Most studios do not have a demand problem

Add up everything it takes to run one class: the room for that hour, the instructor if it is not you, the share of your software and insurance and music licensing that hour carries, and the time you spend on it that nobody sees. Then be honest about paying yourself for teaching, even if you are the owner. A business that only works because the founder teaches for free is not a business yet.

That total, divided by a realistic number of people in the room, is your floor. Not your average class, not your best class. The Tuesday in February.

Almost everybody is surprised here, and the surprise is the point. You cannot price sensibly until you know the number you must clear.

A drop-in sells one evening. A class pack sells a habit at a discount, paid up front. A membership sells belonging, and it sells you a predictable month.

These are not three price points for the same thing. They are three different products for three different people, and the discount between them is not generosity: it is what you are paying for commitment. Somebody who buys ten classes has told you something about their intent, and somebody who subscribes has told you more.

If you only sell drop-ins, you have a business that starts at zero every single week, and you will feel it every time the weather turns.

Start with the drop-in and treat it as your reference price. Everything else is expressed relative to it, and it should be comfortably above your floor, because the drop-in is the least committed customer you have.

Then the pack, priced so the per-class rate is visibly better than the drop-in. The saving has to be obvious without arithmetic, or it does not change behaviour.

Then the membership, priced so that somebody who genuinely comes weekly is better off subscribing than buying packs. That is the whole design: each step should be the obviously correct choice for somebody who has already decided to keep coming.

Keep the whole thing to a handful of options. Every extra tier costs you sales, because a person who cannot decide does not buy the middle one, they leave.

Nobody is comparing your hourly rate to a gym. They are deciding whether to spend a Tuesday evening learning something with strangers, and the alternatives in their head are a restaurant, a class at the community centre, and staying home.

That means being the cheapest is rarely the winning move. Cheap signals beginner-level and high-churn, and it attracts exactly the customers who leave for the next cheap thing. It also makes it very hard to pay a good instructor, which is the thing your students actually came for.

Charge what the experience is worth, then make the experience worth it. That order is not idealism, it is the only version that survives a second year.

Put your prices on a page anybody can read, without an account, without a message, without a DM. Every studio that hides its prices believes it is protecting margin. What it is actually doing is filtering out everybody who is not comfortable asking, which is most people.

Show what each option gets you in plain language: how many classes, how long the credit lasts, what happens if you cannot come.

The most common reason a person does not turn up is not price. It is uncertainty. A clear prices page removes more objections than a discount does.

Costs rise every year and most studios do not, until something forces it and the increase has to be big enough to hurt. A small, expected, annual adjustment is far easier for everybody than a sudden one that arrives with an apology.

Tell people in advance, be plain about why, and honour existing packs to their expiry. Almost nobody leaves over a modest rise announced properly. A few will, and they are usually the people who were price-shopping anyway.

Existing members are the group to protect, not the group to squeeze. Grandfathering the regulars for a period costs little and buys a lot of goodwill from the exact people who tell their friends about you.