ReelShort Clone Features: Catalog, Coin Unlock & VIP
The hard part of short drama is not the player. It is pricing an episode instead of a subscription and keeping one wallet honest across three clients. Here is every capability that ships, grouped by who touches it - including the parts that are preview rather than production.
Request a Live Demo →See PricingFeature Set by Role
Every capability grouped by who actually touches it - the viewer watching an episode, the wallet deciding whether it opens, and the operator running the catalog and the economy.
Viewer & Player
- Vertical episode player with sequential play
- Categories, titles and numbered episodes
- Episode 0 as the trailer convention
- Banner carousel, trending, new release and coming soon rails
- Search on title and plot with an optional genre
- My List at series level, continue watching on the client
- Subtitle track from a stored VTT or SRT file
- Likes, comments capped at 400 characters, reports
Wallet, Coins & Rewards
- Free episode window set from one setting
- Coin unlock priced per episode
- Rewarded ad unlock with a per-title daily cap
- Auto-unlock for the rest of a title
- Reward and purchased coins tracked apart
- Spend draws reward coins first, promos carry an expiry
- Seven typed ledger codes for earn and spend
- Seven day check-in ladder, referrals and follow bonuses
Operator Console
- Film category, film list and episode modules
- Drag and drop episode reorder with relocking
- Coin packs with bonus coins and an offer price
- VIP plans by validity and validity type
- Overview, user, monetization and coin analytics
- Series and episode level reporting, order history
- Block, comment hide and report queue
- 24 permission modules across four actions
ReelShort vs Miracuves Clone vs Building From Scratch
The same capability, three different paths to get it.
| Capability | Original ReelShort | Miracuves Clone | Build From Scratch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vertical episode player | Yes - proprietary | Yes - sequential play, subtitles, continue watching | The easiest part, and the part everyone starts with |
| Per-episode pricing | Yes | Coin price per episode, free window set globally | Requires an entitlement model before a player |
| Three ways to unlock | Yes | Coins, rewarded ad, VIP window, plus auto-unlock | Four inputs resolved at read time - easy to get subtly wrong |
| Two-balance coin wallet | Yes | Reward vs purchased tracked apart, promos expire, spend draws reward first | Where most builds leak money or double-credit |
| Typed ledger | Yes | Seven typed codes across earn and spend | Usually added after the first reconciliation problem |
| Rewards ladder | Yes | Seven day streak, ad tasks, referrals, follow and email bonuses | Retention machinery, always underestimated |
| Right-to-left layout | Varies by market | Five locales, RTL for Hebrew and Arabic across all three clients | A retrofit that touches every screen |
| Operator console | Internal | Catalog, economy, moderation, staff and settings, 24 permission modules | The single largest hidden line item |
| Source code ownership | N/A | Full ownership, self-hosted | Full ownership (you are building it) |
| Content licensing | Held by ReelShort | Not included - you supply and license your catalog | Not included - you supply and license your catalog |
| Price | N/A | $3,399 one-time | Six figures and a year, typically |
The demo catalog that ships is original seed material with royalty-free stills, not licensed third-party drama. Your catalog and its rights are yours to arrange - see the Development Company page for what that means in practice.
How It Works, End to End
Short drama looks simple from the outside. Here is the path a viewer and their coins actually take.
Discover and Watch
- Land on rails: banner, trending, new release, coming soon
- Coming soon titles are excluded from the other rails
- Open a title, watch Episode 0 as the trailer
- Episodes inside the free window play immediately
- Continue watching is held in browser storage
Hit the Wall, Choose a Tender
- Access is decided at read time from four facts
- Is the episode locked, is it inside the free window
- Does the viewer hold an active VIP window
- Does a per-user unlock row already exist
- Coins, a rewarded ad or auto-unlock all write that same row
Earn, Buy and Come Back
- Spend draws reward coins before purchased coins
- Promotional coins carry an expiry window
- Coin packs and VIP plans run through hosted checkout
- Seven day check-in ladder builds a streak
- Every movement writes a typed ledger entry
Because entitlement is one row rather than a per-client rule, an episode unlocked with coins on the web app is already unlocked in the Flutter store build. The clients never disagree because they never decide.
Every Feature Earns Its Place
Nothing here is on the list because it demos well. Each capability exists because leaving it out breaks something specific.
| Capability | Why it is not optional |
|---|---|
| Two balance types in one wallet | Because promotional coins and paid coins are not the same liability. Mixing them means you cannot expire a promo without taking money the viewer actually paid for. |
| Spend draws reward coins first | Because consuming free inventory before paid inventory is what makes a rewards ladder affordable instead of a permanent discount. |
| Seven typed ledger codes | Because "balance changed" is not an answer when a viewer disputes a spend. Typed entries are what let you reconstruct why. |
| Unlock resolved at read time | Because caching an entitlement is how a viewer ends up locked out of an episode they paid for, on a different device. |
| Unique compound keys on unlock rows | Because a double-tap on a slow connection should not charge twice for the same episode. |
| Episode 0 trailer convention | Because a free sample inside the same data model costs nothing, where a separate trailer system costs a subsystem. |
| Hosted checkout | Because no card number reaching your database removes the single largest compliance surface a small operator has. |
| Magic-byte upload inspection | Because an operator uploading a renamed executable is an ordinary accident, not an attack, and it still has to be discarded. |
| RTL across all three clients | Because retrofitting right-to-left after launch touches every screen, and Hebrew and Arabic markets are underserved precisely because most platforms skip it. |
The Technology Behind the Features
A Vite and React consumer web app served as a static single page application, a Next.js 14 operator console on its own subdomain with client-side ApexCharts, and a Flutter GetX store build for iOS and Android. All three talk to one Node.js and Express service running roughly 202 registered handlers across a client router and an admin router, behind nginx and PM2. State is 33 Mongoose models on MongoDB: categories, titles and numbered episodes carrying lock state and coin price; reward and purchased balances against a seven-code typed ledger; unique compound keys on the per-user unlock rows; and indexes on active titles, release date and ledger timelines. Uploads run through a storage switch across local, S3 and Spaces with magic-byte inspection, and cron jobs reset the ad counters at midnight.
What Is Not Included in the Base Package
Every capability above is built and demonstrable in the live demo. These are not - and the hub says so too, because it is the kind of thing that surprises buyers otherwise.
Stated against the feature, not implied away
The last five are named in the platform's own VAPT reference as a labelled hardening backlog rather than buried, and they are closed with you at deployment. We would rather you saw the list before you bought than after.
See how Miracuves compares to scripts, freelancers and agencies
The deployment process, the content-licensing reality, and what to check before you hire anyone - on the Development Company page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does episode unlocking actually work?
What is the difference between reward coins and purchased coins?
Do the ads actually pay?
What languages does the interface support?
Can viewers cash out their coins?
Does an unlock carry across the web app and the store build?
See exactly what you are getting - before you commit
Request a working demo of the catalog, the unlock paths and the operator console, or check exact pricing.
Explore the ReelShort Clone
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Deploy in 6 days with the catalog, the coin wallet, the rewards ladder and the operator console included, full source code ownership.
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