Two publications of similar size can restrict access in completely different ways. The choice reflects what each believes its readers will pay for rather than any settled best practice.
The hard wall assumes indispensable content
A hard paywall requires a subscription before any article can be read. It works only where the material is difficult to obtain elsewhere, which usually means specialist or financial reporting.
Reach collapses under this design, since casual readers and search traffic cannot enter. That is accepted deliberately because the audience is small, defined and willing to pay well.
Advertising revenue is largely abandoned in exchange, which is viable when subscription prices are high enough that a modest subscriber base sustains the operation.
Metering trades a few articles for a habit
A meter allows a set number of articles before requiring payment. The reasoning is that a reader must form a habit before a subscription decision makes sense to them.
Setting the limit is the entire craft. Too generous and most readers never reach it; too strict and casual visitors leave before the publication becomes familiar.
Meters are also porous by design, since the count is usually held in the browser. Publishers tolerate that leakage because tightening it costs more readers than it converts.
Freemium separates the audience deliberately
A freemium model keeps breaking news and general coverage open while restricting analysis, investigations and columns. The open material serves reach and advertising.
The restricted material is chosen because it demonstrates what the subscription buys. A reader encountering the wall has already been shown the value on the other side.
Deciding which pieces sit behind the wall becomes a daily editorial judgement, and getting it wrong on a major story can cost either reach or credibility.
Registration walls solve a different problem
Asking for an email address rather than payment produces a known reader, which supports newsletters and direct relationships without any money changing hands.
Those addresses matter because they reduce dependence on search and social platforms, where a change in ranking can remove a large share of traffic without warning.
A registration wall is often a step in a sequence, identifying readers first and presenting a subscription offer once their reading behaviour suggests they are ready.
The wall interacts with search and sharing
Search engines require that what they index be reachable, so publishers implement specific arrangements that permit indexing while still restricting ordinary access.
Gift links, which let a subscriber open an article for someone else, exist to restore sharing. Without them, a paywalled article cannot circulate in the way news normally does.
Every paywall is therefore a compromise between being read and being paid for, and the design chosen reveals which of the two a publisher believes it cannot survive without.