Jonathan Parra
Joined Superwall pre-revenue as lead designer and built thousands of customer paywalls (Webflow → Svelte → Superwall editor); ~4,000–4,500 by early 2026. Now designs paywalls for clients via an agency. Credits much of his testing philosophy to Superwall’s Jake and Nick Godwin.
Strong on: paywall component systems, plan-selector design, CTA microcopy, video paywalls, multi-tier styling, AI-app price anchors.
Bias to keep in mind: Superwall-affiliated, sponsored channel; results are self-reported wins without sample sizes.
Sources: sources/youtube/superwall/2026-02-08-*.
Notes citing Jonathan Parra
- How many plans to show and how to display pricesShow 2–3 plans so the main one has an anchor (removing a monthly decoy tanked sales), and break prices down per period — a per-month/per-week display lifted conversion 38%.
- Paywall CTA and microcopy that convertsTested button and microcopy wins — "Continue" over "Subscribe" (+30%), "Start free trial" on Android, "Unlock…" for lifetime, "No payment now" (+30%), the word "free" (+11%).
- Paywall design learnings from 4,000+ Superwall paywallsJonathan Parra's lessons from designing 4,000+ paywalls — there is no universal winning paywall, start from a single-page bullet-list baseline, simplify the plan selector (+10%), cut comparison tables (simpler variant +111%), try native SwiftUI styling, hero-journey paywalls for transformation apps, and test design/packaging before price.
- Paywall placements beyond onboarding (transaction abandonment, session start, actions)Cover every placement before experimenting — transaction-abandonment offer (discount annual only, add an undiscounted monthly anchor), session-start paywall once a day, after N in-app actions, after trial/subscription cancel — plus a spin-wheel discount reveal and a "not ready for a year?" drawer ladder.
- Paywall visuals — video, photos and social proofVideo beats photos beats graphics on paywalls (one app went 2.5% → 4.7% → 6.8%), social proof helps, and a money-back guarantee line was winning in a RevenueCat experiment.
- Setting your first subscription priceStart higher than feels comfortable — Ravi Mehta's $20–30/month "high waterline" doubles as a PMF test — then anchor on competitors, cost-plus-perceived-value (AI apps), ROAS/payback math and the value of the user's whole problem; text-AI wrappers cluster at $30–40/year, niche custom-prompt chat apps get $20+/month.
- Subscription funnel benchmarks (trial start, trial-to-paid, install-to-paid, LTV per install)Target numbers for subscription apps — 5–10% install-to-trial (10%+ with a hard paywall), 30–40% trial-to-paid, ~2–3% install-to-paid, and ≥$3 realised LTV per install before scaling Meta.
- Tiered subscriptions plus consumables (fitting the demand curve)Tinder's model — 2–3 subscription tiers (Plus, Gold, Platinum) with à-la-carte consumables (Super Likes, Boosts) layered on top to capture both low and high willingness to pay; subscriptions act as a force multiplier for consumables, which free users rarely buy.
- Weekly vs monthly vs yearly plans — and which plan gets the trialMonthly plans usually underperform; test weekly vs yearly per category, and put the free trial on the plan with the highest LTV — moving it from yearly to a 3-day weekly tripled sales in one app.
- What to show when users close the paywall (exit offers)Exit-offer ladder for dismissed paywalls — longer (14-day) trial, discount, discount + trial, free credits followed by a review prompt, and finally a forced email capture.