News Why parts of Tom’s Hardware now have a paywall

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For context to others reading this thread, I haven't held back on my criticism of Tom's in the past, an I won't be subscribing.

That said, a few people in this thread so far are making some wildly inaccurate comments.

This isn't a money grab, this isn't a peace out for anyone who doesn't want to pay. This is actually a very moderate attempt to make up some of the costs of a very expensive business (to pay people to test hardware and write about it) in a very competitive market.

Tom's could have paywalled everything. They could have taken their most relevant content and made that premium exclusive. Neither of those things happened. Instead their testing out new tools and putting together a separate program which they developed by soliciting feedback from this community.

So I'd say, take a moment and give them the benefit of the doubt to a publication and a community that have long had the interests of builders at the forefront of what they do.
 
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If a paywall allows content like Jared's CPU/GPU scaling article, it might be worth it but I'm skeptical.
I haven't seen anything similar since that came out

I have seen a lot of stuff that seemed to be straight from a press release and might as well been paid ads.
 
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Hello Jeremy,

>We have added staff, added budget, and are adding new content and features, not taking anything away.

Any plans for adding an AI writer? Considering that AI-on-PC will be a thing soonish, the topic would be of great interest to PC DIYers.

Of the new talents, Chris Stokel-Walker is more of an AI "generalist", not a how-to-optimize-an-LLM guy that befits the DIY PC space. Chris Hoffman is a Windows guy. THW's existing staff has no AI writer. It's a yawning gap.
 
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Sigh…

Knowing the overall ownership of TH, this will only be the thin end of the wedge to come.

Clearly the shockingly disruptive nature of adverts on webpages that have shepherded people on to adblockers has created an environment where TH et al simply can’t sustain the profit desires of their owners.

Partial blame obviously lies with those of us with adblockers, but at least an equal share lies with the carpetbomb approach of the advertising that drove us away in the first place.

I couldn’t find any mention of whether the premium TH would be advert-free, and this does actually concern me.

If I have missed it, then I would gladly be corrected, but to pay extra for something we mostly received for free (with advertorial warts) and yet still receive the advertorial warts would seem like a fabulous incentive for a competitor…?

I don’t like this idea of paywalling and I don’t believe that a time won’t come when all of the relevant TH content is behind the paywall. I don’t blame the staff of TH for this: far, far from it. I reserve my cynicism for the overall ownership and their desire to increase profit for shareholders.

TH is a useful resource with a value. Marketing departments have mostly poisoned websites with indiscriminate and disruptive advertising to render it almost entirely non-effective, so now they turn to this next method.

If I believed that overall ownership had learnt from the way website advertising has failed then I may have a more positive outlook for the future, but I I don’t, so I won’t.

Even if this ‘trial’ proves to be a success, the outcome is a greater movement of content behind the paywall, as it will have been proven to ‘work’ and provide shareholder benefit. If it doesn’t work, then one of two things will happen: the funding for TH from above will dry up, or more content will move behind the paywall anyway to coerce/incentivise users to take up subscriptions…

I support TH, but not their overall ownership.
 
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I am afraid your pricing is completely detached from reality.

Ars Technica $25/year (no ads)
The Verge $50/year ("Fewer, better ads")
Washington Post $40/year (1st year deal)
New York Times $4/moth (6 month deal)

I have been reading Tom's Hardware for well over a decade but there is NO WAY it is worth $69/year to me.

I agree that paywalls are better than advertising and are a necessary thing for any media site in the coming AI-slop apocalypse, but you need to be realistic in your pricing.
 
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This is something I would actually pay for, but make sure those pay walled articles don't end up on news aggregators. I wouldn't do it Tom's, because I am familiar, but if I click a random article with interest and am immediately greeted with a paywall notice, or worse, they get fancy and I read a paragraph and THEN I must pay or quit... the anger takes over and things go dark until it all fades back in and I see the selection animation of a "Never show articles from Site X again" menu option fading out.
 
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>can you guarantee that content pre-premium is not slowly bled into the premium side?

You can see which articles that were previously free and are now tagged as premium, from the Premium article listing. Any article that's dated earlier than today (Aug 6) were previously free.

https://www.tomshardware.com/premium

https://www.tomshardware.com/tag/premium-feature

Premium Feature Coverage - Page 2 | Tom's Hardware

The latest Premium Feature breaking news, comment, reviews and features from the experts at Tom's Hardware
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

https://www.tomshardware.com/tag/news-analysis

News Analysis Coverage - Page 2 | Tom's Hardware

The latest News Analysis breaking news, comment, reviews and features from the experts at Tom's Hardware
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com
https://www.tomshardware.com/tag/news-analysis/page/3

News Analysis Coverage - Page 4 | Tom's Hardware

The latest News Analysis breaking news, comment, reviews and features from the experts at Tom's Hardware
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

Of the premium "Featured" articles, 7 of the 16 were previously free.

Of the premium "News Analysis" pieces, all except one were previously free.
 
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I know that it was hard to make money in tech journalism to begin with and it's gotten worse recently, but I think that asking people to commit to a full-year subscription on the promise of improved content to come is quite the leap.

As others have said, the $69/yr promotional rate is steep compared to other news websites, and the $99/yr full price it auto-renews at is even more steep. Tech news is a very competitive space, you're in a self-admitted "Beta" state right now, and your promo rate is more than some other tech websites' full price!

It is less than niche, industry-specific news sites aimed at professionals, but that leads into another issue that others have touched on... The quality of writing on Tom'sHardware. Reviews are generally pretty good, while news coverage is more of a mixed bag. Things like the PCIe 8.0 announcement and Raja Koduri's latest project are interesting and are the kind of thing that video news roundups breeze through pretty quick if they even cover at all, and I appreciate a longer, written article... but there's also wild claims out of China from companies with questionable track records getting hyped up, rumor articles that are little more than "hey we saw someone say something on Twitter", "news" that's just telling us about a YouTube video you watched or a Reddit post you read, etc. I know that there's slow news days and there's a value to getting the word out to a larger audience about something that a small YouTube channel or the community on Reddit has discovered even if you don't have a lot to add, but that kind of content feels "low effort" and brings down the prestige of the site as a whole. As for your standard editorial coverage... it might be a matter of opinion, but some days it feels like you're trying to manifest the successes you want to see for Windows-on-Arm/consumer RISC-V/Chinese GPU startups/Arc Battlemage, or at least failing to question very optimistic claims/projections because you want them to be true.

Where you want to go with the subscription feels like it's more for industry professionals and IT than it is for gamers and the DIY crowd, but I'm not sure if that's what the current Tom'sHardware brand is. It almost feels like there should be a separate URL to a no ad, no fluff, spinoff website that's all industry analysis and deep dives that are not for everyone and makes no apologies about it and is "Brought to you by the Tom'sHardware Experts".
 
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Of particular relevance to the PC space is the breaking news that there'll be a 100% tariff on semiconductors.


This would be a good time for THW to show its mettle in assessing the impact of said tariff on PC components. TSMC, Apple, and presumably Intel will be exempted, but everything else (memory, GPU, etc) will rise in price, if not from chips tariff, then from the 15-20% reciprocal tariffs that's on every electronics-exporting country.

To Chris Stokel-Walker, Anton Shilov, & co, let's see your A game.

NB: Methinks Intel will get more interest in its 18A process going forward. Let's hope Intel can get it up to snuff.
 
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helper800 said:
Imagine paying for something, amiright?
Click to expand...
No. Imagine paying for what was free last week.

But I mean it's not just this one site, admins shouldn't be subject to a witch hunt. Surface internet is sort of collapsing on its own because the ad revenue model of 10 years ago is not sustainable anymore, mainly because of ghost traffic done by malignant botnets, so site owners have to find ways to actually profit off the sites, it's valid, but not when you just take some of the old content, put it behind a paywall and call it a day.

Yeah there's "Exclusive features and interviews" and "Bench access", and a newsletter. Premium newsletter.

But what do I know, maybe people will actually pay for it, I dunno. Can't relate, I don't really pay for anything other than internet access, I never did, no paid software, premium of any kind, subscriptions for music, videos, etc. it never worked with me, mainly because even if I wanted to pay I could never do it, to put things in perspective the average monthly wage in my country is $12,20 so a bit over 6 months of working to pay for TH premium, assuming I have access to an international payment platform, which I don't, so, that's how it is with everything when it comes to me, I mean if you make $50k a year then $70 suddenly feels like pocket change, it's expensive compared to other platforms, sure, but it's not at the level it'd bankrupt someone from a first world country.

I whitelist some websites that don't have annoying ads, aka google adsense, everything else is blocked, my problem isn't with the owners of sites using adsense, but with adsense per se, or any localised ads platform really, for my own sanity I must block localised ads because they're the most down right annoying things ever, and most are downright scams that take advantage of basically the fact we're living in a sh*thole, so there's ads like "free US visa", "this country hands out free welfare to workers from [your city]!!!" or "import goods without permits or taxes!!!!" - which is basically unethical af (somehow google allows it) if you ask me, that and counterfeit labubu dolls, normie browsing experience is truly a nightmare.

Anyway $70 is too much vs. other journalism websites but relatively fine.
 
I'll be honest, that's too much to ask for me. Maybe once I moved up a bit in the world, I'll reconsider.
I really don't want the site to go the way of Anandtech. Still, I admit I rarely visit the actual main news site these days. I only read the peripheral reviews generally, because every single thing I bought that I got recommended from these articles has been great.

I miss reading deep dives like this one.

HearMyMoo said:
I couldn’t find any mention of whether the premium TH would be advert-free, and this does actually concern me.
Click to expand...

If my eyes didn't fail me (and they do often), premium TH will still have ads. It's stated in the article.
 
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I will see. I did read tom's for years, and short time ago a renewed my account.

But obviously everybody wants to pull money out of our bags, and everything becomes more and more expensive. Where from should normal working people take the money?

I will look, and could be, I might leave this webpage for ever. It will depend how good the rest of postings and articles will be.
 
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