| Does the paid text ever reach the reader’s browser?Neither | Yes. BLOX’s own help center says that in standard metering the full text is often loaded behind the scenes for SEO, and BLOX’s script decides in the browser whether to show it. Content Encryption, which BLOX’s team switches on for Audience+ customers at no extra charge, ships the paid part encrypted, so a reader who hides the overlay sees the first two paragraphs. Audience+ also identifies the device rather than the cookie, so a meter holds across a private window or a second browser. | EdgeKit’s proxy, a Worker on your own Cloudflare account in front of your site, withholds the gated body before the response is written, at no extra charge and in every mode — there is no paid tier that withholds and a free one that does not. We set it up with you; there is no self-serve install yet. It asks one thing of your template: a CSS selector naming the article body, which BLOX’s standard article template already has, and we verify it per title before you sign. Until it is declared we draw a client-side panel over the full page, a softer gate than BLOX’s encrypted one. |
|---|
| Do we want the paywall from our CMS vendor?Favours BLOX | That is the offer. Audience+ is built into BLOX CMS, beside BLOX’s reader accounts, BLOX Pay, e-Editions, apps and managed ads, under one vendor and with BLOX’s own Audience+ team. | EdgeKit is not a CMS. It runs the paywall decision, the reader accounts and the reader data beside the CMS you already have, so publishing, the e-Edition and the apps stay with that vendor — and you manage more than one vendor where BLOX offers one. |
|---|
| Does the paywall learn on its own, or do we write every rule?Favours BLOX | Machine-learned segments since 2024: likely to subscribe, likely to sign up, unlikely to subscribe and likely to churn, which an access rule can target with its own meter. | Rules you write, over scores EdgeKit already computes: Profile Streaming derives engagement, recency and frequency on the live event stream as it lands on the reader record, and a rule reads them in the same request — as it reads a score written back from a model you already run. What is not shipped is the model that learns the score: EdgeKit AI Paywall is managed today, its scores built and its tests run toward yield by EdgeKit’s team, and the model that does it on its own is coming; ask us where it is. |
|---|
| Can our own team query the reader data directly?Favours EdgeKit | BLOX documents a web service API: keys issued per site and scoped to chosen modules, with calls that look up a user and list the services each one holds. | Your reader record is a database of your own. Ask for managed deployment and that database is a project in your own cloud account. |
|---|
| Can we keep the billing vendor we already run?Favours BLOX | BLOX Pay processes through Spreedly, with gateways including Stripe, Authorize.net, Payflow Pro and Moneris, plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal. A circulation system — APT Falcon, DSI, DTI, Mediaspan, Newzware or Vision Data — can hold the subscription instead. | EdgeKit holds one billing model that every processor maps into — accounts, catalog, subscriptions and their items, schedules, invoices, payments, refunds and disputes — and every row records which system it came from. The paywall decision never branches on the provider, so connecting one EdgeKit has not connected before is a connector into a model that already exists, not a second billing model. Recurly and Stripe map into it today, each a full mirror kept current by webhook. Any other processor is wired by EdgeKit, at no charge, before go-live or after, rather than as a change order or a services fee — and a group mid-cutover can run two at once. |
|---|
| Who changes the paywall, the developers or the revenue team?Neither | The revenue team, in BLOX’s admin: an access rule picks who can pass, which offers show and its place in the order, with criteria from a meter check and a segment to the referrer, an ad blocker or a campaign parameter — and custom JavaScript, written by your developers, where those run out. | The revenue team, on a role that can publish. An ordered rule they write and deploy themselves, landing as one numbered entry naming who shipped it. |
|---|