The Daily Mail Chases 1 Million Paying Subscribers With Its First US Paywall 

The Daily Mail introduced its first paywall for its U.S. edition on Tuesday, marking a shift in its digital strategy as the general interest publisher seeks to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising.

DailyMail+ is part of a broader plan from the privately owned title to attract 1 million paying subscribers by 2029, according to Tom Lowe, the manager of digital subscriptions at Daily Mail parent company DMG Media.

It will debut at an introductory rate of $1.99 for the first year, after which the price will rise to a steep $9.99 per month. It includes an 80% reduction in ads, unrestricted access to Daily Mail content, and an invitation to an exclusive newsletter.

Despite its ambitious goals, the paywall will be very limited in scope, gating only about 5% of content across the site, Lowe added. 

“We have a strong advertising business, but there has been a desire to diversify away and reduce our reliance on it,” said Lowe. “We intend on being a massive news site with a significant subscription product, but we have no plans of being a primarily paywalled site.”

As it turns to embrace even a limited subscription product, the publisher joins a growing list of publishers looking to spin up new lines of revenue by tapping into their most ardent users. In recent months, Vox Media brought a paywall to The Verge, BuzzFeed introduced a subscription tier to HuffPost, and Vice Media tied its print product to a monthly membership.

The global news organization rolled out a similar product in its U.K. and Australian markets 12 months ago, which has since generated 135,000 paying subscribers. It also has a legacy subscription product for tablets, called Mail+, which has around 90,000 paying subscribers. It wouldn’t offer specific projections for its U.S. venture.

Hand-picked articles and key new hires

While only a small portion of Daily Mail content will go behind the paywall, every article that does will be hand-selected by editorial staff, said U.S. editor in chief Katie Davies.

This analog approach is meant to keep the workflow simple and ensure that gated stories all have a distinct Daily Mail sensibility and an element of exclusivity. 

But the strategy runs counter to the sophisticated methods increasingly favored by publishers, where machine-learning algorithms process troves of audience data to present paywalls to readers when they are most likely to subscribe.

“The Mail isn’t a high-end, editorial-first publisher where human curation is part of the brand,” said media analyst and former Zuora global head of marketing Felix Danczak. “It’s a volume-driven, engagement-optimized machine, and machine learning would have been a more efficient way to surface content that’s actually worth paying for.”

The paywalled articles will reflect the breadth of Daily Mail reporting, coming from every section of the site, said Davies. This includes its coverage of the entertainment industry, the royal family, true crime, sports coverage, and more.

Gated articles will be clearly marked, with readers able to consume as much free content without ever hitting a paywall. There is also no registration wall required—although readers do need to log in to comment on articles or receive a free newsletter.

To support its subscription expansion, the Daily Mail has brought on several high-profile columnists in a part-time capacity, including Kevin O’Leary, Scott Jennings, and Jillian Michaels.

“We’ve invested in reporters to build up that reporting firepower,” Davies said. “We want DailyMail+ to feel like an extension of the Daily Mail brand—offering something special to our most loyal readers.”

Calculated side hustle rather than full-scale shift

With its infamously ad-dense layout, The Daily Mail represents the extreme end of the monetization spectrum, making it something of a bellwether for the viability of an exclusively ad-funded product.

But digital advertising revenue is under pressure, especially with third-party cookies disappearing, said Danczak. And even though the Daily Mail has built and maintained a massive audience—124 million average monthly visitors since January 2022, according to Similarweb data—it will still benefit from monetizing that readership in multiple ways.

Still, core elements of the Daily Mail’s paywall strategy—namely its limited scope and lack of quota—suggest that the move is more of a “calculated side hustle” than a full-scale shift, added Danczak.

“The Mail’s business will always be ad-driven, but layering in even a modest subscription stream helps stabilize revenue,” Danczak said. “This isn’t about transforming the Mail into a subscription-first business—it’s about skimming extra revenue from its most engaged users.”