| name | paywalls |
| description | In-product paywalls and upgrade moments — feature gates, usage-limit screens, trial-expiration flows, upsell modals, in-app pricing. Use when the user says "paywall", "upgrade screen", "upgrade modal", "upsell", "feature gate", "limit reached", "trial expiration screen", "free to paid conversion", "freemium conversion", "trial-to-paid", "plan upgrade prompt", or "free users won't upgrade". Distinct from public pricing pages and general landing-page CRO. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Write, Glob, Grep |
Paywalls — In-Product Upgrade Moments
A paywall is not a wall, it is a timed ask. It converts when the user has already felt the value, and it burns trust when it arrives before they have.
When this skill activates
Implicit: "design our upgrade screen", "our limit-reached modal converts badly", "free users won't upgrade", "improve trial-to-paid", "what should we gate?", "write the upsell modal copy".
Explicit: "Use the paywalls skill to [task]."
Routed from: .claude/workflows/sales-workflow.md Phase 4 (Convert), alongside [[signup]] and [[cro]]. No /mk: command routes here directly today — reach it via /mk:cro with an in-product target, or by naming the skill.
Scope
Covers:
- Gating model choice — hard gate, soft gate, metered limit, freemium tier, time-boxed trial.
- Trigger design: which moment fires the prompt, and the frequency/cool-down rules around it.
- Paywall screen anatomy + copy — headline, value demonstration, plan comparison, CTA, escape hatch.
- Trial mechanics — length, card-vs-no-card, expiration sequence, grace period, downgrade path.
- Upgrade-path friction from paywall click to payment confirmed, and the post-upgrade moment.
- Paywall experiment design + the metrics that judge it.
Does NOT cover:
- The general 25-point conversion framework, public landing pages, public pricing pages → [[cro]] (owns the framework; this skill applies it to the in-product surface).
- Signup/registration flow and form friction → [[signup]].
- Exit-intent, time-delay and scroll-trigger overlays for anonymous visitors → [[popup]]. A paywall targets a logged-in user who has used the product; a popup targets a visitor who has not.
- Getting the user to the aha moment in the first place → [[user-onboarding]].
- Instrumentation and funnel reporting → [[analytics]].
Core principles
- Value before ask. The user must have experienced real value first. Upgrade should read as the natural next step, not a toll booth. Timing: after the aha moment, never before.
- Show, do not just tell. Demonstrate the paid feature — preview it, screenshot it, state what they could do with it. Abstract feature lists convert worse than a visible artifact.
- Friction-free path. Easy to upgrade the moment they decide. Do not make them hunt for pricing or leave the context they were in.
- Respect the no. No traps, no pressure. Continuing on free must stay easy — a declined user is a future conversion, and a cornered one is a churned one.
Gating models
| Model | Mechanic | Fits when | Main risk |
|---|
| Hard gate | Feature cannot be used at all without paying | The feature is the product's core paid value and is cheap to explain | Blocks before value is felt; highest trust cost |
| Soft gate | Feature is previewed/demoed, action is gated | The value is visible in one screen (export, share, report) | Preview too thin = feels like a tease |
| Metered limit | Free up to N (projects, seats, runs, messages) | Usage correlates with value received | Limit set wrong: too low reads as bait, too high kills urgency |
| Freemium tier | Free plan is permanently useful; paid adds scale/depth | Free users create network or content value | Free tier absorbs the paying segment |
| Time-boxed trial | Full access for N days, then downgrade | Value takes multiple sessions to accumulate | Trial ends before the aha moment |
Pick by asking where the value is actually felt. Gate the scale of a value the user already gets, not the first taste of it.
Trigger points
Feature gate — user clicks a paid-only feature. Explain plainly why it is paid, show what the feature does, give a one-click path to unlock, and an option to continue without.
Usage limit — user hits the metered ceiling. Indicate the limit clearly, show what upgrading provides, and never block abruptly mid-task. Offer the non-paying resolution too (delete/archive something).
Trial expiration — warn early: 7 days, 3 days, 1 day. State exactly what happens on expiration, and summarize the value already received (what they built, what they used).
Time-based prompt — after X days of free use. Gentle, highlights paid features they have not touched, trivially dismissible.
When NOT to fire
- During onboarding — too early, no value delivered yet.
- Mid-flow, when the user is executing a task they came to do.
- Repeatedly after a dismissal.
Frequency rules
Cap prompts per session. Cool-down after a dismiss measured in days, not hours. Track annoyance signals (repeat dismisses, session drop-off after the prompt) and treat them as a conversion metric, not noise.
Paywall screen anatomy
- Headline — what they get, not what they hit: "Unlock [feature] to [benefit]".
- Value demonstration — preview, before/after, or a usage-personalized "with Pro you could…".
- Feature comparison — key differences only, current plan marked.
- Pricing — clear and simple; monthly vs annual explicit.
- Social proof — a customer quote or adoption count, placed at the decision point.
- CTA — specific and value-oriented ("Start getting [benefit]"), not "Submit" or "Upgrade".
- Escape hatch — a visible "Not now" / "Continue with Free".
Screen patterns
Feature lock:
[Lock icon]
This feature is available on Pro
[Feature preview/screenshot]
[Feature] helps you [benefit]:
- [capability]
- [capability]
[Upgrade to Pro — $X/mo]
[Maybe later]
Usage limit:
You've reached your free limit
[Progress bar at 100%]
Free: 3 projects | Pro: Unlimited
[Upgrade to Pro] [Delete a project]
Trial expiration:
Your trial ends in 3 days
What you'll lose: [feature used] · [data created]
What you've accomplished: Created X projects
[Continue with Pro]
[Remind me later] [Downgrade]
The bracketed tokens above are slots to fill from the product and plans/marketing-context.md — never ship them literally.
Upgrade flow
Paywall to payment: minimize steps, keep it in-context where the platform allows, pre-fill everything already known about the user.
Post-upgrade: grant access immediately, confirm and receipt it, then route straight into the feature that triggered the upgrade. The upgrade moment is the highest-intent moment the account will ever have — spend it on activation, not on a generic dashboard.
Anti-patterns
Dark patterns — hidden close button, deliberately confusing plan selection, guilt-trip decline copy ("No thanks, I like wasting time"). These convert once and churn twice.
Conversion killers — asking before value is delivered; prompting too often; blocking a critical flow; a multi-step upgrade process; a limit the user cannot see coming.
Metrics
- Paywall impression rate (per active free user, per session).
- Click-through from paywall to checkout.
- Checkout completion rate.
- Free-to-paid conversion, and trial-to-paid separately — they behave differently.
- Revenue per free user.
- Post-upgrade churn — a paywall that converts users who cancel in 30 days is a leak, not a win.
Judge every paywall change on the pair (conversion, post-upgrade churn). Conversion alone rewards coercion.
Experiments
Test one variable at a time ([[cro]] principle 16). The experiment bank — triggers and timing, layout and value presentation, price framing, headline and CTA copy, objection handling, trial structure, personalization, frequency and dismiss behavior — is in references/experiments.md.
Key concepts
- Aha moment — the first time the user gets the outcome they came for. Everything about paywall timing is measured from it.
- Hard gate vs soft gate — blocked entirely vs previewed-then-blocked. Soft gates trade some urgency for a lot of trust.
- Loss framing vs gain framing — "what you'll lose" (trial end, existing work) vs "what you'll gain" (new capability). Loss framing fits expiration screens where the user already owns something; gain framing fits feature gates.
- Endowment — value the user has already built inside the product (projects, data, history). Surfacing it at the upgrade moment is the strongest asset a paywall has.
- Escape hatch — the visible decline path. Its presence is what separates a paywall from a dark pattern.
- Cool-down — the enforced silence after a dismissal, measured in days.
Process
- Load
plans/marketing-context.md — ICP, brand voice, forbidden words.
- Establish the upgrade context: freemium to paid, trial to paid, tier upgrade, feature upsell, or usage limit. They need different screens.
- Establish the product model: what is free, what is gated, what fires the prompt today, current conversion rate.
- Establish the journey: where in the product this appears, what the user has already experienced, what they were trying to do when interrupted.
- Choose or confirm the gating model, then the trigger point.
- Draft the screen against the 7-part anatomy; write real copy, not slots.
- Set frequency and cool-down rules, and the escape-hatch behavior.
- Define the experiment and the metric pair that will judge it.
Open questions to ask when unstated: current free-to-paid rate; what fires prompts today; what sits behind the paywall; the aha moment; pricing model (per seat, usage, flat); web, mobile, or both.
Output
plans/marketing/<campaign>/paywalls.md — gating model decision, trigger map, screen copy, frequency rules, experiment plan.- Or, in the sales workflow, into
plans/marketing/<campaign>/conversion-assets/.
- Inline recommendations for quick reviews.
Cross-references
plans/marketing-context.md — required hub (ICP, brand voice).claude/workflows/cro-framework.md — 25-point framework; principles 3 (CTA), 7 (bias stack), 9 (genuine urgency), 10 (price anchoring), 14 (objection preemption), 16 (one-variable testing), 17 (post-conversion momentum) apply directly here.claude/workflows/sales-workflow.md — Phase 4 (Convert).claude/workflows/marketing-rules.md — copy quality + brand voice gates- [[cro]] · [[signup]] · [[popup]] · [[user-onboarding]] · [[copywriting]] · [[analytics]]
.claude/skills/marketing/README.md — full kit overview
Provenance
Imported from coreyhaines31/marketingskills (MIT, (c) 2025 Corey Haines) and adapted for KitForge: KitForge frontmatter, /mk: namespace, wired to plans/marketing-context.md and the 25-point cro-framework.md; upstream's eval harness, .agents/product-marketing.md context convention, and cross-references to skills this kit does not ship (churn-prevention, pricing, ab-testing) were dropped.
