Lessons from MAU with Zach Witzel and Phil Carter on the future of app monetization, beyond the app stores.
At MAU Vegas, I sat down with Zach Witzel, Co-Founder and CEO of Helium, and Phil Carter, Founder and CEO of Elemental Growth, to discuss one of the biggest shifts happening in mobile apps today: the move toward web monetization.
Few topics are generating more discussion in the mobile ecosystem right now than App2Web, external payments, and the changing relationship between app stores and the web. Much of that conversation has been driven by regulation, particularly following Epic v. Apple. But what struck me during our discussion was how quickly we moved beyond regulation and fees into a broader conversation about product strategy, growth, and the future economics of software.
The session covered everything from AI-driven unit economics and paywall experimentation to App2Web execution and operational complexity. These were the five ideas that stayed with me.
1. The 30% fee is becoming the least interesting part of the conversation
When people talk about web monetization, the conversation almost always starts with fees. That is understandable. For years, the App Store fee has been the most visible difference between selling through an app store and selling on the web.
But one of Zach’s observations reframed the discussion in a way I found compelling. “I actually think the margin benefit is overrated, and the innovation benefit is underrated.” The App Store remains one of the most successful distribution and commerce platforms ever built, but the real advantage of web monetization is not simply what companies save. It is what they gain access to.
The App Store provides distribution, trust, and an incredibly simple purchase experience. But it also places constraints on how companies can experiment with pricing, packaging, trials, subscriptions, retention flows, and customer lifecycle management. Pricing changes require approval cycles. Trial structures are limited. It is difficult to offer ad hoc discounts to existing subscribers, manage cancellation journeys, build downgrade paths, or allow users to pause their subscriptions. Sponsored subscriptions, where one user buys a subscription for someone else, are, as Zach put it, “really hard to construct” inside the App Store.
On the web, many of those constraints disappear. Teams can move faster, test more ideas, deploy pricing changes more easily, and experiment with subscription models, cancellation journeys, retention mechanics, and customer experiences that would be difficult to build within traditional App Store frameworks. The result is not simply lower fees. It is access to a much broader monetization toolkit.
Zach also made the point that ecommerce has spent the last decade building sophisticated tooling around checkout optimization, pricing, ranking, personalization, and experimentation.
The App Store ecosystem, by comparison, is still relatively early in its evolution. “The App Store tooling ecosystem is a decade behind where other industries are,” he argued.
Phil highlighted speed as another significant advantage. Because web experiences can be updated independently of app releases, teams can iterate on pricing, paywalls, onboarding flows, and conversion journeys much faster than they typically can inside App Store environments. As he put it, “It doesn’t require a new mobile app release if you have a web to app flow, so you can experiment more quickly on web.”
That speed matters because learning compounds. In highly competitive subscription markets, relatively small improvements in conversion, retention, or lifetime value can become material over time. Phil also pointed to a third benefit that is particularly important for companies investing heavily in paid acquisition: better data. Web flows can make it easier to pass more deterministic data back to ad networks, which can improve optimization, attribution, and acquisition efficiency. Taken together, these advantages paint a different picture of web monetization. The fee matters, but the bigger opportunity lies in flexibility, experimentation, and control.
2. AI is making monetization more important, not less
Another theme that surfaced repeatedly was the changing economics of software. Historically, many subscription businesses operated with very low marginal costs. Once the product was built, serving an additional user cost relatively little. That is one reason subscription businesses became such attractive models.
AI is changing that equation. As Phil explained, “It used to be that the marginal cost of a subscriber for most digital subscription apps was essentially zero. But that’s not the case now. If you’re supporting AI-powered features, then you’re paying for those underlying compute costs. And that just puts more pressure on your margins.”
For AI-native businesses, every interaction can carry a real cost. Inference is not free. As products become more intelligent and more personalized, the economics become more complex. That places greater pressure on conversion rates, retention, pricing strategy, acquisition efficiency, and cash flow.
Phil also highlighted a point that often receives less attention: payout timing. App Store payouts can take 60 days or more, while web payments are often faster and more predictable. For growth-stage businesses funding customer acquisition and product investment, that difference can be meaningful.
“If you’re an early-stage startup, you only have two choices in terms of funding growth,” Phil explained. “One is you get the cash on whatever you’re getting paid for your subscriptions as quickly as possible, or two is you’re raising more venture capital money. And if you’re raising more venture capital money, you’re taking more dilution.”
The faster a business can access the revenue it generates, the more flexibility it has to invest in growth without raising additional capital. And as AI lowers the barriers to building software, we are likely to see more niche products serving more specific audiences. Those businesses still need sustainable economics. More monetization flexibility may help support a broader range of successful apps.
3. App2Web is real, but execution matters
The regulatory changes that followed Epic v. Apple have created a meaningful opportunity for developers. For the first time, developers in the US can direct users from an in-app paywall to a third-party web checkout. That shift has generated significant excitement across the industry.
Zach was clear about the size of the opening. “In this domain, the courts of the United States have a little bit more power than Apple. They have blown wide open App2Web.” But one of the strongest messages from the session was that App2Web should not be viewed as a shortcut. It is a capability, and like any capability, success depends on execution.
The discussion around CalAI illustrated this well. The company became one of the most visible examples of a business pushing the boundaries of App2Web implementation. While the headlines focused on its temporary App Store removal, the more useful lesson is that companies need to understand the rules before trying to optimize around them.
Developers still need to offer in-app purchases. Pricing needs to be transparent. User experiences need to be compliant. And companies need to recognize that greater freedom often comes with greater scrutiny. As Zach put it, “If you are going to do App2Web, it will increase the scrutiny on the other things you’re doing. Make sure you’re buttoned up in general.”
The companies that succeed in App2Web will not be the ones looking for loopholes. They will be the ones building experiences that are transparent, trustworthy, and genuinely valuable for users. Aggressive upsells, confusing pricing, or dark patterns may improve short-term conversion metrics, but they often create downstream problems in retention, refunds, chargebacks, and brand trust. The opportunity is real, but it should be approached as a product and customer experience challenge, not simply a payments optimization exercise.
4. The best teams treat monetization as a product experience
One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was reviewing examples of what strong App2Web execution actually looks like. Duolingo came up repeatedly as a benchmark, and what makes its implementation effective is not simply that it routes users to a browser. It is that the experience remains cohesive from beginning to end.
When users tap the upgrade CTA, they move into a browser-based checkout experience that still feels entirely native. Apple Pay is prioritized. The experience remains mobile-first. Users who prefer in-app purchases can still access them. If users navigate backwards, they return to a relevant in-app purchase flow rather than hitting a dead end. As Zach noted, “Some users might not even realize that they’re transacting in a different way.”
That is the result of thoughtful product design. The goal is not simply to move a transaction from one channel to another, but to create a seamless purchasing experience regardless of where the transaction happens. When implemented well, Zach described the outcome as “flat conversions with a substantial margin benefit,” and in some cases stronger trial conversion and retention as well.
Importantly, not every transaction should move to the web. Some products are better suited to App Store billing. Some purchase moments are better served by IAP. Some users will simply prefer it. The goal is to intelligently match users with the experience most likely to create value for both the customer and the business.
Phil highlighted a different example: Tolan, one of the fastest-growing AI companion apps in the market today. Rather than presenting a generic paywall, Tolan uses information gathered during onboarding to personalize the purchase experience. The paywall reflects back the specific motivations and goals that brought the user to the product in the first place.
“Paywalls tend to be very transactional,” Phil said. “This one is very personal.” That observation reflects a broader shift happening across the industry. The most effective monetization experiences no longer feel like payment experiences. They feel like product experiences.
The best teams are applying the same rigor to monetization that they apply to onboarding, activation, engagement, and retention. They are testing constantly, personalizing intelligently, and thinking about monetization as an extension of the user journey rather than a separate commercial layer.
5. The future is multi-channel
The final takeaway was perhaps the most important. Throughout the discussion, neither Zach nor Phil framed the future as a choice between the App Store and the web. The direction of travel appears to be increasingly multi-channel, with companies using each environment for its strengths rather than attempting to replace one with the other.
The App Store continues to provide enormous value: distribution, trust, convenience, and a familiar purchasing experience. At the same time, the web provides flexibility, experimentation, ownership, and access to a rapidly evolving ecosystem of commerce tools. The most sophisticated companies are not choosing between the two. They are learning how to combine them.
Zach estimated that roughly half of the top 100 apps in the US App Store already have a comparable web flow live. Whether that number is exactly right is less important than the broader trend: App2Web is no longer a niche strategy. It is becoming part of the modern monetization playbook.
That creates operational complexity. Payments, tax compliance, fraud management, chargebacks, alternative payment methods, subscription lifecycle management, and customer support all become more challenging when monetization spans multiple channels. As Zach put it, “The opportunity is large. The effort is not small.”
For many businesses, that is where a Merchant of Record model becomes increasingly important. Just as the App Store handles payments, tax, and compliance inside its own ecosystem, a web-based MoR can take on much of that operational burden for web transactions, allowing teams to focus on building better customer experiences rather than managing infrastructure.
Final thoughts
What struck me most about the discussion was that very little of it was ultimately about avoiding the App Store. The best companies are not trying to replace it. They are trying to build better monetization systems around it.
The App Store remains an extraordinary platform. The web is becoming an increasingly important complement to it. But this is still a fast-moving space. Regulation is evolving, platform rules are being tested, user expectations are changing, and the economics of software are shifting quickly, especially as AI-native apps continue to grow.
So while the direction of travel appears clear, the playbook is still being written.
That was my biggest takeaway from the session. The companies that do best will not simply be the ones that move fastest to web monetization. They will be the ones that keep listening to customers, learning from the market, respecting the platform ecosystem, and building monetization experiences that work for both the business and the user.
That feels like a much more interesting shift than simply saving 30%.
