Adding Axate is a simple, short, well-defined project and does not require a platform migration. Here is what is involved, who does what, and what you get at the end.
The most common hesitation we hear is not about whether readers will pay.
It is about whether adding payments will be complicated.
For most media companies it is not. Axate is added to your existing website and runs alongside the systems you already have, including any current subscription platform.
Who needs to be involved
A typical set-up draws on four people for a short time:
Commercial: decides prices, the free point and reporting.
Editorial: decides which content carries a price.
Marketing: agrees the wording readers see and the emails they receive.
Technical: adds the code and handles testing.
We have worked on most standard web platforms, and a number of large-scale proprietary ones as well.
We provide a checklist covering every technical, editorial and commercial decision, so nothing is missed. If you have no in-house developers, we can help with the implementation. If development is outsourced, we work with your supplier directly.
The typical steps
Add the Axate code. Your developers add it to your site using our public developer documentation.
Test on staging. We set Axate up on a staging version of your site, or on a handful of old articles that get no traffic, and test it there first.
Set up first-party cookies. Axate is added to your cookie consent list and we create a dedicated subdomain for your site. A DNS change is done together on a short screen-share call, followed by a cache clear and a check that your firewall allows it.
Configure what audiences see. Your logos, the page notice wording and colours, how much of each article shows before the notice, marketing consent wording, and staff accounts so your team can read premium content free.
For search visibility, we recommend applying Google’s structured data guidance for paywalled content, so priced articles still appear properly in results.
Quality assurance. We test at staging and again at pre-launch on the live site, and your own team can test with dummy or real cards. Any live test payments are refunded.
Go live. Readers start paying, and you start seeing the data.
How long it takes
On a standard platform, set-up is technically simple. Larger sites with legacy subscription systems, several titles or bespoke requirements take longer, and we scope those with you before anything starts.
What you get
Live dashboard: Key metrics such as registrations and articles read
Monthly financial report: Revenue for the month, sent to your finance contact
Data portal: Details of readers who registered through your site, with their marketing consents and transactions, protected by two-factor authentication
Reader support: Payment and account queries go to Axate’s support team; editorial queries come to you
[Image to add] The summary dashboard (example data): registrations, active users, readers moving from PAYG to subscription, and subscribers kept on PAYG instead of lost.
[Image to add] The pay-as-you-go dashboard (example data): paid reads by day and by month, and your most-read paid articles.
Readers who register through your site are your customers. Under GDPR, use of their data follows their consents and your privacy policy.
What it works with
Axate runs on websites, alongside your content management system and any existing subscription platform, and supports pay-as-you-go, subscriptions, paid newsletters and contributions.
It does not currently run inside mobile apps.
Next step
If you would like your technical lead to see what is involved for your site, book a call and we will go through it together. If you want to know whether it is worth doing first, start with the assessment.
[Book a call] · [Try the assessment]