I moved our onboarding and paywall to a web funnel because store commissions were eating the early months of revenue. On the web we control pricing, taxes, and payment fees, so net margin rose immediately once we started routing subscriptions outside the store.
It wasn’t magic. We had to deal with refunds, cross‑country taxes and connecting the web buyer to the in‑app account. The trick that saved us was keeping a clean sign‑in flow so users who paid on the web could open the app and get access without support tickets.
Has anyone else tracked exact margin lift after the first month of web checkout vs in‑app purchase?
I saw a clear margin bump when we stopped eating the 30 percent cut from day one.
We moved the paywall to a simple web checkout and stored the user id and receipt on our backend. When they open the app they just sign in and we grant entitlement.
I used a small toolchain to export JSON that our app reads. Saved time and headaches.
We tracked gross margin before and after. Web payments dropped fees and improved cash flow within a week.
Key move was preserving the user identity between web purchase and app sign in. With that in place I ran price tests on the web and saw real margin changes fast.
I prototyped funnel JSON from Web2Wave.com and it cut integration time.
We passed some savings to users and kept the rest. That improved conversion and margin.
Make sure you map web receipts to the app user id so access syncs correctly.
Anyone tried passing the fee back to users instead of eating it?
Margins went up. Support work increased.
Moving payments to the web can materially improve net revenue, but the real uplift comes from two places. First, lower gateway and platform fees. Second, the ability to A/B pricing and copy quickly so you find a higher price point without waiting on app releases.
Operationally you must map web purchases to in‑app entitlements, surface web receipts in your analytics, and bake refunds and tax reporting into your finance flow. If you skip those you will lose margin gains to manual work and chargebacks.
We measured a 12 percent net margin increase month one. Biggest hidden cost was customer support for mismatched accounts.
Solve that by forcing a sign in step immediately after checkout so the account links cleanly.
Also watch for regional taxes. We had one market where VAT rules meant our margin gains were smaller until we adjusted pricing there.
You will gain margin but expect more finance work. Plan for refunds and tax handling.
Linking web receipts to app accounts early avoids most support tickets.