The webpass.io subscription service is a change from the standard consumer - publisher relationship. Instead of having to create and maintain subscriptions with different websites, consumers can subscribe to a single service and affiliated websites can check with the platform to confirm entitlement - thus eliminating friction.
Depending on how websites configure the service customers don't need to create local accounts to get benefits - unless of course sites require accounts for things such as posting comments in topics and articles, or using other non-subscriber's related services.
I am not involved with the service, except as being a publisher using the platform as an alternative to ad-based revenue/subscription model.
I posted this reply to another question, but will repost here for your benefit:
I am the OP. I run a website that uses webpass.io. I am not posting a link to the site to avoid self-promotion but it should be easy enough to find.
With that said, here is MY implementation. Other publishers may do it differently.
Our site is a discussion forum. People can browse at will but only logged in users can post and reply to topics.
We run advertising with Google DFP. A few years back we started offering a subscription where users pay us a recurring fee and they have the option to turn ads on/off in their profile.
I myself thought of using a micro-payment service but I wanted something easy.
The way webpass works is by their add-on sending a unique token on every page request. If there's a token my code checks with their server if it's a valid token. If yes we then have two options:
- if you are not logged in then we completely remove the ad scripts BEFORE sending the page to the browser client.
- if you are logged in we treat your session as a subscriber session and will send or not the ad scripts based on your profile preferences. This means you can go to your profile page and turn ads on/off.
Using webpass made the experience better for our users because even those people who don't want to create another web profile and pay another subscription can still get to our site ad free.
Depending on how websites configure the service customers don't need to create local accounts to get benefits - unless of course sites require accounts for things such as posting comments in topics and articles, or using other non-subscriber's related services.
I am not involved with the service, except as being a publisher using the platform as an alternative to ad-based revenue/subscription model.