You are in your billing settings with the price field open. Nine dollars feels friendly. Nineteen feels safe. You type twenty-nine, look at it for a second, then delete it back down, because nineteen is the number nobody could possibly object to.
That is how most people price a membership community. Not with math. With a flinch.
Cheap feels like the generous choice. More people can afford it, more people join, nobody has to hear you say a number out loud that makes your face hot.
Cheap is not the on-ramp. It is the hardest possible version of this business to run.
Here is what to charge, why the low number costs more than it saves, and how to land on a price that lets your membership survive and lets you keep showing up for it.
How Do You Price a Membership Community?
Price to the value of the outcome your membership delivers, not the size of the content library. The right number is usually the one that makes you slightly uncomfortable.
Most memberships are not priced. They are guessed at, low, by a founder who is scared. Scared that if you charge what it is worth nobody will pay. Scared of the moment someone sees the number and thinks, who does she think she is. Scared that a bigger number makes you responsible for delivering more.
I know that fear well because I lived in it. I kept my own pricing too low for years and told myself it was about being accessible. It was not generosity. It made me resentful and tired and stuck serving far too many people for far too little, quietly wondering why the thing I loved felt so heavy.
A one time offer priced too low stings once. A membership priced too low undercharges you every month, forever, on repeat. It is a slow leak.
So if there is one number in your business worth getting right, it is this one, because the mistake compounds.
Why Is a Cheap Membership Harder to Run?
At $9 a month you need about 550 members to make $5,000. At $90 you need 55. Same revenue, one tenth of the people to welcome, serve, and keep.
Run that math on your own number before you read another word. Take the monthly revenue you actually want, divide it by your current price, and look at how many members you would need. Then run it again at double your price.
The 550 number is abstract until you live it. At that size you cannot know your members. You cannot welcome them personally. You cannot notice when someone goes quiet. You are not running a community, you are running a stadium, mostly alone, for people who barely know you exist.
Then there is churn, and this is the part that surprises people. Cheap memberships churn harder. Think about every $9 subscription you have canceled without a second thought. You barely noticed it leave. Now think about the things you paid real money for. You show up to those.
The price someone pays is tied to how seriously they take the thing. A low price does not just bring in more people. It brings in more people who are only half in.
So the cheap version hits you from both sides:
- You need ten times the members to make the same money
- Those members leave faster and care less
- You can never stop selling, because the second you stop marketing, the whole thing starts draining
That last one is not a pricing decision. That is a life decision.
How Do You Land on Your Number?
Start from the outcome your membership delivers and what that result is worth to the person getting it. Then choose the number that makes you a little uncomfortable, not the one that feels safe to say.
Price the outcome, not the library
Your price should reflect what your membership does for someone, not how many trainings sit inside it. This is the same principle as selling the outcome instead of access, applied to the number on the checkout page. A membership that helps a founder build a business that finally supports her is worth a lot, whether the library holds twelve videos or two hundred.
What that looks like:
- Write down the result a member has after a year with you, in their words
- Price against that result, not against your content count
- Be honest about the category: helping someone enjoy a hobby and helping someone make money are not priced the same, because the outcome is worth a different amount to the person receiving it
Pick the number that makes you slightly uncomfortable
Almost everyone I work with is underpriced. When someone is stuck between two numbers, the right one is usually the one that made them squirm a little, not the one they landed on to avoid squirming.
What that looks like:
- Say both numbers out loud and notice which one you rush past
- Check whether your reason for the lower number is a fact about your audience or a feeling about yourself
- Say the higher one to someone who will not just agree with you
Your price is also a signal. When someone sees a membership at $9, part of their brain quietly decides it cannot be that valuable, because valuable things do not cost $9. A low number undersells the transformation before anyone has walked in the door, and then they treat it exactly as casually as you priced it.
Should You Offer Monthly or Annual Billing?
Offer both and nudge toward annual. Monthly billing gives a member twelve chances a year to reconsider. Annual is one decision, and twelve months of runway to actually get the result.
Every month that charge hits their card, and every month is a small opening for someone to look at it and wonder if they still need this. Annual closes that door. It also helps the member, because a month is not long enough for most transformations and a year is.
Here is a simple way to structure it. If your monthly price is $50, do not offer the annual at $600. Offer it around $500. The member saves two months, which reads as a real win, and you get the full year of commitment plus the cash up front.
What the annual option gives you:
- Cash flow you can plan around instead of hoping for
- A stable base of members who are not going anywhere for a year
- Members who show up and get results, because they are invested, literally
A lot of founders simply never offer one. That is the easiest fix on this whole list.
Won’t a Higher Price Mean Fewer Members?
Yes, and that is the point. You do not need a crowd at a real price, you need a right sized group who value it. A higher price is a filter that lets the right people in, not a wall that keeps people out.
The other worry underneath this one is usually, but my audience cannot afford more. Sometimes that is true. Far more often it is your discomfort with the price projected onto them. The people who actually want the outcome will find the money for something they believe will get them there, and the ones who can only do $9 are frequently the same ones who churn in month two.
Fewer, better fit, better paying members is a dramatically healthier business than a giant room of barely committed ones. It is also a better room for the members. A cheap price does not just cost you. It waters down the room for the people who are all in.
If you want a place to pressure test your number with people who will not just tell you what you want to hear, that is a lot of what happens inside coCreator Society. The answer is usually charge more.
Try This Prompt
This one does the math you have been avoiding and then argues with your number.
“I run a [type of community] for [who it serves]. My current price is [price] per month, and the outcome members get is [describe the result in one sentence]. First, show me how many members I need at that price to hit [monthly revenue goal], then run the same math at 1.5x and 2x my current price. Then pressure test the price itself: tell me where it is out of line with the outcome I just described, and what someone charging properly for that result would likely charge. Give me the math as a short table, then three sentences on the number you would land on and why.”
It drafts the case. You make the call.
Your Price Is Not a Tattoo
A lot of us treat the launch price like something permanent, so we agonize over it and land low out of fear. Mine has moved the whole way along. My community started as the Community Co-op at $47 a month, and I struggled to fill it at $47, which felt completely backwards. We pivoted and launched coCreator Society at $77. I still knew, quietly, that it was under what it was worth.
As of October 1, 2026, it is $97, and the honest part is why. We did not raise it to make more money. We raised it because we built my five stage system into the community: the recorded videos, a working digital workbook, and an onboarding survey that hands each member a personalized roadmap for their own community. That is the thing I used to give only private clients. The value went up, then the price did. That is the order.
The part that makes raising a price much less frightening is that your existing members get grandfathered in. The people who joined early keep their number. That is their reward for believing you first, and it means a price increase is closer to a thank you than a betrayal.
One caution, because I know where some brains will run with this. Do not swing to the other extreme and slap a huge number on it to prove a point. Land it on the value and the math, not on ego and not on fear.
Start where you start. Just do not mistake the starting line for the finish line.
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More From Your Community Strategist
Not every episode has a video version, but the channel is where the walkthroughs live: Circle builds, settings, and setups on screen instead of described out loud. New videos every Thursday.
More Like This
Listen: Membership Positioning: Sell the Outcome, Not Access. The positioning half of this conversation, and the thing your price has to match.
Listen: What Your Community Actually Needs on Day One (Hint: Not What You Think). What members are really paying for, which is rarely the content library.
Listen: Why Self-Care Doesn’t Work for Founders (And What Actually Does). For anyone already running the underpriced version and feeling it.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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