Showing Paywalls
At the heart of Superwall’s SDK lies Superwall.shared.register(event:params:handler:feature:)
.
This allows you to register a placement to access a feature that may or may not be paywalled later in time. It also allows you to choose whether the user can access the feature even if they don’t make a purchase.
Here’s an example.
event
to placement
. If you see event
anywhere, you can mentally replace it with placement
. They mean the same thing.With Superwall
Without Superwall
How it works:
You can configure "StartWorkout"
to present a paywall by creating a campaign, adding the placement, and adding a rule in the dashboard.
- The SDK retrieves your campaign settings from the dashboard on app launch.
- When a placement is called that belongs to a campaign, rules are evaluated on device and the user enters an experiment — this means there’s no delay between registering a placement and presenting a paywall.
- If it’s the first time a user is entering an experiment, a paywall is decided for the user based on the percentages you set in the dashboard
- Once a user is assigned a paywall for a rule, they will continue to see that paywall until you remove the paywall from the rule or reset assignments to the paywall.
- After the paywall is closed, the Superwall SDK looks at the Feature Gating value associated with your paywall, configurable from the paywall editor under General > Feature Gating (more on this below)
- If the paywall is set to Non Gated, the
feature:
closure onregister(event: ...)
gets called when the paywall is dismissed (whether they paid or not) - If the paywall is set to Gated, the
feature:
closure onregister(event: ...)
gets called only if the user is already paying or if they begin paying.
- If the paywall is set to Non Gated, the
- If no paywall is configured, the feature gets executed immediately without any additional network calls.
Given the low cost nature of how register works, we strongly recommend registering all core functionality in order to remotely configure which features you want to gate – without an app update.
Placement Parameters
You can send parameters along with any placement you create. For example, if you had a caffeine logging app — perhaps you’d have a placement for logging caffeine:
Now, imagine you could log caffeine from several different touch points in your app. You may wish to know where the user tried to log caffeine from, and you could tie a parameter to the caffeineLogged
placement to do this:
The via
parameter could now be used all throughout Superwall. You could create a new audience which has filters for each place users logged caffeine from, and unique paywalls for each of them.
Parameter placements can be used in three primary ways:
-
Audience Filtering: As mentioned above, you can filter against parameters when creating audiences. Following our example, you’d create a placement parameter named via and then choose how to filter off of the parameter’s value:
-
Templating in Text: Parameters are available in our paywall editor, so you can easily use them in text components too:
- Interfacing with Analytics: Another common scenario is cohorting with your own analytics. See this doc for more.
Feature Gating from the Paywall Editor
Paywall Editor > General > Settings > Feature Gating
Feature gating allows your team to retroactively decide if this paywall is Gated or Non Gated
Type | Behavior | Example |
---|---|---|
Non Gated (default) | Show Paywall → Execute Feature | When “Sign Up” button is pressed, show a paywall, then continue onboarding once the paywall is dismissed. |
Gated | Show Paywall → Is user paying?If Yes → Execute FeatureIf No → Do Nothing | When “Start Workout” button is pressed, show a paywall, then continue once the paywall is dismissed only if the user subscribes. |
Remember, the feature is always executed if:
- No campaign is configured for the placement
- The user is already paying
Using the Handler
You can provide a PaywallPresentationHandler
to register
, whose functions provide status updates for a paywall:
onDismiss
: Called when the paywall is dismissed. Accepts aPaywallInfo
object containing info about the dismissed paywall.onPresent
: Called when the paywall did present. Accepts aPaywallInfo
object containing info about the presented paywall.onError
: Called when an error occurred when trying to present a paywall. Accepts anError
indicating why the paywall could not present.onSkip
: Called when a paywall is skipped. Accepts aPaywallSkippedReason
enum indicating why the paywall was skipped.
Automatically Registered Placements
The SDK automatically registers some internal placements which can be used to present paywalls:
app_install
app_launch
deepLink_open
session_start
transaction_abandon
transaction_fail
paywall_close
Register. Everything.
To provide your team with ultimate flexibility, we recommend registering all of your analytics events, even if you don’t pass feature blocks through. This way you can retroactively add a paywall almost anywhere – without an app update!
If you’re already set up with an analytics provider, you’ll typically have an Analytics.swift
singleton (or similar) to disperse all your events from. Here’s how that file might look:
Need to know if a paywall will show beforehand?
In some circumstances, you might like to know if a particular event will present a paywall. To do this, you can use Superwall.shared.getPresentationResult(forEvent:params:)
.
Handling Network Issues
Superwall’s SDK handles network issues as gracefully as possible, but there are still some scenarios to consider. The behavior will be different based on if subscriptionStatus
evaluates to .active
or not.
If it is .active
and Superwall has already fetched or cached its configuration, then paywall presentation proceeds as it normally would. If Superwall was unable to fetch its configuration, the SDK waits one second to give it a chance to be retrieved. After that time, if it’s not available — then a timeout event is tracked and the onSkip
handler will be invoked with a reason of userIsSubscribed
. The “feature” block or closure will then be invoked:
If it’s not .active
then Superwall will retry network calls until we have retrieved the necessary data for up to one minute. If it’s still unavailable, then the SDK fires the onError
handler with the error type of noConfig
.