Media companies need content distribution infrastructure that the CMS vendors never anticipated.
Modern media companies — newsletters, podcasts, video networks, or content brands — need software for subscription management, content access control, distribution, and the audience analytics that publishers require. We build media infrastructure.
Media company operating with off-the-shelf tools (Substack, Buzzsprout, YouTube) that don't support the subscription model, content access control, or audience analytics the business needs
Media companies face a platform dependency problem: the tools that make it easy to publish (Substack, Spotify, YouTube) also own the audience relationship. The subscriber list, the audience data, and the monetization economics are controlled by the platform.
The specific constraints:
Substack owns your newsletter subscribers. Export is available, but the subscriber experience, the pricing, and the algorithmic distribution are Substack's. A media company that wants to integrate its newsletter with its other content properties needs to own the stack.
Podcast platforms don't have subscription access control. Podcast episodes are either public or private. Building a paid podcast product — where paying subscribers get early access, bonus episodes, or ad-free versions — requires a platform that Spotify and Apple Podcasts don't provide.
YouTube owns the video relationship. Monetization is at YouTube's rates. The subscriber relationship is YouTube's. A media company that wants to sell video subscriptions directly at full margins needs its own video distribution.
No unified audience view. Subscribers on Substack, listeners on Spotify, viewers on YouTube — three separate audience databases with no unified view.
Owned media platform with subscription management, content access control, audience data, and the distribution tools that free the media business from third-party platform dependency
Subscription management
Stripe billing for monthly and annual subscriptions. Free tier with premium tier access control. Subscriber management with cancel, pause, and upgrade flows.
Content access control
Gated content (articles, episodes, videos) behind subscription. Metered access (N free articles per month). Token-based access for individual content purchases.
Audience database
Unified subscriber records with subscription status, content engagement, and communication preferences. The audience relationship owned by the media company.
Content CMS
Editor-friendly content management for articles, audio, or video. Scheduled publishing, draft workflows, and contributor management.
Email distribution
Newsletter sending from the media company's own domain via Resend. Subscriber segmentation, open and click tracking, and unsubscribe management.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Owned media platform with subscription management, content access control, audience data, and the distribution tools that free the media business from third-party platform dependency
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Media company platform investments are defined by the content types and monetization model. Fixed price.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
Not necessarily. For newsletter businesses with under 10k subscribers and simple monetization, Substack's cost is often acceptable while the audience is being built. Custom platform makes economic sense when Substack's transaction fees exceed the cost of ownership, or when the media business needs capabilities Substack doesn't offer.
Video at scale requires a CDN-backed video delivery service. Mux, Cloudflare Stream, and AWS MediaConvert/CloudFront are the options. The media platform integrates with one of these for video encoding and delivery — not hosting video files directly.
Content + subscription + email: from $25k. Full media platform with video: from $45k. Fixed-price.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.