When to raise your membership price: the signs, the maths and the email

Signs it’s time

Two illustrative creators run through this guide: a recipe membership with 600 members at US$8 a month, and a fitness membership with 400 members at US$20 a month. Their numbers are examples, not benchmarks.

• You’ve added a lot since you set the price. The recipe example launched with 120 recipes and now has 410, plus weekly meal plans. The fitness example launched with one class a week and now runs three, with a new program each month.
• People join without asking about price. Steady sign-ups from your sales page, and few “is it worth it” replies, mean the price isn’t what’s holding people back.
• More members choose the annual plan. People who commit for a year are telling you the membership is worth more than a month at a time.
• You’re well below comparable memberships. Our guides to meal plan and fitness membership pricing have current ranges.
• It’s been a year or more. Memberful says that, among its customers, those who raise prices successfully tend to do it every 12 to 18 months, and that memberships keeping at least 75% of members a year can usually raise prices by up to 20% without harm. That’s one platform’s observation, not a study, but it’s a sensible pace.
• Your costs have gone up. Video hosting, a recipe tester or an editor all cost more as you grow. Costs alone aren’t a reason to raise the price, but they add weight to the others.

Signs it isn’t

Hold off if more members are cancelling than usual, if fewer visitors are joining, or if nothing has changed since you set the price. A price rise won’t fix a retention problem; it usually speeds it up. Fix whatever members are leaving over first.

The maths: how many members you can afford to lose

After an increase, you earn exactly what you did before if the share of members who leave equals one minus the old price divided by the new price.

Price increase	Members you can lose and still earn the same
10%	9.1%
20%	16.7%, about one in six
25%	20%, one in five
50%	33.3%, one in three
100%	50%, one in two

Card fees make it slightly more forgiving, because the fixed 30 cents or so per payment doesn’t rise with the price.

Recipe example. 600 members at US$8 a month brings in US$4,800. Here’s what happens if everyone moves to US$10. The cancellation rates are assumptions.

Members who cancel because of the increase	Members left	Monthly revenue	Change
5%	570	US$5,700	Up US$900
10%	540	US$5,400	Up US$600
20% (break-even)	480	US$4,800	None

Fitness example. 400 members at US$20 is US$8,000 a month. Raising the price to US$24 breaks even if 67 members leave because of it. If 24 leave (6%), the 376 who stay pay US$9,024 a month, up US$1,024.

Real increases can survive more cancellations than you’d expect. RevenueCat describes TalkingParents, which doubled a US$4.99 tier to US$9.99 and initially lost around a quarter of those customers. Three-quarters of the customers at twice the price is 50% more revenue from that tier.

Model your own numbers, including your normal monthly churn, in the membership revenue calculator.

Grandfather, raise everyone, or something in between

Approach	What happens	Best when
New members only	Existing members keep their price for as long as they stay	You promised founders their price, or you’re nervous about cancellations
Everyone, with notice	All members move to the new price after at least 30 days	The increase is modest and the membership has clearly grown
Everyone, later	New members pay more now; existing members move in six or twelve months	You want the upside without surprising loyal members
Lock in with annual	Before the change, monthly members can switch to annual at the old annual price	You want more annual members anyway

Grandfathering costs you time, not members. In the recipe example, if 40 new members join each month at US$10 instead of US$8, the extra takes about a year to reach US$960 a month (ignoring churn). Moving everyone, with 5% leaving, gets you about US$900 a month straight away.

If you promised founding members their price for as long as they stay, keep that promise. Every later offer is worth less if you don’t.

What Stripe lets you do with existing subscriptions

Most web memberships bill through Stripe. Here’s how Stripe’s documentation says price changes work. Your platform may handle these steps for you, but it’s worth knowing what’s possible.

• You can’t edit a price’s amount. Once a price exists, Stripe only lets you change its metadata, nickname and whether it’s active. To charge more, you create a new price.
• Existing members stay put by default. Archiving the old price stops it being used for new subscriptions, and Stripe says existing subscriptions on it stay active until they’re cancelled. That’s grandfathering, built in.
• Moving existing members is a deliberate step. Each subscription has to be updated to the new price. If both prices bill monthly, the member’s billing date doesn’t change.
• Watch prorations. By default, Stripe prorates a change made partway through a billing period. With prorations turned off, Stripe says members pay the full new price on their next invoice. For changes timed to the end of a billing period, Stripe suggests subscription schedules.
• Forever coupons stay forever. If you grandfathered people with a coupon set to last forever, deleting the coupon doesn’t remove the discount from members who already have it.

The mechanics are the easy part. The announcement is yours to write.

If members pay through an app or another platform

App stores and fan platforms have their own rules.

• Apple lets you keep the current price for existing subscribers when you raise it. If you move them to the new price, they must agree to it first when the increase is more than 50% and more than about US$5 a period (US$50 a year for annual plans), when they’ve had another increase in the past 12 months, or when they live somewhere that requires consent. Otherwise Apple notifies them and the new price applies. Apple also notes that once an increase takes effect, it can’t be reversed.
• Google Play keeps existing subscribers on their old price by default, in what it calls a legacy price cohort. If you move them, the default is an opt-in increase: subscribers must accept it or their subscription is cancelled, and the new price is charged after a 37-day notice period. Opt-out increases, which don’t need acceptance, are only available in some countries and within limits.
• Patreon, according to its help centre, lets you apply a new tier price to new members only or to all members, raise a price by up to US$20 that way, and keeps members who joined through iOS in-app purchases at their original price.

More on how app subscriptions differ from web ones in app store fees vs web checkout.

Notice and the law

Give at least 30 days’ notice. Some places set rules. In California, a law that applies to subscriptions entered into, amended or extended from 1 July 2025 requires a clear and conspicuous notice of a fee change no less than 7 and no more than 30 days before it takes effect. Rules differ by country and state, so check what applies where your members live.

A timeline that fits both:

1. 30 days before: the announcement email, plus a note on your site and in your member area.
2. 7 to 10 days before: a short reminder to everyone the change affects.
3. On the day: update the sales page and the welcome email.

How to announce it

RevenueCat’s guide to communicating a price increase recommends explaining the reason honestly, showing the old and new prices side by side, giving generous notice, sending the message from the founder, making it easy to cancel and sending more than one email. For a creator membership, the founder is you, which helps.

Sample email for the recipe example

Subject: Your Kitchen Club price is changing on 1 December

Hi Sam,

When I opened the Kitchen Club in 2024, it had 120 recipes and a weekly email. Today it has 410 recipes, a weekly meal plan with a shopping list, and a live cook-along every month.

From 1 December 2026, the membership will be US$10 a month (it’s US$8 now) or US$90 a year (it’s US$72 now).

What this means for you:

• Nothing changes before 1 December, and you don’t need to do anything.
• If you’d like to keep a lower price for longer, you can switch to the annual plan at US$72 until 30 November.
• If the Kitchen Club isn’t right for you any more, you can cancel any time from your account page and keep access until the end of the period you’ve paid for.

Thank you for cooking with me. If you have questions, reply to this email. I read every one.

[Your name]

For the fitness example, change the opening to what has grown: “When I started the Studio, it was one live class a week. Now it’s three classes with replays and a new four-week program every month.” Then give the new price, US$24 a month instead of US$20.

If you’re grandfathering, the email is shorter: say the price goes up for new members on a set date, that their price isn’t changing, and thank them for joining early.

After the change

Watch three things for the next two months: cancellations in the 30 days after the notice and after the first renewal at the new price, compared with a normal month; how many visitors join at the new price; and the replies. RevenueCat’s guide suggests that complaints from fewer than 1% of users aren’t a cause for concern.

Where Voyage fits

Launch with Voyage is how Voyage, a product and growth agency in New Zealand, launches a creator’s own membership with them. Members pay into your own Stripe account, and you change prices from your own dashboard. There’s no monthly fee and no setup fee: Voyage takes a share of sales, from 10%, agreed before launch, and Stripe’s card fees apply. Members who subscribe inside your app pay through the App Store or Google Play, where Apple’s and Google’s rules apply. See how Voyage pricing works, and if you’re reworking your offer at the same time, read how many membership tiers to have.