Should you bundle your paywall with someone else’s?

The idea of bundling is not new. From cable packages to Spotify Premium and Netflix-style subscriptions, the model promises a simple proposition: more for less. In the publishing world, bundling is now having its moment, whether through cross-brand partnerships, third-party subscription platforms, or all-you-can-read apps like Apple News+ and PressReader.

For readers, it’s attractive. Instead of paying £10 to five different outlets, they pay £12 and get them all. For publishers, the pitch is equally tempting: broader distribution, incremental revenue, and discovery by readers who might never otherwise encounter your brand.

But while bundling offers a surface-level win, it also raises deeper strategic concerns. At what point does shared access dilute brand value? When does reach come at the expense of relationship? And is the bundle building your audience—or someone else’s?

The case for bundling: frictionless reach and added revenue

In theory, bundling offers several advantages:

• Discovery: Smaller or niche publishers can be exposed to new audiences through larger, aggregated ecosystems.

• Lower churn: A bundled subscription is harder to cancel if it includes multiple high-value brands, creating a sense of embedded utility.

• Reduced marketing costs: Publishers can benefit from the platform’s user acquisition machine, reaching readers without having to build or buy traffic themselves.

• Incremental income: Even if the revenue per reader is lower, it can add up—particularly for underutilised inventory or paywalled content that sees little direct conversion.

For many mid-sized outlets, bundling feels like a pragmatic way to monetise audiences that might never become full subscribers. It’s especially appealing in markets where consumer subscription fatigue is rising and competition for wallet share is fierce.

But discoverability is not the same as loyalty

What bundling rarely offers is loyalty. When your content appears as one tile in a universal feed—or as just another voice in a multi-source newsletter—the brand relationship weakens. The reader may like the article. They may even read more of your work. But they don’t necessarily associate the value with you.

Instead, the credit accrues to the platform. The aggregator becomes the brand the reader trusts—the place they go, the app they open. Your publication is a byline, not a destination.

For publishers whose long-term goal is to build direct reader relationships, this is not a trivial risk. Bundling can increase reach, but decrease recall. And without recall, subscription conversion becomes far harder to drive independently.

Pricing power becomes precarious

Another challenge is that bundling tends to commodify content. In a bundle, each additional piece of journalism contributes marginally to perceived value, but loses distinct pricing power. This can be useful in a high-volume model—but problematic for publishers who rely on the uniqueness of their coverage.

When readers grow accustomed to getting premium content from multiple outlets for one flat rate, the perceived value of a single subscription diminishes. Your £8/month paywall may look reasonable in isolation—but in a world of bundled abundance, it looks expensive.

This dynamic gives bundling platforms more leverage over time. Publishers become vendors, not partners—dependent on inclusion and traffic share, unable to command their own price point.

Know your position in the bundle

Not all bundling is equal. There is a difference between participating in a bundle and anchoring it. For market leaders—whether by scale, niche authority, or brand prestige—the benefits of bundling can outweigh the risks. These players drive value perception, set the tone, and often receive favourable revenue splits or editorial promotion.

For smaller outlets, the calculus is more fragile. If you’re not the reason someone subscribes to the bundle, you’re simply hoping to capture some downstream attention and revenue. That can still be worthwhile—but only if it doesn’t cannibalise your own efforts to build direct, paying relationships elsewhere.

Strategic bundling, not bundling by default

The answer is not to reject bundling outright, but to approach it with clarity:

• What do you want from the partnership—reach, revenue, retention, or brand amplification?

• Is the bundle attracting readers you’d struggle to reach on your own?

• Does your participation support or undermine your direct subscription goals?

• Can you access data and insights that help you understand bundled reader behaviour?

And critically: can you exit the bundle if the trade-offs start to outweigh the gains?

When bundling works—and when it doesn’t

Bundling works best for publishers with:

• Strong back-catalogue value (archives, explainers, evergreen content)

• Complementary brands that attract similar but non-overlapping audiences

• Low overlap between bundled and core subscriber bases

• Confidence that their core value proposition won’t be diluted by inclusion in a wider offering

It works less well for publishers whose value lies in exclusivity, high differentiation, or a tightly knit reader community. In those cases, bundling may bring noise, not signal.

A shifting landscape of subscription logic

As audiences grow more discerning and subscription budgets tighten, the logic of ownership is giving way to the logic of access. Bundling responds to that shift. But it’s not a panacea. It’s a distribution choice, with trade-offs that affect brand, audience, and economics.

The most successful publishers in the next phase of reader revenue won’t necessarily be the biggest—they’ll be the ones who know exactly what kind of relationship they want with their audience. And whether bundled or not, that relationship still needs to be built—one reader at a time.