Poool vs Steady

Poool is a platform for media businesses to manage audience engagement, conversion, and retention. Its products cover visitor access, subscriptions, and on-site experiences. Access lets publishers use paywalls, registration walls, and cookie walls to guide visitors toward becoming leads, members, or subscribers. Subscribe supports creating offers and landing pages, setting up checkout journeys, collecting payments, and managing subscribers. Engage lets teams build on-site elements and set display conditions such as device, date, behavior, traffic source, or on-page interactions. Audience segmentation and A/B testing are also available for conversion journeys. Engage connects to GA4 and Piano analytics, while Zapier and webhooks can send form data to a customer’s own system. Poool says it does not retain data entered in Engage forms, so customers need their own collection or retrieval logic. Access requires Access.js and Audit.js, and publishers must pass consent information in its configuration and manage exclusions for existing subscribers. The paid service is available on Android, iOS, web, through an API, and as an extension. Pricing is on request.

Steady is a web and API platform for independent media makers, including magazines, newsletters, podcasts and video channels. It helps creators publish newsletters and memberships and earn directly from audiences. Newsletter sending is free without audience limits or escalating costs. Memberships use recurring billing, with monthly or annual charges, and Steady takes a 10% commission on membership revenue once earning begins; payment-provider fees and VAT also apply. The service supports full-site content gating, flexible paywalls, embedded buttons and supporter prompts. Newsletter tools can welcome readers automatically, resurface selected work and re-engage quiet subscribers. Externally hosted podcasts can be gated by membership tier and distributed through Spotify or private RSS. Steady Code adds website layers and embeds regardless of a site’s CMS. Creator income is transferred in lump sums, and failed payments are retried automatically. The Free plan is free. Custom domains are not supported.