Raising your prices? Find out if it’s worth it.
Some members will leave. Nobody can tell you how many, but you can work out exactly how many you can afford to lose. Put in your numbers, make a guess, and see where the rise stops paying.
A price rise costs you three ways.
Most calculators only count the first. The other two are quieter, and they never stop.
Members cancel on the day
A one-time hit. Some of your current members see the new price and leave. Painful, but it's over once it's happened, and the extra revenue from everyone who stays starts paying it back right away.
Fewer people sign up
A higher price converts fewer visitors, every month, forever. Nobody notices a smaller number of signups the way they notice cancellations, but this is often what decides the long run.
Members leave a little faster
At a higher price, the bar for "still worth it" goes up. A small rise in monthly churn compounds: your membership levels off at signups ÷ churn, so churn up a fifth means a ceiling down a sixth.
The long-run maths is the same one behind the Churn Ceiling Calculator: your membership settles at new members per month ÷ monthly churn. A price rise wins in the long run only if price × that ceiling goes up.
What this model leaves out.
It's built to answer one question clearly. Here's where that clarity costs accuracy.
Your guess is the whole input
The maths is exact. The three effects you put in aren't. Treat the break-evens as the real output: they tell you how wrong you can afford to be.
Cancellations take a billing cycle
The model takes the day-one cancellations all at once. In practice they land over the month as each member renews, so the first month looks a little better than shown.
One price, one plan
No annual plans, no tiers, no upgrades or downgrades. If a real share of your members are annual, they'll meet the new price at renewal, spread across the year.
Revenue, not profit
Fewer members usually means less support, lower per-member costs and lower payment fees. None of that is counted, and all of it is in the rise's favour.
Questions about raising prices
How the simulator works, what it can't know, and what happens to the numbers you type in.
On day one, the answer is 1 minus old price divided by new price. Going from $20 to $30 a month, you can lose a third of your members and your monthly revenue stays the same: 1 − 20 ÷ 30 = 33%. That's the textbook figure, and it's optimistic, because it only looks at day one. A higher price can also mean fewer new signups and members cancelling a little faster from then on, and both of those keep costing you every month. The simulator works out a break-even for each effect separately.
Nobody can tell you that in advance, and any calculator that gives you a single number is guessing. It depends on how much value members get, what they'd switch to, and how you announce it. Two ways to find your own number: ask a sample of members what they'd do at the new price (expect them to overstate how many would leave), or charge the new price to new signups only for a month and compare conversion. That's what grandfathering does, so it's also the lower-risk way to roll a rise out.
Grandfathering means keeping current members on the old price and charging the new one to new signups only. You give up the immediate revenue jump, but nobody cancels over the change, so the rise can't backfire on day one. Over time the old-price members churn out and everyone ends up on the new price. It tends to win when your current members are price-sensitive or when you can't afford a bad month. Raising everyone tends to win when your churn is low and members get clear value, because the extra revenue from your whole base starts immediately.
The immediate effect and the long-run effect are different numbers. Day one is your whole member base paying more. The long run is where your membership settles: new signups per month divided by monthly churn, times your price. If the higher price cuts signups or raises churn by more than it raises the price, you settle lower, even though the first months look great. The simulator flags this case and shows the month where the old price would have overtaken you.
Built by the team at Memberstack, where over 10,000 businesses run their memberships.