How to set up class packs vs unlimited memberships

The single product-structure decision a pilates or yoga studio makes that has the biggest revenue effect over twelve months is the structure of class packs and memberships. The wrong structure leaves money on the table at one end (regulars who would pay for unlimited but aren't offered it) or cannibalises margin at the other (occasional clients who would pay drop-in but get bundled into a pack at a discount they don't need). This post is about how to get the structure right.

The short version is in the Short answer callout at the top of this page. The long version, with the worked numbers and the per-client segmentation logic, is below.

What packs and memberships actually do

Packs and memberships are two different products solving two different operational problems.

A class pack is a prepaid bundle: a client buys four classes at a small discount off the drop-in price, valid for thirty days, and redeems each class against the pack. The pack solves the studio's cash-flow problem (prepaid revenue, paid before the classes are taken) and the client's commitment problem (paid for the classes, more likely to attend). The pack is structurally a discount product: the per-class price is lower than drop-in, but only marginally, and the studio captures the prepaid revenue regardless of whether the client attends all four.

An unlimited membership is a recurring subscription: a client pays a flat monthly fee in exchange for unlimited class bookings inside the month. The membership solves a different problem on both sides. For the studio: predictable monthly recurring revenue that decouples from class-by-class attendance, which is the operationally most valuable revenue type. For the client: the freedom to attend as many classes as their schedule allows without the per-class purchase friction.

The two products converge in practice. A pack client who consistently buys and redeems four-class packs every month is functionally on an unlimited-of-four. An unlimited member who attends three classes a week is paying roughly the same as if they were on a ten-class pack. The product distinction matters mainly at the margins: the heavy attender (four-plus classes a week) pays meaningfully less per class on unlimited; the light attender (one to two classes a week) pays meaningfully less per class on packs. Both products together cover both segments cleanly.

The pricing logic, worked

Take a studio with drop-in at twenty pounds per class. The pack-and-membership pricing structure that works for most one-to-five-instructor pilates and yoga studios:

Drop-in: £20 per class. The reference price. The intro offer (£20 for two classes, see how to write a pilates studio booking page that converts) is priced against this.

Small pack (4 classes, valid 30 days): £75. £18.75 per class — a five percent discount on drop-in. The small pack converts the post-intro-offer client into a regular pack buyer. The thirty-day validity creates a natural re-purchase cadence: clients buy the pack roughly once a month if they're attending the studio at the rate the pack assumes (one class a week).

Larger pack (10 classes, valid 90 days): £170. £17 per class — a fifteen percent discount on drop-in. The larger pack converts the regular who attends two-plus classes a week but doesn't want to commit to unlimited. The ninety-day validity is long enough to absorb a holiday or a work-travel week without the pack expiring unused.

Unlimited membership: £180 per month. Roughly the equivalent of nine classes a month, or two-and-a-quarter classes a week. The unlimited membership converts clients who attend four-plus classes a week (the "committed regulars") because the per-class price for them drops to ten pounds or less. The studio's per-class margin compresses on these clients, but the predictable monthly revenue and the structural retention (clients on unlimited churn at meaningfully lower rates than clients on packs) compensate.

The math: a client attending one class a week pays twenty pounds per class on drop-in, or eighteen seventy-five per class on the small pack, or seventeen per class on the larger pack. The same client doesn't convert to unlimited because the unlimited price is more than they'd pay anyway. A client attending three classes a week pays sixty pounds a week on drop-in, or roughly fifty-six pounds a week on the larger pack. They might convert to unlimited if the per-class price on unlimited is meaningfully lower; at one hundred and eighty per month for twelve classes, the per-class price on unlimited is fifteen pounds, a fifteen percent discount on the larger pack — borderline. A client attending five classes a week pays one hundred pounds on drop-in, ninety-five on the larger pack, and nine pounds per class on unlimited — a clear convert.

The pricing structure produces three clean segments. Drop-in for the very occasional visitor. Packs for the regular at one to three classes a week. Unlimited for the committed regular at four-plus.

What the wrong structure looks like

Three pricing-structure mistakes that show up frequently in studio operator interviews. Each one costs revenue in a different way.

Unlimited too cheap. A studio with drop-in at twenty pounds that prices unlimited at one hundred and twenty pounds a month is offering six-class-equivalent unlimited. Any client attending more than six classes a month converts to unlimited and stops buying packs. The studio captures a small predictable-revenue lift on the converters but loses meaningful per-class margin on the regulars who were happily buying packs at the higher per-class price. The cannibalisation cost is usually larger than the predictable-revenue lift for a one-to-five-instructor studio.

Unlimited too expensive. A studio with drop-in at twenty pounds that prices unlimited at two hundred and eighty pounds a month is offering fourteen-class-equivalent unlimited. Clients who attend three to four classes a week (the natural unlimited segment) don't convert because the unlimited price is meaningfully more than they'd pay on packs. The studio captures no committed-regulars-on-unlimited revenue and loses the retention lift that unlimited members provide.

Pack discount too steep. A studio with drop-in at twenty pounds that offers ten-class packs at one hundred and fifty pounds is offering a twenty-five percent discount on drop-in. The pack converts more clients than a less-discounted pack would, but the per-class margin is compressed by the discount and the unlimited membership becomes less attractive because the pack equivalent is so cheap. The studio captures the conversion lift but loses both per-class margin and unlimited conversions.

The right structure pays attention to the relative prices across the products. Drop-in to small pack: five percent discount. Drop-in to larger pack: fifteen percent discount. Drop-in equivalent to unlimited: forty to fifty percent discount on the per-class price for clients who actually use it heavily. The gradient produces clean segmentation.

The role of memberships in retention

Unlimited memberships do more for the studio than just generate revenue. They produce structural retention.

The retention math is well-documented across SaaS and subscription businesses, and it applies to studio memberships too. Clients who pay monthly through a subscription churn at meaningfully lower rates than clients who pay class-by-class or pack-by-pack. The reasons are operational: the subscription is a default-on commitment, the client doesn't have to decide to re-purchase each month, and the cancel action requires explicit effort. The pack, by contrast, is a default-off commitment — the client has to decide to re-purchase, and the friction of the re-purchase moment is when packs lapse.

For a studio with one hundred active clients, moving thirty of them from pack-based to unlimited-membership-based typically produces a ten to fifteen percent improvement in three-month retention. The retention improvement compounds over twelve months. The math: thirty clients on unlimited at one hundred and eighty pounds a month is five thousand four hundred pounds of monthly recurring revenue, predictable and decoupled from class-by-class attendance. Even with the per-class margin compression on the unlimited clients, the predictable revenue plus the retention improvement is a clear net win for the studio.

The structural commitment that comes with unlimited memberships also changes the pattern of investment in the relationship with the client. Studios that have meaningful unlimited membership bases tend to invest more in member onboarding (the first thirty days are when membership churn risk is highest), in member-specific events and class formats, and in the operational tooling that supports recurring billing well. Junocal's recurring-billing layer is built on Stripe Connect Standard direct to your own Stripe account, which means UK Direct Debit through Bacs runs at Stripe's published rate of one percent capped at four pounds per transaction — meaningfully lower than the bundled-platform processing rates on the PE-backed platforms.

When packs should be the only product

The exception to the both-products recommendation is the very small studio, the term-only studio, and the boutique-experience studio.

Very small studio (fewer than thirty active clients): The operational complexity of running two products may not be worth the segmentation lift. Stick with packs only until the active-client base grows past thirty.

Term-only studio: Some pilates studios run eight-week beginner blocks as their primary product (the term-based course pattern that's particularly common in the UK). Term-based courses are a different product type entirely — fixed slot, single payment, eight-week block — and don't fit the pack-or-membership decision. A studio that runs only terms doesn't need packs or memberships. A studio that runs terms plus drop-in classes typically offers terms as the primary product and packs as the secondary for the drop-in classes.

Boutique-experience studio: A studio positioned as a premium boutique experience where each class is a meaningful event (the "you're paying for the experience, not the class count" positioning) may deliberately not offer unlimited memberships because unlimited normalises the experience and erodes the premium positioning. These studios typically offer drop-in plus packs at premium pricing, no unlimited.

For most one-to-five-instructor pilates and yoga studios, none of these exceptions applies, and the both-products structure is the right default.

How to implement the change

If you're moving from a single product structure to packs-plus-memberships, or restructuring an existing pack-and-membership pricing, the implementation pattern that minimises client friction:

1. Pick the cutover date. A specific day, ideally the first of a month, when the new structure goes live. Honour existing terms until they naturally expire.

2. Communicate thirty days in advance. A single email to active clients explaining what's changing, the new prices, the reason (operational simplicity, fairer pricing, whatever the honest reason is), and a one-line answer to the most common questions. Avoid burying the price changes in long paragraphs of corporate explanation.

3. Provide a comparison table. Before-and-after on each product type. A client should be able to look at the table and see in twenty seconds whether the change affects them and how.

4. Cap the price increase per client. No existing client should see their effective monthly cost go up by more than ten to fifteen percent at the cutover. If the new structure produces a larger increase for some clients, grandfather them at a transitional rate for ninety days.

5. Be available for questions. A dedicated email address or office hour for the two weeks before and after the cutover. Most clients have one question; answering it directly is meaningfully more reassuring than a help-centre article.

The studios that implement the change cleanly report minimal churn at the cutover. The studios that don't communicate well report meaningful churn, particularly among the regulars who feel the change was sprung on them.

Closing pattern

The right pack-and-membership structure for a one-to-five-instructor pilates or yoga studio is both products together, priced so the gradient produces clean segmentation: drop-in for the very occasional, packs for the regular at one to three classes a week, unlimited memberships for the committed regular at four-plus. The structure converts the right clients into each segment without cannibalising the per-class margin or under-serving the heavy attenders.

The structural decision worth making once and reviewing once a year is the pricing relationships across the products. The relationships matter more than the absolute prices: drop-in to small pack at five percent off, drop-in to larger pack at fifteen percent off, unlimited at nine-to-twelve-class equivalent. Hold the gradient and adjust the absolute prices for inflation or positioning.

Related reading: how much do pilates studios charge in the UK — the broader pricing context; how to write a pilates studio booking page that converts — how the intro offer feeds into the pack-and-membership funnel; how to handle pilates studio no-shows — the operational pattern that interacts with pack expiry and membership pause rules. If you'd like to walk through your specific pricing structure, hello@junocal.com gets a real reply from a real person, usually within a few hours.