How to price your community

The hardest part of launching a paid community isn't building it. It's deciding what to charge, usually with no data and a strong suspicion that whatever you pick is wrong.

It probably is wrong. That's fine — the number is easier to change than almost anything else about your community. Here's a way to arrive at a first one that isn't a guess.

Start from what you're replacing

People don't compare your community to other communities. They compare it to whatever they're doing instead.

If your members would otherwise buy a $200 course, watch free videos, or pay a coach $150 an hour, those are your anchors — not what some other creator charges for a Discord. Ask what a member stops paying for, or stops doing without, once they join.

That gives you a ceiling. Your price should sit comfortably under it, because you're asking for a recurring commitment rather than a one-off decision.

Pick the model before the number

There are three, and they suit different things.

Monthly subscription. The default for a community, because a community's value is ongoing — the conversation next month is worth as much as this month's. It's also the only model where your income compounds.

Yearly subscription. On Berrytap this is set at ten times the monthly price, so members get two months free. Worth offering as an option rather than the only choice: it lowers churn and pulls cash forward, but it asks for a much bigger yes.

One-time access. Right for a course with an end, wrong for a community without one. If members pay once and stay forever, your costs grow while your revenue doesn't.

You can mix them. A common shape is a monthly membership with a course priced separately for people who want the material but not the room.

Then pick the number

Three approaches, in order of how much I'd trust them:

1. Charge what makes ten members worth your time. If ten paying members at your price wouldn't justify showing up every week, the price is too low. This is the only test that survives contact with reality.
2. Anchor to the alternative. A quarter to a half of what the thing you're replacing costs, priced monthly.
3. Start at $19–$49/month if you genuinely can't decide. It's where most creator communities land, and it's high enough that you're not competing with free.

What not to do: price low to fill the room. A cheap community fills with people who don't value it, and they're the ones who don't turn up — which makes it a worse community for the people who do.

Free isn't a price, it's a strategy

A free community can be the right call, but be clear about which job it's doing:

• An audience you'll sell to later — free works, and a paid course inside it is the business.
• A funnel to a paid tier — free works, if the paid tier has a genuinely different reason to exist.
• Getting to critical mass first — free works, and you should say up front that it won't stay free.

Berrytap's Free plan caps at 25 members, which is roughly the point where a community becomes self-sustaining anyway. It costs nothing and takes 10% of anything you do collect, so a free community with a paid course is a real business on it.

Raising it later

You will want to, and you can. Two rules make it painless:

Grandfather everyone. Existing members keep their price. It costs you very little — they were already paying — and it buys enormous goodwill. It also makes the increase a reason to join now rather than a reason to leave.

Announce it before it happens. Two weeks is plenty. A price rise that appears without warning reads as a mistake or a trick, and members leave over the surprise rather than the money.

If you're nervous, raise the price for new members only and watch the join rate for a month. If it doesn't move, you were underpriced.

What it costs you to collect it

Whatever you charge, some of it doesn't reach you. Worth knowing which parts:

• Card processing, roughly 2.9% + 30¢, which every platform pays and passes on.
• The platform's cut. On Berrytap that's 10% on Free, 5% on Growth, and 0% on Scale.

The 30¢ is the reason very low prices don't work well. On a $3 membership you lose over 10% to the fixed fee alone before anyone's percentage applies. If you want a low tier, price it annually instead — one $30 charge loses 30¢, twelve $3 charges lose $3.60.

The short version

Price it so ten members are worth your week. Charge monthly. Offer yearly at a discount. Don't compete with free. Grandfather everyone when you raise it.

Then change it in a month, because you'll know more then than you do now.