App2Web Results: 5 Apps, 5 Wins on Proceeds Per User
5min Read
The most interesting shift in consumer app monetization isn’t a new paywall design. It’s where the transaction happens.
Zach Witzel
CEO, Helium
The most interesting shift in consumer app monetization isn’t a new paywall design. It’s where the transaction happens.
After Epic v. Apple in 2025, US apps can route users to web checkouts and skip the 30% platform fee on in-app payments. The math is obvious, but the execution can be complicated.
That’s what Helium’s app2web flow is for.
What app2web does
When a user clicks “Start for free” or “Subscribe now”, instead of paying in-app, they’re routed to the web where they can securely pay for the subscription and be rerouted back into the app.
Helium’s app2web flow makes the handoff seamless, offering a native-feeling, beautifully designed payment experience for every eligible user.
No need to rebuild the funnel, you just need to test into it.
We’ve shipped app2web with a ton of consumer apps across different categories. Below are the initial rollout results for five of them, anonymized for customer privacy.
Plus we these under-estimate app2web impact, both because we continue to do optimization in subsequent experiments to lift results further and it seems like retention continues to lift after the first few months.
I must say…
The numbers speak volumes
1. Lifestyle Social App (Health & Fitness)
Flow: Trial centered pitch, focusing on converting users to annual, actively experimenting on various prices
The cleanest win of the group, with flat trial starts (+0.2%), but trial-to-paid conversion up 9.2%, overall conversion to paid +11.9%, and revenue per user +24%. Proceeds per user landed at +44.2%. Huge win.
2. Productivity Assistant (Productivity)
Flow: Trial centered pitch, focusing on converting users to annual, actively experimenting on various prices.
Conversion to trial -4.3% relative, trial conversion +1.5%, conversion to paid -2.3%. Proceeds per user: +23%.
Conversion slipped slightly. Proceeds went up anyway.
3. Health Tracking App (Health & Fitness)
Flow: Focused on paid trials, leveraging the significantly higher retention of web payments.
Trial starts dropped -5.2%, but despite fewer people in the funnel, trial conversion rose +8%, ARPU +18%, and proceeds per user +39%.
Fewer trials, better better. The web flow filtered out some of the low-intent starts and converted the rest at a much higher rate.
4. Task Management Tool (Utilities)
Flow: Optimized trial oriented paywall with a second-try price waiting for the user if they return to the app.
Despite trial starts (-2.6%), conversion to paid (-3.4%), and revenue per user (-1.1%) softening, proceeds per user still came in at +21%.
5. Health Coaching App (Health & Fitness)
Flow: Very simple setup, offering Apple Pay web payments inside the app, with the option to select “purchase in app”
Trial starts at +0.4%, trial conversion -1.1%, revenue per user flat, yet proceeds per user: +31.4%.
Three things worth noting
Proceeds per user moved in every single case.
Different categories, paywalls, placements, funnels - none of it mattered. The margin line went up every time.
Funnel metrics are a bad proxy for app2web performance.
Three of the five apps saw at least one metric decline, which looks alarming on a dashboard. Yet all three still gained 20%+ on proceeds.
There’s more to app2web than the swap itself.
With Helium, you control which users get routed to web. Given softer trial start rates in some cases, we’d point higher-intent users at the web so the churn rates don’t rise.
None of which you have to manage yourself. You get a team on every part of it, plus self-improving software that helps you ship experiments weekly, not annually.
