You are planning to launch at $3,995 a month with no subscription clients yet. This guide sets out what one subscription promises, where published prices actually sit, and a worked check that your price covers your weekly hours.
You will need about an hour, a pen and last month's project list. You do not need any software beyond a spreadsheet.
What one subscription actually promises
A client paying you every month is not buying "unlimited design". They are buying a small set of rules. Before you write a price on a sales page, write down each of these in one line:
- Active requests at a time. How many pieces of work you have open for that client at once. Usually one.
- Typical turnaround. How long a normal request takes from the moment it is ready to start.
- Users per client. How many people at the client can submit and approve. Two approvers is a very different month from eight.
- Brands. Whether a client with three product lines gets all three for the same fee.
- What counts as one request. The unit you deliver.
- Exclusions. What you will not do on the subscription at all, such as video, print management or full website builds.
- Pause and cancel terms. What happens to the fee and to open work when a client stops.
The line that causes most arguments is the request itself. Define it by deliverable family. For example: a social set of up to eight posts in one format, one landing page layout, or a 15 to 20 slide deck from supplied copy. Avoid counting every file as an equivalent request: a resized export and a new visual direction create different demands.
If you let clients submit as many requests as they like, say plainly that submission volume is not simultaneous production. The queue can hold twenty cards. You still work on one at a time. Put the active limit and the exclusions next to the price, not in an onboarding email three weeks later.
What DesignJoy and ManyPixels charge
Published monthly prices for the plans we could read run from $699 at ManyPixels to $4,995 for DesignJoy's Monthly Club (both). DesignJoy is the useful anchor for a $3,995 offer. For its price it promises one request at a time, an average 48-hour delivery and up to two users.
The comparison of what design subscriptions charge sets the plans side by side and explains why they define capacity so differently. It also covers what solo founders have reported about their own prices. Use it to position your offer, then set the number from your own hours below.
Price from your weekly request capacity, not a competitor's number
Your price has one job: pay for the hours you can actually sell, with something left for you. Start from those hours, not from a competitor's price.
The figures below come from the capacity and profitability guide. This is an illustrative example, not a benchmark. A solo founder has about 22 production hours a week once admin, client calls, a revision buffer, leave, sales and invoicing come out. At an average request of 4 hours, that is 5.5 requests a week. Round down to 5.
Now the question that decides everything: how many requests does each client get delivered per week? One active request does not mean one request a week. A client who approves on Tuesday can have the next card in your queue by lunchtime.
| Delivered requests per client per week | Clients you can carry | Monthly revenue at $3,995 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 (5 requests a week) | $19,975 |
| 2 | 2 (5.5 ÷ 2 = 2.75, rounded down) | $7,990 |
Both figures are before tools, payment fees, tax and your own pay. Look at the second row. If your clients send work as fast as you ship it, $3,995 across two clients barely beats the $7k a month you might already earn from projects. And you have far less room to absorb a bad week.
So the check is simple. Divide your production hours by your average request size. Divide that by the delivered requests per client you expect. Round down. Multiply by your price. If the answer does not pay your costs and a wage you would accept, you have three levers. Raise the price. Cut the request size by narrowing what counts as one request. Or slow the pace with a turnaround promise you can keep.
The pricing and capacity worksheet walks through this with your own figures, including your own labour as a cost even if you never pay yourself a salary.
When to add a second tier or a second active request
Add a tier only when a client wants something that genuinely costs you more hours. A second active request, a third user or an extra brand might each qualify. A different name and a badge do not.
Price the extra slot with the same maths. In the example above, a client who takes two delivered requests a week uses the capacity of two single-slot clients. That points to about $7,990 a month for a two-request tier, not $3,995 plus a small uplift. If you are on £3,000 (about $3,975) and wondering about a higher tier, run the same sum with your team's production hours rather than guessing a premium.
Do not sell an extra active slot merely because the interface can display one. Your board can show two cards in progress for a client. That does not mean you have the hours to work both. Before you sell it, check whether one designer or one reviewer is the bottleneck, and whether two open requests will simply both run late.
When you set this up in Stripe, create one product per tier with its own monthly price. Mixing add-ons into invoices by hand makes it hard to see later which clients pay for what. The billing and subscriptions page covers the software choice once the tiers are settled.
Write the policy before the sales page
A sales page promises. A service policy says how you keep the promise. Write the policy first, then copy its wording into the sales page and the onboarding email, so all three say the same thing.
- List what is included and what is excluded. Name who decides on odd requests, so they do not slip into production by default.
- Define "ready to start": approved copy, supplied assets, sizes and a named approver. Incomplete requests wait outside the queue.
- Set the active limit and say whether work waiting for feedback holds the slot. Say how paused work comes back.
- Set revision limits, how a client changes priority, which days you work and when you give a delivery estimate.
- Write pause, cancellation and renewal rules alongside the delivery rules, then check sales and onboarding use the same words.
The guide to the one active request rule covers step three in detail. The billing and retention guide covers what happens to the fee when a client pauses or leaves mid-request.
Test it on an awkward request
Here is an illustrative case. A client asks you to replace approved copy halfway through a landing page layout. Your policy should answer three things without you improvising. Who decides whether this is a revision or a new request? Does the half-finished layout keep its slot or go back to the queue? How does the delivery estimate change, and who tells the client?
If you cannot answer from what you have written, the policy is not ready, and neither is the price. Narrow the offer until you can. Then run the capacity sum again with the smaller request definition.
The pause, cancellation and refund answers you write here carry legal and tax effects that differ by country. Have an accountant or lawyer where you trade check them before you take the first payment.