There’s a question I’ve been sitting with lately…

It’s one I think is worth asking out loud, even if it feels a bit uncomfortable:

What is your membership actually priced for?

Not what you tell yourself it’s priced for.

Not what the market once rewarded.

But what the structure of the price quietly encourages.

Because more often than not, when I look at memberships across the subscription economy, I see a lot of pricing optimized for reach and churn tolerance - not for commitment, trust, or longevity.

And in this landscape, it’s a tradeoff that’s starting to show.

Let’s dive in.

Low pricing has always had a clear appeal. It lowers friction. It widens the funnel. It makes growth feel accessible.

But it also carries an assumption - one we don’t always acknowledge.

That assumption is churn.

When a membership is priced low enough, the business quietly accepts that people will come and go.

The model stops asking, ‘How do we earn a long stay?’ and starts asking, ‘How many people can we afford to lose?’

Sure, at scale, that can work. But at maturity, it creates fragility.

You’ll feel it in constant acquisition pressure. You’ll feel it in shallow engagement.

And you’ll certainly feel it in the emotional whiplash of growth followed by attrition.

Before you know it, your membership will feel less like a relationship and more like a subscription people keep…until they don’t.

To be clear, this isn’t failure.

It’s simply the structural outcome of how the offering is priced.

Many things are out of your control as an operator - but pricing isn’t one of them.

Pricing isn’t just a number - it’s a design choice. And whether you intend it or not, it trains both you and your members how to behave.

If you want to pressure-test whether your membership is priced for churn tolerance or for depth, here are a few practical lenses worth applying:

Every price removes friction somewhere.

Action:
Look at your price and ask: What does this make effortless? And what does it make optional?

If staying feels optional, engagement usually follows.

Some memberships are structurally built to absorb churn rather than prevent it.

You can spot this when:

Action:
Calculate how much churn your current pricing model can tolerate before growth stalls. If your answer is “we just need to keep filling the top,” that’s a sign the price is doing the wrong work.

Many prices are set for the edge of the audience - the casual joiner, the hesitant buyer, the drive-by subscriber.

But mature memberships thrive when they are priced for the core:

Action:
Ask yourself: If we raised the price slightly, who would leave? That answer tells you who your membership is actually meant to serve.

Price is one of the clearest signals of what kind of relationship you’re offering.

A price that says “anyone can drop in” creates a different dynamic than one that says “this is an ongoing commitment we take seriously.”

Action:
Review your pricing language, not just the number. Does it frame the membership as something to “try,” or something to commit to?

Low prices often feel safe because they reduce short-term resistance. But long-term, they can cap trust, engagement, and retention.

Action:
Model two scenarios:

Which one produces more stability - for you and for the member experience?

Remember this: Pricing isn’t about charging more for the sake of it. It’s about aligning the economics of your membership with the kind of relationship you actually want to build.

When price and intention are aligned, everything downstream - engagement, trust, longevity - gets easier.

I don’t believe the future of membership belongs to the widest possible audience.

I believe it belongs to operators willing to say: “We don’t need everyone. We need the right ones.”

In a saturated landscape (like we have now), trust compounds more than reach.

Longevity compounds more than volume.

And depth compounds more than novelty.

Low prices aren’t inherently wrong - but they do optimize for a certain kind of behavior. And in today’s environment, that behavior is increasingly misaligned with what long-term membership businesses actually need.

So as you think about your own pricing, here’s the question I’m asking you to sit with:

Is your membership priced to absorb departures - or to honor commitment?

Think about it - because the answer to that question will shape everything that’s yet to unfold in your business.