PaywallProject

Description

PaywallProject helps publishers sell access to protected content with Stripe-powered subscriptions, gifts, coupons, subscriber management, and reporting.

Learn more, read the documentation and get support at paywallproject.com.

Payments and fees

Payments go through Connect with Stripe. Connect your Stripe account in one click, with no API keys or webhooks to set up. PaywallProject charges a platform fee of 10% on each payment, on top of Stripe’s own fees. The fee is shown on the Connect button before you agree to it.

AI Shield

Keep AI companies from crawling your stories while Google, Bing and other search engines index your site as before. Turn it on under Settings → AI Shield and PaywallProject adds a rule for each AI crawler to your robots.txt — training crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and CCBot, and AI search and assistant fetchers such as ChatGPT-User and PerplexityBot. robots.txt only stops crawlers that respect it, so the tab also gives you a ready-to-copy Cloudflare WAF rule that blocks the same crawlers at the edge, which works even when your pages are served from a full-page cache. Untick any crawler you want to let in. Googlebot, Bingbot, Applebot and DuckDuckBot are never blocked. Off by default.

External services

This plugin connects to the third-party services below. Nothing is sent to a service until you configure it.

Stripe

Stripe processes all payments. The plugin calls the Stripe API (api.stripe.com) when a reader checks out, buys a gift, changes or cancels a subscription, when tax is calculated at checkout, and when an administrator manages subscribers or coupons. It sends the reader’s email address, name, billing and shipping address, the plan and price, and for tax estimates without an address, the reader’s IP address. Checkout pages load Stripe.js from js.stripe.com, which collects card details directly; card numbers never reach your site.

• Terms: https://stripe.com/legal/ssa
• Privacy: https://stripe.com/privacy

PaywallProject Connect hub (paywallproject.com)

Used for all payments made through Connect with Stripe. Before you connect, the plugin asks the hub for the platform fee rate and sends your site URL. When you connect, disconnect, or refresh the connection, it sends your site URL and the connection credentials. While connected, every Stripe API request listed above goes through the hub (https://paywallproject.com/wp-json/ppconnect/v1), which forwards it to Stripe and applies the platform fee. That includes the reader data listed under Stripe.

• Terms: https://www.paywallproject.com/terms-of-service/
• Privacy policy: https://www.paywallproject.com/privacy-policy/

Google reCAPTCHA

Used only when reCAPTCHA is selected as the signup protection. Registration and checkout forms load the reCAPTCHA script from google.com, which collects data about the visitor’s browser. When a form is submitted, the plugin sends the captcha token, your secret key and the visitor’s IP address to Google to verify it.

• Terms: https://policies.google.com/terms
• Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Cloudflare Turnstile

Used only when Turnstile is selected as the signup protection. Registration and checkout forms load the Turnstile script from challenges.cloudflare.com. When a form is submitted, the plugin sends the Turnstile token, your secret key and the visitor’s IP address to Cloudflare to verify it.

• Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/
• Privacy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/

Slack

Used only when you enter a Slack webhook URL. When a subscriber signs up, renews or cancels, the plugin posts a message with the subscriber’s email address and plan to that webhook.

• Terms: https://slack.com/terms-of-service
• Privacy: https://slack.com/trust/privacy/privacy-policy

Outgoing webhooks (Zapier and others)

Used only when you add a webhook URL. On the subscriber events you select, the plugin posts the event name and subscriber details (email address, name, plan and status) to the URL you entered. The data goes to whichever service owns that URL, under that service’s terms.