As publishers shift to privacy-first strategies, traditional paywalls are no longer enough. Every reader arrives with different intent, and a fixed set of paywall templates treats them all the same. Pelcro's paywall is now fully dynamic: publishers describe the experience they want, and Pelcro AI Studio builds it.
Why Traditional Paywalls Fall Short
Historically, publishers used basic paywalls to set a fixed number of free articles before requiring payment. This static model proved readers' willingness to pay but left revenue on the table. Data-driven paywalls followed, yet they are still limited to the templates and settings a vendor ships, so every publisher on the same platform ends up with a similar wall.
Pelcro's AI Paywall: Fully Dynamic, Built by an AI Coding Agent
Pelcro AI Studio works like a website builder for paywalls. Describe a change in a sentence, and the agent writes Pelcro code against the JavaScript SDK, opens a branch and hands you a preview link. You approve it, or you don't, and nothing goes live until you do.
Because the agent writes code rather than filling in a template, the possibilities are open-ended. Publishers use it to:
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Run countdown offers. Show a timer on the paywall that reveals a coupon when it reaches zero, or a holiday sale code that expires at midnight.
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Catch hesitant readers. Show a discount when a reader sits idle on the subscription page without choosing a plan.
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Save cancellations. Present a tailored offer when a subscriber clicks cancel, such as a lower price, a pause or a different plan.
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Change the checkout. Add Apple Pay and Google Pay, collect a name and job title at signup, or restyle buttons to match the brand.
Every change is ordinary code in your repository, with no proprietary runtime, so your developers can read, edit or roll it back.
Built-in Paywall Features
The agent sits on top of a complete paywall, so most publishers start with features that need no code at all:
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Metered, freemium and hard paywalls, configured without code.
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Targeting by location, device, reader behaviour, URL pattern and article tag, with custom JavaScript conditions for anything else.
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A/B tests across plans, pricing, messaging and targeting, compared by conversion.
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First-party data. Access is based on each reader's own subscription and entitlements, with plans shown in their country, language and currency.
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SEO-safe gating. Search crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot are detected, so gated articles stay indexable.
How Pelcro's AI Paywall Drives Revenue
The paywall runs on the same subscriber record as billing and print fulfillment. When a reader converts on a countdown offer, their access, invoice and, for print bundles, their delivery update together. When a save offer keeps a subscriber from cancelling, the change is reflected in billing immediately.
That combination is what makes Pelcro's AI paywall different: a fully dynamic paywall your team designs in plain language, built on a platform that already handles the subscription behind it.
See AI Studio build a paywall change, or talk to the Pelcro team about your paywall strategy.