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March 14, 2013
2 min read time

What makes the Varnish Paywall unique?

Hildur Smaradottir
  • paywall
  • Varnish Software
  • Varnish Plus

    • Paywalls are one of the hottest topics these days within the world of digital media. And not without reason.

    Advertising revenue is becoming less and less reliable for online media. Increasingly more media houses are joining the paywall league as charging for digital access becomes more mainstream. A good example being Swedish publishers. A recent study from resume.se shows that 70% of Swedish publishers say that they have plans of setting up paywalls and start monetizing their digital content in 2013. Varnish Software has already helped one major Swedish mediahouse set up a paywall on their first pilot publication and we are doing the same for the largest media group in Denmark. More than 90% of Norwegian online media is either already using the Varnish Paywall or going live this year. And as the good reputation of our pay-for-access solution is spreading we are delivering our service to a fast growing number of media in North-America.

    Why such a great pick-up of our solution?

    There are three things that make the Varnish Paywall unique:

    1. It’s amazing flexibility:
    Varnish will integrate with any type of publication and payment system. It will also allow you to detect from what type of device your users are accessing your website (via an embedded DeviceAtlas API) thereby allowing you to implement a multi-device paywall.

    2. It’s unmatched scalability and speed:
    The Varnish Paywall is implemented from within Varnish Cache, our open source web accelerator. Varnish is built for speed and scalability. The Varnish Paywall is compiled to native code which on a modern CPU runs so fast that the time taken to execute the logic/rules for access is insignificant. Hence, after the rules for access are implemented and the paywall deployed Varnish will retain its speed and scalability and render requested content to your users at a blazing speed.

    3. It’s fast return-on-investment (ROI):
    One of our very first customers on the Varnish Paywall, Norwegian fvn.no, saw a significant increase in the number of subscriptions as well as the added bonus of a younger reader base as early as two months after deploying the Varnish Paywall.

    You can also learn more about our pay-for-access solution by watching the webinar on the Varnish Paywall here.

     

    p.s. the screenshot displays how the Varnish Paywall can help you track traffic across your different publications during the course of a day.