The question usually arrives already framed as a choice. We are thinking about memberships, should we retire the ten-packs?
No. And there is a number behind that.
The number
Before memberships existed in Petboost, over 60% of all daycare revenue running through the platform was bought as a package rather than paid for visit by visit. Packages were never a side offer sitting next to the real pricing. In daycare they were the main way the service got sold, and they still are.
Memberships went live in May. Packages are still carrying between 61 and 64 percent of it.
That is the thing worth understanding before you redesign anything. Memberships did not take a bite out of packages. They picked up people who were never going to buy a twenty-pack in the first place.
Two ways of buying, not two products
Ask why somebody chooses one over the other and it stops being a pricing question.
The package buyer wants the decision finished. They pay once, the credits are theirs, and nothing leaves their account again until they say so. A lot of these households run on a rule about direct debits, and they go through the bank statement every January cancelling things. Offer them the best-value membership you have and they will still say no, and the money is not why.
The membership buyer already has more recurring payments than they could list from memory. They want it handled. One number a month, no decision to make again, and the automatic charge reads as convenience to them.
Neither of those is the better client. They are frequently in the same street, and sometimes in the same house.
Sell only packages and the second group never sees an offer they want. Retire your packages in favour of memberships and you become unbuyable to the first group, which on our numbers is the larger of the two in daycare.
What actually differs
| Prepaid package | Membership | |
|---|---|---|
| The payment | One amount, up front | Every cycle, automatically |
| The balance | Counts down to zero | Refills each window |
| Unused value | Sits there. Petboost credits do not expire | Gone at the reset |
| What it rewards | Buying a lot at once | Coming back on a rhythm |
| How it ends | When the credits run out | When somebody cancels |
| The objection you will hear | "That is a big number" | "I do not want another subscription" |
| Your cash | A lump now | The same amount every month |
| Re-selling | You have to do it again | You do not |
Where a package is simply the better product
Sporadic and seasonal use. Boarding is the clearest case. Somebody travels three times a year and has no idea when the fourth trip will be. A monthly charge for that is absurd. Ten nights on a card they draw down whenever they book is exactly right.
Anybody who will not take on a recurring charge. This group is larger than most owners assume, and no discount reaches them. A package is the only shape they will buy.
Cash you need now. A twenty-pack sold in February is February's money. The same twenty visits bought through a membership trickle in over however many months it takes to use them. Both are fine, and they are not the same when the rent is due.
Making a single visit look expensive. Three package tiers next to your casual rate do the price-anchoring job better than anything else you can put on a page. There is a whole guide to that in prepaid packages that actually sell.
When you do not want a cancellation policy. No terms to sign, no commitment period, no pre-renewal reminders, no refund conversation. A pack is sold and done.
Where a membership is simply the better product
Anything with a weekly rhythm. Daycare three days a week, dog walking, maintenance grooming on a four-week cycle. The client is coming back anyway. A membership stops both of you re-deciding it every time.
Taking the cap off. A twenty-day pack quietly tells the client they have twenty days, so somebody who would come four days a week rations themselves to two. An allowance that refills every Monday removes the balance they were protecting, and their frequency goes up without you discounting anything further.
Not selling the same thing twice a year. Every pack needs re-selling by a human who noticed the balance was low. A membership renews on its own.
Revenue you can plan against. Forty members at $480 every four weeks is a floor under the business. You can hire against it. A pipeline of pack top-ups is a forecast, not a floor.
Seeing churn before it happens. A member who has not redeemed anything in six weeks shows up as a number. A pack holder with credits left looks identical to a happy client right up until they never come back.
The third shape people forget
There is a version sitting between the two, and it tends to get found the hard way. An owner in a daycare group described landing on it after a full membership programme flopped for them: members still paid for every visit, and what the membership bought was a standing discount.
That is a real plan in Petboost, not a workaround. A benefit does not have to be an included service. It can be a percentage off, or a fixed dollar amount off, pointed at a service or a whole category. Build a plan whose only benefit is fifteen percent off boarding and you have a paid discount club: recurring revenue, no allowance to count, no included nights sitting on your balance sheet as a promise, and no capacity exposure at all.
It earns less per member than a plan with inclusions in it. It also cannot blow up on you, which makes it a sensible way to find out whether your clients will take a recurring charge at all before you put real inclusions behind one.
The mistake that makes them compete
Price them to the same effective per-visit rate and you have built two doors into one room. Your team will spend a year explaining the difference to people who cannot see one, and everybody will pick whichever was mentioned first.
Make the offers genuinely different. The package discount buys volume, so it scales with size: five, ten, twenty. The membership discount buys rhythm and commitment, so it should beat the pack per visit, but only for somebody who actually turns up. A three-day-a-week plan that works out cheaper than your twenty-pack per visit is correct, as long as it stops being cheaper for a member who only comes twice a month.
One product rule that saves arguments at the counter: a membership benefit and a package credit never apply to the same line. If a service is being drawn from credits the client already paid for, the member discount does not also come off it. One or the other.
Running both without confusing anyone
One of each per service line. Not four packs and three tiers. A daycare needs a ten-day pass and a club plan, and possibly a bigger version of each. That is it.
Put them on the same page with the per-visit price shown. People compare anyway. Doing it for them honestly is faster than a staff conversation and it stops the "so which one is actually cheaper" email.
Name them for the behaviour. "10-Day Pass" and "Daycare Club" tell somebody which one they are, immediately. "Package A" and "Silver" do not.
Let them self-select, and stop selling. The single most useful sentence at your counter is a question: would you rather pay for a block of days when it suits you, or have it come out monthly? Most people answer instantly and mean it.
Do not migrate your pack buyers. They are not a lower tier of membership customer waiting to be upgraded. They are already buying the product that fits them.
Which to lead with, by service
Daycare. Both, and this is where the split is most obvious. Membership for anybody at three days a week or more, pass for the one-and-two-day families and the casuals. If you can only build one this month, look at what your existing pack holders actually redeem before you decide which.
Grooming. The pack suits the six-to-eight week dog. The membership suits the doodle on a three-to-four week maintenance cycle, where shortening the gap is the entire point. Most salons need both, because both dogs are in the book. More on the shorter-cycle plan in maintenance grooming memberships.
Boarding. Package, nearly always. If you do build a plan, make it quarterly with a couple of stays in it rather than monthly, because travel does not happen monthly.
Dog walking. Membership. Few services in this industry are as reliably weekly, or as uniform from one visit to the next.
Training and puppy school. Neither, usually. A course is already a block of sessions sold up front, which is a package wearing different clothes.
The part they have in common
Both are money you have taken for services you have not delivered yet. On the balance sheet that is a liability rather than income, and under Australian Consumer Law it is a promise you are expected to keep.
It matters more than it sounds. A hundred unredeemed pack credits and forty members with three days a week each are the same obligation in different wrapping, and if your busiest Thursday cannot hold them, that is a problem the bank balance will not warn you about. We wrote it up in full in memberships and packages are debt on your balance sheet.
Where to start
If your packages are working, leave them alone. Look instead at the clients your pack is capping: the ones who redeem their days faster than anybody else, or who buy again within six weeks. That is your first membership plan, and it is aimed at people who are already telling you they want more.
If you sell neither yet, start with the package. It is easier to price and explain, and it is the one most of your book will buy.
Packages and memberships both live in Petboost and are designed to run side by side. If you want help choosing the shape for your menu, book a demo and we will look at your actual redemption numbers with you.
Worth reading next: are memberships right for your pet business, and pricing memberships for multi-dog households if a fair chunk of your book has two.