Rating: 5 stars
I’d like to share with anyone reading this that a) Leaky Paywall is a great software product, and b) a great company to work with. Building a paywalled website can be complex, and for us, even with my strong web development background, we really need to partner with a company that could help us establish both what to do, and why to do it! Pete, and his team, have come through for us. We’ve recently expanded from one paywalled website to two, and after two years of working with Leaky Paywall, I wouldn’t really consider any other option. Also, they’re making other features available, refining the product and there are a lot of add-ons that extend the capabilities, making it a really reliable platform that we have had now for about three years without any software problems whatsoever. Thank you LP for making our business possible, and for working with us to create our custom paywall website solution. You guys are great.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Having been with a previous paywall which ended in disaster. Leaky paywall set up and migrated our previous subscribers within a matter of days. The paywall has been working like a dream and support has been answered within minutes. Their advice has skyrocketed our subscribers and streamlined our business. Would highly recommend.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
We are LOVING?Leaky?Paywall and all its flexibility and insights! Jeremy has been a great help getting us setup and answering our questions. Leaky’s flexibility, insights, and extensions make it an excellent alternative to some of the big subscription management platforms out there today. Leaky+Stripe = Win!
]]>Rating: 1 star
Spent hours setting everything up only to have it do nothing. The signup portal works but there’s no paywall showing, no “nag”. Tried both methods offered. Even tried customizing my own CSS tag to make it work… Whats the point of a paywall that doesn’t hide content? And what’s the deal with charging $400 a month for your pro addons? I will never pay that much to have recurring subscriptions. You realize the top paywall plugin only charges $180 a year for all the same features, right?
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Unmatched feature set and support makes this one a winner. Simple to integrate and easy to use!
]]>Rating: 4 stars
I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit trying to figure out how to configure a metered paywall/view limit paywall for my site. I’m not confident a hard paywall would work as well to trigger subscriptions at my site, so I felt it necessary to do a lot of research on the best metered paywall plugins, and I tried several of them.
There are plugins other than Leaky Paywall that can give you a metered paywall, and some of them have easier setups and lower costs. However, Leaky Paywall is the only metered paywall plugin I’ve found that enables me to track site visitors by their IP addresses. Every other metered paywall plugin I’ve tried tracks site visitors with cookies, and that’s a non-starter for me.
If visitors can get unlimited access to my content by deleting their visits to my site from their browser histories (which, of course, takes seconds), why would they pay for a subscription? I’m sure some might out of principle, but that doesn’t eliminate the major undermining of my profitability that would come by using a cookie to track visitors. On some browsers, or with some browser extensions, visitors might not even have to delete their histories to gain unlimited access to my content, if I tracked them with a cookie. If you try to get around metered paywalls at major sites like the Wall Street Journal by deleting your cookies, it won’t work, and why would it? How can you charge for content if the content isn’t protected?
It’s bizarre that I can’t find another plugin that offers a metered paywall based on tracking IP addresses. What are all these plugins trying to accomplish by giving their customers artificial paywalls?
You need to install a Leaky Paywall add-on to track by IP address, which costs extra, but I don’t see another option. I give four stars instead of five because the cost is pretty high, and I’ve wrestled with the setup, but Leaky Paywall has become more reliable over time, and it offers a capability that’s hard to find.
]]>Rating: 3 stars
Needs clearer instructions. Took 2 days to figure out.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
We implemented Leaky Paywall on a client’s site, and when we ran into issues the devs at Leaky Paywall were quick to respond and resolve the issue. I appreciate their rapid response and great support.
The tool is very versatile and exactly what we needed for our client.
]]>Rating: 2 stars
The concept behind Leaky Paywall is appealing, but any users managing subscriptions or subscribers through this system need to have full admin rights to the WordPress site where it is implemented, as the system does not provide for definition of user roles or rights.
This makes the system unusable for anything beyond a single person operation.
As a subscriber to the company’s paid system, I was told by their head of support to try asking questions on the Codeable platform if we wanted to find help in implementing user roles. So if you need support in using this platform, paid users are effectively told to “go ask the Internet.”
No user roles and lackadaisical support makes it difficult for any publisher to rely on Leaky Paywall as a subscription management solution.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
I am not a website wizard at all. But when my boss wanted to create a paywall I had to figure out what to do. THANKFULLY, the team at LeakyPaywall – Jeremy and Tyler – literally saved me from having a breakdown!
They were SO kind and so helpful as I navigated setting up our site’s paywall.
I can’t thank them enough.
If you are reading this, Jeremy and Tyler, thanks for everything, and if your boss is reading this, they need raises!
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Leaky Paywall is the most flexible paywall plugin out there for WordPress. If you’re serious about building a sustainable business through digital subscriptions, look no further.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Leaky Paywall does its job well, and the plugin developers are very responsive.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Here’s a real-life, first-hand, straightforward assessment of my (by now extensive) experience both with Leaky Paywall and the folks behind it.
If you have a sizable, dedicated following and you post quality content regularly, you can use Leaky Paywall (and the suite of additional offerings and services from Zeen101) to build a serious business — period. I know, because I did it myself.
I started with Leaky Paywall more than two years ago and gradually added a few additional plugins from Zeen101. By the second year, I had built a good relationship with the folks at the company, with whom I now work regularly on my site. I currently run a variety of their plugins and correspond with the Zeen team on an (almost) weekly basis about anything and everything to do with my business.
Two years ago, in mid-2018, my site relied solely on ad revenue, and while it was more than a “hobby,” it wasn’t quite a business. Fast forward to August 2020, and it is a fully incorporated enterprise, generating six-figures/year in revenue.
Admittedly, I’m a bit of a workaholic, so that’s part of it. But the fact is, what I’ve been able to do with my site wouldn’t have been possible without the folks at Zeen, and it started with Leaky Paywall.
Of course, I could have gone out and hired developers to build in a paywall, but that would have come at considerable cost. Zeen101 now provides me with all of the services and support that I need to run a six-figure business at a tiny fraction of what it would cost to hire a team to do the same work. I will almost surely tap into additional offerings from them in the very near future, especially considering my current growth rate/trajectory.
So, yes, this plugin works. And, yes, you can use it as a springboard to establish a working relationship with the folks behind it on the way to building a serious, highly profitable subscription business for yourself. And you can do that in a relatively short period of time, and at a very low price point.
As with all businesses (and all business relationships), you have to be dedicated to your own cause. I was determined to see what these products could do for me, and also to get to know the folks behind them so that I could discern whether it made sense for me to work with them over the longer-haul. That took some time, but it was worth it — and then some.
My recommendation is simple: If you’re serious about your subscription business, try Leaky Paywall. Then, if you’re successful with it, reach out to the Zeen101 team (all you have to do is go to their site) and find out more about everything else they can do for you. They’re good folks and they’ve been patient and helpful with me at every possible juncture for more than two years — which is saying something, because I’m not always an easy guy to be patient with.
I hope that helps everyone.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Tea is the most consumed prepared beverage in the world. Half the world drinks tea daily but for Tea Journey magazine the challenge is identifying the small percentage of a global audience of three billion who prefer authentic, single-origin, and artisanal teas. Leaky Paywall helps Tea Journey identify and reach niche prospects in more than 100 countries.
Here’s how:
Tea Journey is a content-driven publication. Transaction data available through Leaky Paywall enables editors and circulation staff to see which articles lead readers to subscribe. Our team reasoned that Health & Wellness articles would be popular given the widespread interest generated during the pandemic, but Leaky Paywall provides us with valuable insights beyond page views tracked in Jet Pack. Tracking the transaction history lets us precisely identify which Health & Wellness articles lead potential subscribes to signup.
Tea Journey’s circulation strategy is based on the theory of 1,000 “fans” advanced by WIRED’s Kevin Kelly who states that all an artist needs is 1,000 true fans to maintain a fruitful, if unspectacular, career. Tea Journey uses Leaky Paywall to empower influential super fans in several countries (usually directing tea associations) to incentivize their members to join by issuing Tea Journey discount coupons that provide unlimited access to the content at no cost for one year.
]]>Rating: 4 stars
It took sometime but we are moving in the right direction now. Leaky paywall is our metered paywall solution for our content. We have the option to set visibility on every page. We are running the paid version on 4 sites, active sites.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
We have been using Leaky Paywall for five years and it has been excellent. First of all, revenue went up and continues to go up. Second of all, they continue to innovate and offer us different ways to get our content to our audience while also generating revenue and building relationships with our readers. Third of all, they are responsive to support requests and really value you as a customer. Highly recommended.
]]>Rating: 1 star
I have had a lot of issues with this plugin since I installed it on my website. I have a pretty popular site – about 20k visitors per week – and so I needed a dependable membership plugin to offer premium memberships to my site visitors. I decided to go with Zeen 101’s Leaky Paywall because it has the option to limit how many posts viewers can read for free each month, and a “countdown article nag” that allows users to see how many free posts they’ve read of their allotment so far (i.e. “You have 1 free post remaining this month.”). There aren’t really any other WordPress plugin options that offer this feature, and I didn’t want to have to either write exclusive premium member posts or make all my posts either free or premium (in other words – I’d prefer to monetize my existing posts by limiting how many posts someone can read each month).
The membership plugin seemed OK (mostly) at first, but I have since had many problems with the main plugin as well as the add-ons. For one, most recently, the plugin no longer works with the latest update for Divi (it interfere’s with Divi’s animations – causing any section of the website that has an animation to simply not display. Since I have a lot of animations throughout my site – i.e. graphics that fade in when you scroll down the page – the plugin broke a lot of my site). When I disabled the plugin, my site worked fine.
Additionally, at one point I purchased the add-on that creates a premium-only link to a piece of media so that only premium members can view or download the media. I thought this would be useful for my eBook that I wanted available only to premium members. The link never worked, and I got lots of emails about the broken link. The Zeen 101 team was not helpful in getting this issue resolved, and eventually I just cancelled the add-on and removed it from my site.
Finally, I’ve had a lot of problems with having the plugin actually work as advertised. When I set certain pages to be “Premium Only,” for example, they are still viewable to non-premium members. Plus, when you try to enable both PayPal and Stripe payment gateways, the plugin doesn’t really know what to do and displays multiple “Subscribe” buttons to the user – which makes the premium subscription setup look spammy or fake. If you uncheck the option to display the PayPal subscribe button on the main subscribe page, it doesn’t display at all. Essentially, this feature is broken and has been since I downloaded the plugin.
To sum up my experience with this plugin – it doesn’t work as intended, and the support team is not very helpful or responsive. I don’t recommend this plugin to anyone at this time.
]]>Rating: 3 stars
The plugin is not realy free, because some main resources are only available via add-ons that are very expensive for those who are starting and have no paid subscriptions yet.
Instead of that, the Leaky Paywall has a lot of bugs and the developers dont give any assistance fot the problems reported.
Rating: 4 stars
I’d give it 4.5 stars. It has a few bugs but saves a bit of coding. Support is very responsive.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Great product! Even though we use it with a non-merged pay system (due to university money path restrictions), Leaky Paywall does everything we need. They are always ready with the support we need to make it work in our unique situation.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
The entire IssueM – Leaky Paywall ecosystem is fantastic. It has been very easy to convince more people to subscribe to the online version of our Journal des Libertes, to manage subscriptions and to maintain the database in sync with Mailchimp and a few other third party services.
]]>Rating: 4 stars
I started out using another membership plugin, and was very satisfied with it. However, when I decided I wanted to try adding a metered paywall to the site, their tech people said their plugin couldn’t do it.
I looked around for a while, at various solutions, and in the end turned to Leaky Paywall as a good combination of price and features.
First, a few negatives:
– The biggest hassle for me, compared to the previous tool I used, is that LP adds people to different lists in Mailchimp based on their membership level. The previous plugin used custom fields for this, which is MUCH better. I have one list and put everyone into it, so on a regular basis I have to manually reconcile my LP members list with my Mailchimp list.
– LP doesn’t integrate with WooCommerce, so I cannot give discounts to logged-in members automatically. (I want them to just see the discount automatically when they go to checkout, if they are logged in.) I got around this by creating coupon codes and sending them to the members, but again, I have to remember to do this for each new member.
– The admin screen for LP was obviously built by someone using the biggest monitor possible, as it scrolls way off the side of my laptop screen. Again, not the biggest hassle in the world, but definitely something of an annoyance.
Now for the positives:
– The biggest positive is that it works. We give 7 free articles a month, and after that you have to be a logged-in member to see any more articles. As far as I can tell, LP does a solid job of enforcing that.
– You can limit content to different membership levels. I am considering having certain pages and articles only be available to higher-level subscribers, and LP supports that. The only glitch with this feature is that it uses the same notice to the user as the metered paywall, so you have to created a message that covers both scenarios.
– The membership page and registration process seem to be solid. I am using it with both Paypal and Stripe, and have had no problems.
I have looked at a number of other solutions, and have not found any other metered paywall solution that works this well at this price point.
]]>Rating: 1 star
I have used this plugin over a longer period of time. I wrote to them asking help with the functionality that did not work as it should. They told me to come back to me, but several months later they did not.
My plugin works – somehow. But every time there is a problem, they don’t really help. When i ask the support, they say they have no technical skills. When I write to the ones who should have technical skills, I just don’t get an answer.
I try to write polite emails, and I am being VERY patient, but it’s seems like they just don’t care about you…? If the plugin works, it’s very good! So it’s so frustrating, they don’t help you with basic problems. I even paid for premium plugins as well.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
This plugin has some of the best support I have come across for a WordPress plugin. I found an issue with the subscription tiers and contacted the developer Jeremy to ask for some help, he quickly responded and found the cause of my issue. He ended up having to update some of the plugins code which he pushed out in under a week!
The plugin itself is fantastic and does exactly what my client needs it to do. I would highly recommend it both for the plugin itself and the exceptional support I received.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
The plugin is not as customizable as I’d like and is missing some features such as captcha. However this is the best supported plugin I have ever come across. I’ll trade some features for great support every single day.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
I encountered a conflict with Leaky and Editflow. Zeen investigated, found and fixed the error. The fixed Leaky version was posted to the WP repository as a version change.
Great support!
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Absolutely love it.
It’s a fantastic monetization option for those who produce -or want to produce- high quality content.
My recommendation to the developers would be to consider a rev share instead of a one off purchase price on add-ons as people who are starting out might find the one off a bit steep and prefer the former option.
In any case, thumbs up.
]]>Rating: 3 stars
One of the better and affordable plugins for content marketing/subscriptions. I have had it for a month or so and I’m still figuring out more details to get the best out of this plugin, as this plugin would dictate my content visibility and indexing by google.
I rated it at 3 stars (still a very generous rating for my experience) for 2 reasons:
1. An excellent customer service is very important to me. If it was not for JEREMY here at Leaky Paywall, despite my payment for the plugin and the need I would NOT have used it ever. Every time I needed help, sent email messages (they do not have a chat or phone call) if someone did reply they did NOT know what they were talking about. Their agreement was that they help you with the leaky plugin issues when you are installing it, learning about it etc. JEREMY was the only person who actually helped set it up. As I write this review I’m still waiting for someone to respond regarding my question of users settings.
I want to get their other plugins that seem interesting for my work but I’m worried there will NOT be any tech support and that would waste my time and money.
2. I even told the team of my experience with them in a message to help them either overcome the issue or clarify to me. They NEVER responded. I had also mentioned that the only reason I’m writing a review for this team is because of JEREMY who helped as a support person should, and he knows the subject unlike his fellow team mates (I do have quite a few emails from them as replies that show they have no clue what they are saying).
Lastly, as a professor, I write a review to help the person or the team and not to make them look bad. Hopefully in this case, whoever is in charge of this team would address the issue or not but that is their business not mine. thanks.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Help has been easy to work with, fast to respond, and patient. This is a great tool for publishers.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Simple and effective, this plugin does exactly what we needed and was simple to set up. The author was also really helpful and there are a number of addons available to extend the functionality to create a great user experience!
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