How to price class packs and memberships

Most studios end up with the same price list: a drop-in price for one class, packs of five or ten classes, and a monthly pass. Choosing those products is easy. Pricing them is harder, because the cheapest way to come still has to cover the room and the teacher once you count how often people actually use it.

1. Start from what one class costs you

Before you look at what other studios charge, work out your own floor. A single class costs you the teacher’s fee (or your own time if you teach), a share of the rent and bills for the room, and a share of everything else: insurance, equipment, software, card fees and marketing.

Say a class costs you €60 to run and holds 12 people. If it’s about three quarters full on average, that’s 9 people, so each visit needs to bring in at least €6.70 to break even. Every price you set, including the cheapest pass, has to stay above that number.

2. Set the drop-in price as your anchor

People compare studios by the drop-in price. Make it the most expensive way to come, because one-off visitors cost you the most: they need more help, book late and miss classes more often. In most cities a drop-in group class costs one and a half to two times what a regular pays per visit.

Check what studios near you charge for something comparable, then decide where you want to sit. For a small studio, being the cheapest is rarely worth it.

3. Build the pack ladder

Packs reward people for committing. With a €15 drop-in, a common ladder looks like this:

• 5 classes for €65, which is €13 a class or about 13% off.
• 10 classes for €120, which is €12 a class or 20% off.
• 20 classes for €210, which is €10.50 a class or 30% off, if some of your clients come several times a week.

Make the steps big enough to notice. If the 10-pack saves 50 cents a class, nobody will think about it. Then check the cheapest per-class price against your floor: €10.50 is well above €6.70.

4. Decide when passes expire

A pack with no expiry date sounds generous, but you end up owing classes for years, and people have no reason to come back soon. A very short expiry feels like a trap. Roughly one month per four or five classes works for most studios: a 5-pack lasts one or two months, a 10-pack three.

Put the expiry date on the pass and in the confirmation, not only in the small print. People mind an expiry date much less when they knew about it.

5. Price the monthly pass for your regulars

Your best clients want an unlimited monthly pass. Price it by how often a typical holder comes. If most of them come about eight times a month, a €99 pass works out at about €12.40 a visit, which is a good deal for them and still well above your floor.

Watch the people who come every day. A pass holder who comes 20 times a month pays under €5 a visit. A few of them are fine, and they’re often your biggest fans. If most of your pass holders use it that way, cap the pass (for example at 12 classes a month) or raise the price.

6. Keep the price list short

Each extra product is one more thing to explain at the desk and one more decision for a newcomer. Three to five options are plenty: a drop-in, one or two packs, a monthly pass and perhaps an intro offer for first-timers (see how to turn trial classes into regulars). Drop anything that hardly sells.

7. Raise prices in the open

When your costs go up and you raise prices, tell people a month ahead and say why in a sentence or two. Let anyone buy one more pack at the old price before the change, and let passes people already hold keep the classes they paid for.

How Groopla handles this

In Groopla you set a drop-in price on each activity and create the passes you sell, each with a name, a price, how many classes it covers (or unlimited) and how many months it lasts. Clients buy passes from your booking page and pay by card, and you can also give a pass to someone by hand. When a client with a pass books, Groopla uses the pass that runs out first, and a class cancelled in time goes back on it. Reports add up revenue and pass sales, so you can see which products sell. More about payments and passes.