It feels like a high-wire act to find the ideal balance between a smooth user experience and successful monetization techniques. the center of the performance? Location of paywalls.

It's a contentious decision: if you implement the paywall too soon, you run the risk of frightening off users; if you implement it too late, you might lose out on prospective members. Showing a paywall more or earlier may feel counterproductive to the user experience, and it may be if you can't make the paywall blend in with the experience.

Paywalls that are implemented properly can make users view them less as a barrier and more as a gateway to value, a logical next step in the user journey that maximizes your app's revenue potential without compromising the user experience.

Reasons for implementing your paywall sooner

It has long been accepted wisdom to wait to implement paywalls until a user achieves a particular activity level or milestone. The concept was straightforward: show users the benefits before requesting a financial commitment. This cautious approach is coming under more and more scrutiny, though.

Greg is a care app for plants. In the beginning, Greg wouldn't reveal its paywall until users had accumulated five plants in the app's collection. The sixth addition activated the paywall prompt, an approach based on the idea that users ought to find something of value before being asked to pay for it.

However, Greg's founder and CEO, Alex Ross, felt it was time for a shift and switched from a usage-based to a feature-based revenue model.

"We made two changes at once," Alex remarked. "We started by displaying the paywall to every user during the onboarding process. Secondly, we modified our monetization strategy to shift from a usage-based to a feature-based model. You must be a subscriber in order to get water reminders for even a single plant.

The outcomes were instructive:

• Trial registrations increased by about 400%.

• The sign-up-to-trial conversion rate increased five times, from 3% to 15%.

Results like these are enough to make anyone reevaluate how today’s users, who are inundated with ads and paywalls in almost every digital space, actually respond to paywalls.

Expectations from users: They don't shy away from commitment

Users' expectations are changing as mobile apps increasingly use subscription-based models. In-app purchases are becoming more common, and many users are used to seeing paywalls early on in their app experience. This change implies that, provided the user experience is maintained, users might not be as resistant to early commitments as some developers might worry.

By integrating paywalls into a story, the personal safety app Citizen elevates this to a new level.

When David interviewed Darrell Stone, the former head of product at Citizen, at the App Promotion Summit, he stated, "We're trying to get them excited about [the app]." "We want the flows that present the paywalls to tell the entire story."

This indicates that the Citizen team takes into account the user's perspective when they launch the app, in addition to the location and appearance of the paywall.

"We consider the narrative we present to them during the onboarding process," Darrell explained, "so that the paywall is contextualized to their experience."


You and your users will benefit when your paywalls enhance rather than detract from the user experience.

The creator of the mental health app Rootd, Ania Wysocka, saw this pattern firsthand. She was first wary because she thought a paywall inserted too early in the user's journey might be unsettling.

"Considering that Rootd focuses on anxiety and panic attacks, I was really concerned that people would be turned off by a paywall," she remarked. It may not be ideal to have a paywall in your face.


Fortunately, Ania made the decision to move the paywall early in the onboarding process in order to test this assumption. A five-fold rise in revenue was the outcome.

The experience of Rootd highlights an important point: as long as users perceive benefits, they are becoming more receptive to paywalls. Developers now have the chance to reconsider their approaches to monetization and take advantage of early paywalls to increase revenue without facing the predicted backlash.

Maximizing the "Aha" moment: The ideal time to introduce your paywall

When interest in an app turns into investment, that crucial turning point when the product's value becomes evident is known as the "aha" moment in the user's journey.

Superwall co-founder Jake Mor talked about the significance of this occasion on the SubClub podcast.


"The most crucial aspect is achieving an aha moment for a user as soon as feasible," he stated. It would make far more sense to add a paywall that explains what the app does and how much it costs before the aha moment if you're losing out on 50% of signups because users aren't even getting to that point.

Jake believes that the AI photo-editing app PhotoRoom does a good job at this. Users must upload a photo and erase the background as part of the onboarding process, which makes the app's value proposition visible almost instantly. Users then encounter a paywall, taking advantage of their "aha" moment.

On the one hand, you have to get users there fast enough to realize the app's value at that critical juncture. On the other hand, you need to take advantage of the chance to make money without acting too quickly. If implemented correctly, the paywall will seem like a logical progression for the user.

Finding the sweet spot for your paywall

It doesn't have to be hard to find that "aha" moment, but it does require some experimentation and best practice knowledge.