No subscription system lives on its own. Your website needs to know who's allowed past the paywall. Card payments come in through a gateway. Marketing want lists in their email platform. The mailing house needs a file every issue. If each of those connections is a one-off bit of glue, sooner or later something breaks on a Friday afternoon.
Avio is designed to sit at the centre. It holds the subscriber, the entitlement and the licence, and the systems around it ask Avio for the answer.
The Avio REST API
The API is how your website, paywall or apps find out who's entitled to what. It covers:
- subscribers and their entitlements;
- companies, licences and seats;
- IP accounts and ranges;
- an IP lookup endpoint for paywall decisions.
That last one is the workhorse for corporate and academic access. A reader at a client organisation lands on your site, your paywall asks Avio whether their IP address belongs to a subscribing organisation and what it's entitled to, and they're in. The licences, seats and IP ranges it reads are the ones your team manage on the corporate subscriptions screens.
Secure by design
The API is read-only. Nothing outside Avio can change a subscription through it, which keeps the subscription record the single source of truth and narrows what a leaked key could do.
- Scoped keys. Each key is limited to what it needs.
- Rate limited. One misbehaving script can't swamp the system.
- Logged. Every call is recorded, so you can see who asked for what and when.
It's the same thinking as the rest of Avio: two-factor login, granular permissions and a full audit trail. See security and administration.
Proven connections
We've connected Avio to the kinds of systems publishers use every day:
- website and paywall platforms;
- card payment gateways;
- CRM systems;
- email marketing platforms;
- secure file transfer to fulfilment and mailing houses.
Every publisher's stack is different, so we don't pretend there's one plug for everything. Tell us what you run and we'll explain how Avio would fit with it.
Getting audiences out
Most day-to-day data leaves Avio as files. Audience selection exports any saved selection, and workflows split a saved audience into steps (everyone, email only, postal only, or whoever is left), then export each step as a CSV or save it to an Avio list. A suppression window stops people being over-contacted, and the run history shows exactly who was in each file.
That's how lists get to your email platform and mailing files get to your printer, with a record of what was sent.
Other exports are built in where you'd expect them: the multi-seat recipient summary to Excel, the month-end pack as a zip, invoices, receipts and credit notes as PDFs, and analysis reports as CSV.
Metabase for reporting
For BI, Avio data can be connected to Metabase, so you can build dashboards and ask your own questions without touching the live system. Our team sets it up. More on the reporting and BI page.
Changes in days, not months
If you need a new connection or an extra field in the API, our in-house UK development team builds it. We use AI coding tools under tight human control, so changes ship in days rather than months. Read about how we build, or why joined-up systems matter in why publishers need end-to-end subscription workflows.
Book an Avio demo and bring a list of the systems you'd need Avio to work with. We'll go through them one by one.
Questions
Can our paywall check whether someone is a subscriber?
Yes. The API covers subscribers and their entitlements, and includes an IP lookup endpoint for paywall decisions.
Can other systems write data into Avio through the API?
No. The API is read-only by design. Data comes into Avio through its own screens and processes.
How is the API secured?
Access uses scoped keys, so each key sees only what it needs. Calls are rate limited and every call is logged.
Which payment gateways and email platforms do you work with?
We've connected Avio to card payment gateways, CRM systems and email marketing platforms before. Tell us what you use and we'll talk through how it would work.