designed interface for managing their account settings as well as an administration area for you to see reports, manage customers, and communicate with your audience.

Recurly

Plugin solution: no, connect via api

Fees published: yes

Description:

On the surface, subscription billing sounds easy: charge a credit card a certain amount every month. But companies of all sizes have discovered that managing recurring billing is significantly more challenging than processing one-time payments.

By automating the complexities of subscription billing management, Recurly helps businesses eliminate the pain of scaling recurring billing operations with an easy, self-serve, pay-as-you-go platform.

Subscription Genius

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: yes

Description

Subscription Genius began as an alternative to the bulky subscription management software that medium-size publishers had been struggling to use for years. Originally developed as a cloud-based subscription management solution for Omaha Publications, Subscription Genius founder Joel Pape quickly realized that there was a need for a reliable, convenient, subscription management solution that could handle online checkouts, promotions, fundraisers, and more.

With a fresh take on the industry, Pape and his team designed a cloud-based software tool that could grow with its partner publications. Subscription Genius is the result of detailed market research and countless interviews with industry insiders providing publishers with smarter ways to streamline operations and provide maximum value for advertisers.

Supertab (formerly Laterpay)

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: yes (search FAQ with the term "pricing")

Description:

Supertab is a patented system that makes it simple for your customers to buy digital goods and services — across websites, devices and open platforms. With one click, users commit to purchase and “put it on my tab.”

Vindicia

Plugin solution: no, connect via api

Fees published: no

Description

The subscription billing people. "Improving the Customer Experience to Keep Them Coming Back".

Wallkit

Plugin solution: yes

Fees published: yes

Description

Wallkit helps publishers control and monetize audience access to editorial content, newsletters, events plus advertising.

Zephyr

Plugin solution: no, connect via DNS routing

Fees published: no

Description

Build, test, learn and optimise your digital subscription journeys and drive personalised experiences that accelerate revenue growth.

Paywalls - What's Out

These are companies that have come and gone, merged, or been bought out.

CoinTent

Reason: There appears to be no big announcement or news related to closure. Former CoinTent clients have confirmed they have wound down operations.

Description:

Making it easy to paywall quality content. Sell subscriptions or individual pieces of content with one account and one click.

Press Plus

Reason: PianoMedia and Press Plus merged September 2014.

Description

No one can point to any quality journalism operation that depended only on ad revenue, that gave its content away for free, and thrived as a profitable, independent business. Not one. Ever. We're offering newspaper and magazine publishers a chance to work with us to reclaim their old business model in which a combination of advertising and reader-paid revenue secures independent journalism.

Our goal is to develop custom programs that drive revenue, while at the same time preserving and even enhancing advertising and circulation goals.

RevenueWire

Reason: Alleged fraud

RevenueWire is a global ecommerce platform optimized for software and services.

Our robust, end-to-end solution allows you to outsource global transactions while giving you access to an experienced team to help you enhance every stage of the customer lifecycle. With millions of transactions under our belt, we understand how to empower companies to grow online.

Swishu

Reason: Acquired by Tinypass early 2014

Tinypass

Reason: Merges with Piano Media

Description

We believe that bloggers, magazines, newspapers, and all creators shouldn't have so much trouble making money online.

And we believe that people should have a way to support the creativity they love, beyond just clicking on banner ads.

We can't change the media landscape overnight. So we're contributing in the way we know how: building amazing software.