We’ve been playing around with hard vs. soft paywalls for our app.
The hard approach boosts immediate conversions but seems to drive users away, while the soft feels less intimidating but might not maximize revenue.
What’s your experience with this?
Soft works better for us. Let people use the basic features a bit first.
Check your day 7 retention first. Users sticking around naturally? Go soft. Dropping off anyway? Hit them with the hard wall early.
I ran campaigns for a meditation app where we lost 80% of users by day 3 no matter when we showed the paywall. Switched to hard paywalls and revenue jumped 40% without losing our actual user base.
Recipe app was different though. Users needed to browse and save a few recipes first. Soft paywall after 3 saves crushed it there.
Look at your organic retention curves - they’ll show you exactly how much time you have to win people over.
Covers solid frameworks for understanding user behavior that’ll help with timing.
Hard paywall day one. Most people never come back anyway.
I trigger soft paywalls after users complete one meaningful action - they need to see the value first.
Conversion rates start lower, but users who convert stick around longer and actually use what they paid for. I’d rather have fewer quality subscribers than deal with refunds.
Test both but don’t just look at initial conversions. Lifetime value matters more. Hard paywalls work great for utility apps where the value is obvious upfront. Soft paywalls usually win for content or social apps since people need to try before they buy. Run your test for at least 30 days and track revenue per user, not just conversion rates. I’ve seen soft paywalls convert fewer people initially but those users often spend way more long-term.