Breaking news will remain free to view on the site, as will video content and newsletters, a blog post from editor Amanda Baillieu explains.
The site's access model has three tiers, including free registration for all site users or £69 a year for a standard subscription to the website only. A standard subscription will give readers access to all news content, comment, building studies and technical studies, as well as a version of the week's print edition online.
The title has also launched a premium subscription package combining print and online for the same price, which includes 48 print issues, regular supplements and discounts on special events and product offers.
"It's quite likely you'll go to another site, which is still free. Some of you may even hope that our attempt to charge for content will fail. After all, it doesn't take much to work out that BD is a tiny part of a huge plc. So we must have been leant on by the bean-counters, right?" says Baillieu.
"Well, right up to a point. Except there's no accountant type telling us what to do. It was our decision to gate our premium content but keep news free (...) Having built up a large and loyal online readership, we want to keep you. So news - which is the best-read part of BD's site - is free as are video and newsletters."
Baillieu says the decision to charge for parts of the site stems from a need to finance and protect quality journalism.
"While publishing companies moan about the cost of the technology, what they don't talk about is the cost of the journalism that's needed to keep feeding a website like ours, which is producing exclusive content," she writes.
"We’re not under any illusions of the size of this challenge, but it's because we value our readers that from today we also have to put a value on what we do too."
BDOnline.co.uk is not the first UBM website to charge for access to its website: Property Week and Building already operate tiered access models to their sites.
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