For a headless CMS: which starters and agencies bring projects that pay, and who pays for them.

01How they sell

• FreemiumA free tier for personal projects, upgraded when a project goes to production or needs more records, locales or roles.
• SubscriptionPlans per project, monthly or yearly, raised by seats, environments or roles.
• UsageAPI requests, bandwidth or assets above a plan's allowance, billed as usage.

02Payments it reads

• StripeProject plans and usage through Stripe; upgrades, renewals and refunds are read.
• PaddleSome CMS products sell to agencies and companies worldwide through Paddle; transactions and adjustments are read.

03Where buyers come from

• Framework startersStarters for Next.js, Astro or Nuxt on GitHub send developers who clone a working site; a UTM on the README link names the starter.
• Deploy buttonsOne-click deploys on hosting platforms create a project and bring developers to sign-up.
• Agency partnersAgencies standardise on one CMS and open projects for each client; a partner link credits them.
• Content modelling docsDevelopers searching how to model content or set up previews land on the docs.
• Comparison searchesTeams leaving a traditional CMS compare headless options on price per seat and locale.

04What Tally answers

1. Who pays: the developer who found us, or the client?

   When the developer and the payer are different people, they are different visitors. The payer's journey in the visitor list shows their own visits, and an identify call on project invites lets the client's payment link by email.

   Visitors and journeys

2. Do agencies bring several paying projects?

   Lifetime value by first source counts the customers and lifetime revenue behind an agency's partner campaign, with repeat rate, so partners who keep opening projects stand out.

   Lifetime value

3. Which framework's starter brings projects that pay?

   With a UTM on each starter's README link, every starter has a campaign row with visitors and the revenue its projects paid.

   Sources with revenue

4. Are AI crawlers reading our docs?

   AI crawlers seldom run scripts, so the tag doesn't see them; the server snippet for Next.js middleware, Cloudflare Workers or Express reports their requests, shown by crawler, operator, purpose and page.

   AI crawlers

5. How long from cloning a starter to a paid project?

   Path to purchase gives the median time and visits from first visit to first payment; a project built for a client may wait for launch day before anyone pays, and the histogram shows how often.

   Path to purchase

05Numbers worth watching

Repeat rate

The share of customers who paid more than once, which agencies with many projects push up.

Revenue by source

Revenue behind each starter, deploy button and partner campaign.

Lifetime value by first source

Lifetime revenue by first source, with seats and usage added as projects grow.

AI crawler requests

AI crawler requests on docs and guides, a sign of how assistants learn to recommend you.

06An example

07Setting up

1. Next.jsIf the docs are a Next.js app, add the tag to the root layout and the middleware snippet for AI crawlers.
2. StripePass tally_visitor_id in the metadata of the Checkout Session when a project upgrades, and in subscription_data.
3. Call tally('identify', { email }) when someone accepts a project invite, so a client who pays links by email.
4. Put UTMs on the links in each starter's README and on its deploy button.

08Questions

• Do API requests from our customers' sites count as visits?

  No. Content API calls aren't visits. Only pages on your own site that carry the tag are counted.

• An agency pays for ten client projects. How does that show?

  As one customer with several subscriptions if the agency pays them all with one email; lifetime value and repeat rate add them up under the agency's first source.

• A developer's free project upgrades months later. Is it still credited?

  Yes, to the last visit that didn't come direct before the payment, with the first visit kept, as long as the payment links by visitor id or email.