Video paywall: subscriptions, rentals and pay-per-view in one admin
Video paywall on Flicknexs: subscription plans, pay-per-view with per-quality prices, rental windows, free-preview minutes and live-event tickets.
Flicknexs enforces the video paywall at playback by checking each viewer's plan, purchases and rental windows against the access rule set on the title.
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Quick answer: A video paywall is the set of rules that decides which viewers may play which titles and what they pay for the privilege. Flicknexs sets that rule per title: subscription plans, pay-per-view with a price per quality level, rental windows, free-preview minutes, tickets on live events and ad-supported free titles, enforced at playback on every app.
Flicknexs provides video paywall as part of its white-label OTT platform. Flicknexs enforces the video paywall at playback by checking each viewer's plan, purchases and rental windows against the access rule set on the title.
Why the paywall has to be a per-title rule
A paywall decides who can press play. On a streaming service that decision has to be made for every title, every plan and every device, and it has to be made in a fraction of a second at playback time. Operators who bolt a paywall on late usually end up with one rule for the whole catalog, which means a documentary that should be a one-off rental sits behind the same monthly subscription as everything else. Flicknexs treats access as a per-title property from day one, so a subscription, a rental, a pay-per-view ticket and a free preview can all coexist in one catalog.
The money side of the paywall is only half of it. The other half is enforcement: the player has to refuse a stream when the viewer has no entitlement, resume it when they do, and do the same thing on the web, in the mobile apps and on a television. Flicknexs checks the viewer's plan, purchases and rental windows against the title's access rule before it hands out the stream, and the same check runs no matter which app made the request. That is what lets a rental bought on the website play on Android TV an hour later without a second purchase.
Store-billed apps add a layer of policy on top. Apple's App Store Review Guidelines require that digital content sold inside an iOS app go through in-app purchase, and Google Play has an equivalent rule for Android, so the iOS and Android apps sell the same plans and per-title prices through the stores rather than through your web checkout. Flicknexs maps store product IDs to your plans and per-title prices in the admin so the paywall stays one set of rules with several billing routes behind it. This page covers each access rule, the plan that includes it and what the paywall does not do.
What the video paywall does, rule by rule
Every row below is in the Flicknexs platform code. Anything not listed is either covered in the limits section or not offered.
SVOD plans
Monthly or yearly subscription plans created in the admin, each granting access to subscription-tagged titles.
TVOD and pay-per-view
Per-title prices set separately for each quality level, charged once through the connected gateway.
Rental windows
Start date, expiry, unseen-expiry and a view count limit stored per rental.
Free preview minutes
A preview length per title, episode or live stream, played before the paywall appears.
PPV on live events
A live stream can carry a pay-per-view price and free-preview minutes like any title.
AVOD
Ad tags on titles, with server-side ad insertion available for linear channels.
Store billing mapping
Apple and Google product IDs mapped to plans and per-title prices in the admin.
Playback enforcement
The platform checks every stream request against plan, purchase and rental window before play.
Source: Flicknexs platform documentation and architecture specification, 2026-09-03.
How the video paywall works, rule by rule
The paywall is six mechanisms that share one enforcement point. Here is what the admin exposes for each and what the player does with it.
Subscription (SVOD) plans
Pay-per-view and rentals (TVOD)
Free preview minutes
Pay-per-view on live events
Ad-supported titles (AVOD)
Enforcement at playback
How to set up the video paywall in the Flicknexs admin
Five steps, in the order the admin expects them. Do them on a free account first so you can watch each rule take effect.
- 1
Connect a payment gateway
Open the payment settings and connect the gateway you will charge through. Stripe, Razorpay and PayPal are the ones most operators start with, and the payment service holds 96 integrations in total. The currency a subscription is charged in comes from the plan, so decide your billing currency before you create plans.
- 2
Create subscription plans
Add each plan with its name, price, interval and description. Keep the plan list short at launch; two or three tiers is enough for the checkout and for the store product mapping you will do later. If you plan to run a coupon, the per-plan coupon toggle lives on this screen too.
- 3
Set per-title access
On each title choose whether it is free, subscription, pay-per-view or a mix. For pay-per-view enter the price per quality level and the rental window: start, expiry, unseen-expiry and view count. For series you can set the rule per episode, which is how a free pilot and paid episodes coexist.
- 4
Add previews and ad tags
Enter the free-preview minutes on titles, episodes and live streams that should be sampleable. For titles you want free with ads, attach the ad tag; for linear channels enable server-side ad insertion in the channel settings. Then test one title in each mode from a logged-out browser.
- 5
Map the store products
If you ship the iOS or Android apps, create the matching products in App Store Connect and Google Play Console, then map each product ID to a plan or per-title price in the admin. Purchases made in the apps are recorded against the viewer account and grant the same access as a web purchase.
Limits and what the paywall does not do
These are the boundaries operators most often ask about. Each is stated as it stands in the platform code.
No free-trial days on plans
Coupons only on Stripe checkout
Store purchases are recorded from the app
Roku billing is not built in
No DRM inside the platform code
A worked example: a film distributor's catalog
Pre-launch checklist for the paywall
- Confirm the billing currency on each plan matches the currency your gateway account settles in.
- Open one subscription title, one rental and one free title from a logged-out browser and confirm each behaves as intended.
- Buy a test rental, wait for the window to expire and confirm the title returns behind the paywall.
- Check that free-preview minutes stop at the mark you set on a title, an episode and a live stream.
- Verify a plan upgrade schedules the change at the gateway instead of creating a second subscription.
- Map every App Store and Google Play product ID to a plan or title before submitting the apps.
- Play a paid title on Android TV and Fire TV with a web-purchased account to confirm entitlement carries across.
- Confirm the ad tag fires on free titles and that server-side insertion is enabled on linear channels that need it.
- Read the revenue report by month after the first test purchases so you know what the real launch numbers will look like.
How the paywall works with the apps and the rest of monetization
Which plan includes the paywall
Standard layers
Pricing & billing
Annual savings
Conclusion: what to do next
Already on Flicknexs
Choosing a platform
Before a rights call
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about the paywall on Flicknexs.
The paywall has no separate price; it is included in every plan, and higher tiers add the device apps that enforce it on mobile and television. F1 Standard is the web-only plan, with 300 GB of storage and 20 TB of bandwidth yearly; see our pricing page for current plan and pricing details.
Yes. Access is set per title, so a catalog can mix free titles, subscription titles, rentals and free-preview titles. Series can set the rule per episode, which is how a free pilot sits next to paid episodes. Free titles can also carry an ad tag if you want them monetized.
Yes. A live stream can carry a pay-per-view ticket price, free-preview minutes and a subscription tag at the same time. Subscribers watch as part of their plan, everyone else buys a ticket, and the entitlement check runs when the viewer opens the stream, so late buyers join without any manual step.
Yes. Pay-per-view prices are set per quality level on each title, so a 720p rental and a 1080p rental can carry different prices. The player offers the qualities the viewer has paid for. This is the pattern distributors use when their contracts price high-definition separately from standard definition.
A rental stores a start date, an expiry, an unseen-expiry and an optional view count. The expiry runs from purchase; the unseen-expiry counts down once the viewer first presses play. When either passes, or the view count is used up, the title returns behind the paywall for that viewer.
No. Viewer free-trial days on plans are not offered in the platform code. The sampling mechanisms that exist are free-preview minutes per title, episode or live stream, and free ad-supported titles. Many operators pair a short preview with a launch coupon at the Stripe checkout instead.
Coupons apply at the Stripe web checkout, where promotion codes and the admin coupon settings are honored. They do not apply to purchases through other gateways or inside the store-billed iOS and Android apps. Read the coupons and discounts page for the exact fields and the per-plan toggle.
The platform passes the upgrade to Stripe as a scheduled plan change, so the viewer moves to the new plan without a second, overlapping subscription. On Razorpay the subscription is updated through the gateway's own update call. Access to the new tier's titles follows the plan change.
Yes. The Android TV and Fire TV apps ask the viewer to sign in, then inherit the plan, purchases and rental windows already on the account. The entitlement check that runs for the web player runs for them too. Roku, Samsung, LG and Apple TV apps are add-ons built per customer.
Product IDs from App Store Connect and Google Play Console are mapped to plans and per-title prices in the admin. On iOS the purchase is recorded from the app and access is granted. On Android, real-time developer notifications are decoded server-side and purchase tokens are verified against Google.
Yes. Titles can be free with ad tags while others sit behind a plan or a price, and linear channels can use server-side ad insertion. A common layout is a free ad-supported tier for discovery with the newest titles reserved for subscribers or sold as rentals.
No. The paywall decides who receives a stream; it does not encrypt it. The platform code provides a signed-URL flag with a TTL, geo-fencing and a player logo overlay. DRM is arranged through the delivery layer on request as part of an enterprise plan.