If you’ve chosen to offer free or paid subscriptions, you’ll need a reliable subscription service to manage the front and back end. Keeping track on a spreadsheet is time-consuming, messy, and risky for data security and accuracy. We’ve gathered some information about some available subscription services based on how you publish your news. This is by no means exhaustive, and new options are appearing regularly, so keep your eye out for the hottest new thing!
PAGEMASTERS PUBLISH
Pagemasters Publish offers its own in-house subscription service with all of its pricing options. It is technically a paywall, but can function as a tool for membership, donations, or a traditional subscription. This can have an attached cost for revenue, or you can offer a free subscription to gather email addresses and other information about your readers. Pagemasters Publish also offers a ‘freemium’ feature, which allows you to show a preview of articles before asking readers for a subscription payment.
If you’re already using Pagemasters Publish, navigate to Settings, then click Paywall. You can then change your access settings on each section, post, or page.
WORDPRESS
There are a number of subscription plugins that work well in WordPress, depending on what setup you already have. They all have their drawbacks, so it’s worth looking into their features in detail to ensure you get the right fit.
Memberpress
Memberpress is a powerful all-in-one paid plugin that can be easily set up to offer a ‘subscription’ style functionality on your website. It supports most secure payment methods, supports paywall functionality, and automatically sends renewal notices each year. Subscribers can take out single year subscriptions, or elect for autobilling. Installing and managing the plugin is simple, and ongoing member management is relatively intuitive and straight-forward.
Woocommerce Subscriptions & Memberships
If you use Woocommerce, you might consider using one of their powerful paid plugins, Woocommerce Subscriptions or Woocommerce Memberships. Supporting a wide variety of payment methods, these plugins are relatively straightforward, but take a little learning to understand how they function on the back end. There’s not a lot of bulk editing options, and updating prices is a headache, but you will have a seamless frontend process for readers to subscribe to regular content. Look at Subscriptions for print delivery, and Memberships for online content restriction. Note: These plugins can work in tandem for a whole hybrid subscription solution.
Paid Memberships Pro
Another comprehensive membership plugin which offers a basic free version or a tiered pricing structure for additional features. Paid Memberships Pro allows you to choose pay per post or view, restrict all content, and show sneak peeks before asking for registration.
Free Plugins
There are countless free plugins available on WordPress, and a number of these offer functional membership and subscription management. Generally, you’ll receive less features and support with free plugins, but they can provide a very effective solution without the price tag. Consider Simple Membership, S2 Member (with paid option), or WP-Members.
STORIPRESS
Storipress is a new all-in-one Australian publishing platform which features its own no-code paywall system, integrating with emails, drip content, and restricted content. While it offers a generous free personal plan, the paywall feature is only included from the Pro level at $24USD / month (which allows you to host multiple publications on one account).
SUBSTACK
If your delivery is mostly newsletter-based, Substack offers a great free service to streamline and, optionally, monetise your output. You can choose the payment amount, and content is also hosted on your Substack site. Substack newsletters tend to have great open and share rates, and can feel more personal than other general mail services. There are a number of success stories from local news providers on their website – but you’d have to try it out for yourself!
GHOST
Ghost is a non-profit, open source platform that is relatively new to the market (2013) and offers another all-in-one publishing solution with integrated subscription options on all pricing tiers. With the cheapest $9USD / month plan, you will have access to 500 members (subscribers), one premium tier and one newsletter. This increases to 1000 members (subscribers), five premium tiers and three newsletters at the $25USD / month Creator level. Ghost offer a free 14-day trial if you’d like to give it a test run!
Got a suggestion or a service we’ve missed? Drop us a line at support@lina.org.au or bring it up in the Slack channel!
