Mobile app subscription revenue is a fiercely competitive space, and the ability to experiment quickly with paywall designs can separate the top earners from the rest. Adapty, a SaaS platform for in-app subscriptions, recognized this need early and developed an innovative Paywall Builder – a no-code tool that allows developers and product teams to create, customize, and test paywall screens without writing a single line of code. Under the product leadership of Ivan Dorofeyev, Adapty’s Paywall Builder has evolved through multiple versions, becoming a cornerstone of how modern apps optimize their monetization. As of early 2025, Adapty offers both its mature Paywall Builder 2.0 and a new iteration compatible with SDK v3.0+, providing developers with powerful capabilities to boost subscription revenue via sophisticated A/B testing and intuitive design controls.
Evolving the Paywall: From Legacy to 2.0 and Beyond
Adapty’s commitment to continuous improvement is evident in the progression of its paywall builder toolset. The original Paywall Builder (now considered the legacy version) provided a template-driven interface for creating paywalls, and was lauded for letting teams deploy subscription offers quickly across iOS and Android. However, the company didn’t rest on its early success. Paywall Builder 2.0 was released as a significant upgrade – this version introduced a more polished UI, improved templates, and greater flexibility in how elements could be arranged and styled. It represented a leap in ease-of-use, making it even simpler for non-technical team members to craft professional-looking paywalls that matched their app’s aesthetics.
One strategic decision, attributed to Ivan Dorofeyev in his role as Product Owner at Adapty, was to maintain backward compatibility even as new versions rolled out. The platform’s legacy Paywall Builder continued to work for apps integrated with Adapty’s older SDK (v2.x and earlier), ensuring that existing customers weren’t forced into an immediate upgrade. This approach gave developers the freedom to move to the new system on their own timeline, a customer-centric move that preserved trust. Meanwhile, the “new” Paywall Builder – built for SDK v3.0+ – could leverage the latest technologies and offer advanced features without being hamstrung by older code. Essentially, Dorofeyev and the Adapty team chose a dual-track strategy: support the old, push the new. This resulted in a smooth transition where no user was left behind, but everyone was incentivized to migrate for more power.
The new Paywall Builder (2024 and later) introduced expanded template libraries and a modular design system. Templates were based on the most profitable paywall patterns identified across Adapty’s client base – for example, layouts highlighting a limited-time free trial, or multi-tier pricing options with one recommended plan emphasized. Even so, these templates were just starting points; everything in them could be customized. The introduction of design “layers” allowed elements like headers, product listings, and background images to be manipulated independently, giving designers creative freedom previously only possible with hand-coded paywalls.
Importantly, Adapty made the tool cross-platform. Paywall Builder 2.0 and above support iOS, Android, and even frameworks like React Native, Flutter, and Unity (with minimal SDK version requirements such as RN 3.0+, Flutter 3.3.0+, etc.). This means an app studio could design a paywall once and deploy it natively across all their app versions. The look and feel remain consistent, and any changes made in the Adapty dashboard propagate to all platforms. This “design once, use everywhere” capability saved teams countless hours and ensured that experiments run on one platform could be mirrored on another for consistent data.
The No-Code Creation Experience
The hallmark of Adapty’s Paywall Builder is that it enables anyone on the team – not just developers – to build and modify paywalls. Upon logging into Adapty’s console, a product manager or marketer can open the Paywall Builder and start assembling a paywall screen visually. They can choose from several base layouts: some optimized for single subscription options, others for comparison of plans (e.g., monthly vs annual), or pages that first show a value proposition before pricing. From there, every element is editable through point-and-click settings:
Text and Copy: All headings, descriptions, and button text can be typed in and formatted with rich text (the latest update even supports bold/italic styling within the text). This allows for on-brand messaging without touching code.
Colors and Images: The background color or image can be set, along with accent colors for buttons, text, and other components. Adapty ensures the final paywall uses native UI components styled accordingly, so it doesn’t look like a foreign web view but part of the app’s identity. If the app supports dark mode, the builder lets you configure a dark theme variant as well.
Layout and Order: Using a simple drag interface or dropdowns, teams can decide the order of sections (maybe the pricing options first, then the features list, or vice versa) and the spacing/padding around elements. Pre-made “blocks” such as a feature list, an image gallery, or a customer testimonial section can be toggled on or off.
Crucially, the paywalls created are native – Adapty’s SDK renders them with native UI elements on iOS/Android, which means they load fast and inherit the platform’s default behaviors (like fonts and buttons that feel “right” for that device). This is in contrast to many other solutions that use webviews to show subscription offers. By avoiding webviews, Adapty’s paywalls not only look more integrated with the app, but also avoid potential latency or caching issues. They auto-scale to any screen size and orientation, which is vital given the diversity of devices in users’ hands.
Adapty often markets the builder with the phrase “build beautiful paywalls without coding, find winning designs without extensive data analysis.” This speaks to the empowerment it gives. A designer can mock up a paywall and push it live in minutes, and start getting results immediately – no waiting on an app store update or developer bandwidth. For companies operating on lean teams, this democratization of the paywall creation process means faster iteration and the freedom to test bold ideas (like a completely new paywall layout) on the fly.
A/B Testing at the Core
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Adapty’s Paywall Builder is how it seamlessly integrates A/B testing into the creation process. The philosophy is clear: because user preferences and behaviors vary, the only reliable way to optimize revenue is to experiment. In the Adapty dashboard, once a paywall variant is created, a user can designate it as part of an A/B test with just a few clicks. The platform allows creating “as many paywalls as you want to run A/B tests for different audiences,” and deploying them to subsets of users is automated by Adapty’s backend.
For example, a team might create three versions of their paywall: one with a bright blue background and a monthly offer highlighted, another with a dark theme and an annual discount emphasized, and a third that includes a testimonial quote at the top. With Adapty, they can set each variant to, say, 33% of new users and let it run. The speed is remarkable – the entire process from idea to live test could be as little as 10 minutes, and it can be done by one person working in the dashboard. Compare this to traditional methods where coordinating a single test might involve multiple departments and weeks of work, and the efficiency gains become obvious.
The kinds of experiments Adapty enables are comprehensive:
Pricing strategy tests: Hard paywalls (asking for payment up-front) vs. soft paywalls (starting with a free trial or delaying the paywall) can be tested to see which yields higher conversion or lifetime value.
Messaging variations: Different headlines (“Start Your Free Trial” vs “Join 10,000 Premium Users”) or benefit descriptions can be tried to see what resonates. In one notable example, an Adapty client removed pricing from the first screen and simply asked “What’s your goal?” – this unconventional approach led to a 27% lift in trial starts, showing that less salesy, more user-focused framing could outperform a straight sales pitch.
CTA and layout changes: Testing the call-to-action button text (“Subscribe Now” vs “Try for Free”), its color, or placement. Also, whether showing a comparison of plans on one screen works better than a paged approach.
Product mix: For apps with multiple subscription tiers (weekly, monthly, annual, lifetime), finding the optimal combination to show (perhaps hiding a weekly option results in more annual purchases, for instance).
The builder’s interface for results makes it easy to identify winners. Adapty provides metrics like conversion rate, trial start rate, and revenue lift for each variant. This data-centric approach has yielded impressive case studies: SocialKit, a content creator app, managed to double its Monthly Recurring Revenue through rigorous paywall A/B testing. Similarly, Prosto, a meditation app, achieved a 30% increase in revenue by experimenting with paywall offers. These aren’t small uplifts – they can translate to millions in annual revenue for successful apps, highlighting how crucial paywall optimization is.
Adapty proudly shares stories like Moonly, which bootstrapped from \$0 to \$2.45M ARR (annual recurring revenue) by leveraging Adapty’s tools and continually optimizing its subscription flows. Or Wave, an indie app, reaching \$2M ARR in just six months after launch – a trajectory accelerated by using data-driven paywall iterations instead of guessing. These examples illustrate that with the right tools, even small teams can unlock huge growth in subscription income by tuning their monetization strategy.
Technical Integration and Execution
To use the Paywall Builder, developers do need to integrate the Adapty SDK into their app, but this is a one-time setup that Adapty has striven to make straightforward. Once the SDK is in place and the app is live, any new paywall design or test created in Adapty’s dashboard can be delivered to the app dynamically. This decoupling of deployment from app releases means product teams aren’t bottlenecked by app store approval cycles to refine their paywalls. Adapty often emphasizes that implementing a paywall via their system requires “almost no coding” – essentially just the initial integration and a function call to fetch and display the paywall. From then on, it’s all configuration on the web.
The tool also handles the heavy lifting of tracking users in each A/B test group and measuring their subscription events. This ensures statistical rigor in the experiments and reliable attribution of results. Developers don’t have to write custom logic to segment users or record conversion events; Adapty’s analytics cover it and present it in a digestible form. The analytics even extend to cohort analysis – for example, seeing if a certain paywall variant led to better long-term retention or revenue per user, not just the immediate purchase rate. This helps teams avoid false positives (e.g., a variant that causes a quick sale but users cancel or refund at higher rates) and truly zero in on designs that maximize lifetime value (LTV).
With Paywall Builder 3.0, integration with other tools also improved. Adapty allows exporting data or connecting to external dashboards, and supports remote config and targeting – meaning you can show different paywalls to different user segments (like new users vs returning users, or based on region) as part of the testing strategy. These advanced capabilities turn what used to be a static part of an app into a dynamic, optimized funnel in its own right.
Driving Monetization Success
Adapty’s no-code Paywall Builder exemplifies a broader trend of empowering non-engineers to directly influence key business metrics. By making paywall optimization accessible, it puts the power of experimentation in the hands of those who often have the best hypotheses (marketing and product teams) without needing to pull in developers for every change. The result is a faster cycle of improvement. Many of Adapty’s clients run dozens of paywall experiments a year – something that would have been unthinkable before. This culture of experimentation, backed by a flexible tool, leads to compounded gains.
The case studies speak volumes: SocialKit’s 2× MRR growth, Prosto’s +30% revenue, Moonly and Wave’s meteoric ARR rises – all underline that effective paywall design is not one-size-fits-all, and constant tuning pays off. Adapty’s contribution is making that tuning process painless and scalable.
From a product perspective, Ivan Dorofeyev’s influence is seen in the user-centric design of the builder and the emphasis on data. Having worked on both acquisition funnels and paywalls, he understood that visibility into the whole funnel (from user acquisition source to paywall conversion) is key. Indeed, some of Adapty’s recent updates involve tying web-to-app attribution into paywall performance – essentially closing the loop that his later venture FunnelFox tackles from the opposite end. By giving clients the ability to see which campaign or user segment hit which paywall variant and how they behaved, Adapty stays ahead in providing actionable insights, not just raw tools.
In conclusion, Adapty’s Paywall Builder represents a significant advancement in mobile app monetization. It combines ease of use with sophisticated capabilities: anyone can build a paywall, but the results can be as complex and optimized as a custom-built solution. By removing technical barriers, it empowers teams to experiment freely and frequently, which is the real driver of growth. As subscription-based models continue to dominate mobile app revenue streams, tools like Adapty’s are quickly becoming essential. In much the same way that analytics platforms became indispensable in the last decade, no-code monetization platforms might become the de facto way subscriptions are managed and maximized. Adapty’s head start and proven track record have positioned it as a leader in this space, and with people like Ivan Dorofeyev at the helm of product strategy, it’s likely to continue pushing the envelope in helping apps convert users into loyal, paying customers.