Class packs vs memberships
Every studio menu ends up with both, and every studio owner eventually asks which one the business should actually run on. The answer has become consensus among strong operators: **memberships are the business; packs are the on-ramp.** Getting the balance wrong in either direction costs real money. Here is the logic and the mechanics.
What each one is for
Memberships (recurring monthly, usually unlimited or high-frequency) produce the thing a studio lives on: predictable recurring revenue you can forecast, unlike drop-in and class-pack income that must be re-sold every month. They also produce better members: someone paying monthly attends to "get their money's worth," builds the habit, and stays; the fastest-scaling operators deliberately shift their mix toward recurring, higher-tier options.
Class packs (5, 10, or 20 classes, pre-paid, with an expiry) serve the people who will not commit yet: newcomers past their intro offer but not ready for monthly billing, travelers, second-studio users, and genuinely occasional attendees. Studios use packs to collect cash upfront while pricing each class between the drop-in rate and the membership per-class equivalent.
The failure mode is well documented: making packs your primary revenue model instead of your on-ramp. A pack-heavy studio re-earns its revenue from zero every month, its members attend strategically rather than habitually (hoarding classes is the opposite of habit), and its churn hides inside quietly unredeemed packs.
Price so the ladder points upward
The menu should make the membership the obviously smart choice for anyone attending regularly. The classic ladder, per the full pricing framework:
- Drop-in: the anchor, priced high, rarely bought.
- Packs: 10-20% off the drop-in rate per class, cash upfront, with a fair expiry (60-90 days for a 10-pack is typical; expiries exist to encourage attendance, not to confiscate money).
- Membership: priced so that attending twice a week makes it cheaper per class than any pack. At a $28 drop-in and $250 ten-pack, a $159 unlimited membership wins for anyone attending 7+ times a month, and your sales conversation writes itself: "you came nine times on your pack; the membership would have saved you money."
That conversation is the system to build: your software should flag pack users whose attendance frequency beats the membership breakeven, because they are your highest-probability membership upgrades and nobody has asked them yet.
Watching the mix
Put the revenue mix in your monthly metrics. Healthy boutique studios typically see the strong majority of class revenue from recurring memberships, with packs as a meaningful minority. Two warning signs:
- Pack share rising usually means the membership is priced or positioned wrong (too small a gap versus packs, or a commitment fear your onboarding never addresses), not that your market "prefers packs."
- A pile of expired-unused classes is short-term revenue and long-term churn; unredeemed packs are disengaged customers. Chase redemption with reminders, because the goal of a pack is to be used up and outgrown.
The two honest exceptions
Some businesses genuinely run pack-first: studios in tourist-heavy or commuter markets, and highly specialized formats where twice-a-week attendance is unrealistic. If that is truly your market, keep packs but shorten the ladder: sell bigger packs with auto-renew (a subscription in disguise) and protect retention with the same absence-flag discipline membership studios use. And whenever demand strengthens, migrate the menu toward recurring; it is much easier to adjust prices and structure from a recurring base than to rebuild one every month from scratch.