Re: [Coworking] Pricing and Plans

[Ryan Price]

At our space we have a "part time" price that most people are on - we assume 2-3 days per week, but we don't count.

We also have a one day a week plan, and a drop-in rate.

On top of the regular part time, we have a "plus" plan that essentially gets you a mailbox and a parking space.

So few people use our copier/printer, we never bothered to put the code on it to count per person.

Peace,

Ryan Price

rpr...@ryanpricemedia.com

@liberatr

UrbanReThink.com

On Oct 28, 2012, at 5:47 PM, Melissa Saubers wrote:

I'm getting ready to open a new coworking space. Trying to nail down pricing and plans. In my research I've seen many different ways to do this. Need some advice/thoughts from this community. I will have 5 dedicated desks, 20 open seats, 1 conference room, 1 phone room for private convos, 1 collaboration lounge, 1 cafe area. I was thinking of setting up pricing by the number of days per week.

5 days per week, dedicated desk = $A
4 days per week, open seating = $B
3 days per week, open seating = $C
2 days per week, open seating = $D
1 days per week, open seating = $E
daily drop-in rate = $F per day
punch card for discounted daily rate = $G per day for 10, $H per day fr 20

Everyone would get wi-fi, coffee, printer/copies
Based on your tier you would get so many copies/prints and conference room hours
Dedicated desk gets locked storage
Hours at beginning - 8:30 to 6pm - M-F

Thoughts? Thanks!

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[Alex Hillman]

You're a similar size to us when we started. 

How does this map against your projected membership at each level? Have you done any research into your prospective community to see how popular you can estimate each plan to be? 

Also, where are you located?

Finally, re Pricing in general, grab yourself copies of "The Paradox of Choice," and "Predictably Irrational,"  and do whatever you can to keep it simple :)

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

Got Community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

[Alex Hillman]

Regarding pay-per-print:

I've seen this go two ways. 

Some memberships print a TON and its not only be lost revenue but a total loss to give away printing "included." 

Others print very little, even at scale, and the payment tracking becomes a nickel-and-dime experience for members. 

It really, really depends who's in your membership. 

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

Got Community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

[Glen Ferguson]

Hi Melissa,

I've been planning to do a long post about the lessons we learned when we had the grand opening of Cowork Frederick at the beginning of September. Pricing was going to be part of that post, so thanks Melissa for prodding me to get off my butt and share some of what we learned now rather than in one big post.

Like you, I read posts here and scoured websites of other coworking places. We started with a soft opening / open house in early August. We started with a "pay as you go" plan of one day per month and add-on days as needed at a reduced rate. We also had part-time (3 days/week) and full-time (5 days/week). The day of the open house, I was watching Twitter because I know its used heavily in our city. The tweets and comments from in-person visits had a common theme: why isn't there a 1 day/week plan? I thought members would want flexibility, but I didn't realize they also wanted 1) a predictable monthly expense and 2) just like having signed up for a class at a gym, the motivation that comes from the expectation that you've now committed to going to the gym/coworking once a week. So we asked if they'd like 5 days per month, and at present over half of our members are on that plan. Over HALF.

My lesson was: it's great to ask this community, but in the end it's VERY good to ask your potential member community what they want. Keep it simple, and stay flexible so you can adapt to the needs of your community. 

Regarding printing, we're going with "please limit printing to reasonable usage" until we get a better understanding of how our members will actually use our space. Right now, people rarely print, so I'm glad I didn't put a lot of effort into creating a policy we don't need. I did get a printer that would support department IDs, so we can put something in place later if we need it.

The lesson I learned - again, was: keep it simple, and ask your members what they want/what's fair. Believe me, they won't hesitate to tell you what they want. And that works both ways; I even had one member tell me we were providing too many reserved conference room hours at her membership level.

Have fun with launching your space,

Glen Ferguson

@CoworkFrederick

[Melissa Saubers]

Ryan, Alex and Glen-
Thank you for the responses. All very helpful information. I think I am going to keep it simple, maybe only 3 tiers and include copies. I'm in Kansas City, Missouri and the space is called Cowork Waldo (in the Waldo district). I just signed the lease last week but have already been developing the community. I'm highly active in the Waldo Business Association and have a lot of contacts in the area. There's a lot of buzz surrounding it. There's nothing like this near us so people are pretty excited. In KC there are only 3 or 4 other coworking spaces and they are mostly downtown, we're a little south of there.

https://www.facebook.com/CoworkWaldo
https://twitter.com/CoWorkWaldo

The space will be ready for members by Feb 1st. Before that, as we are getting it ready, I think I will have some happy hour/open houses to increase the buzz. I need to get some cosmetic things done first. Thanks again for the advice.

I see where you are located so stay safe out there! The entire U.S. is thinking and praying for everyone on the East Coast!

[Alex Hillman]

Great stuff Melissa. Good luck, and thanks for the storm-faring wishes. :)

-Alex

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

Got Community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

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[ShannonSkylightCoworking]

Hi Melissa,

I just opened Skylight Coworking in Phoenixville, PA a few weeks ago after many years of research and development.  I really thought offering Part-Time (3-days-week) and Full-Time (5-days) memberships with "set" monthly pricing was the right way to go; however, it's my new community that informed me these weren't the best options for people in my neck of the woods.  At our coworkers' requests, I've introduced "Drop-In Punchcards."  Coworkers can buy 5-Packs, 10-Packs, and 20-Packs... and this seems to be the popular option now.  As many others have said in this thread, I think it's best to start with something when you open (membership plans you THINK will work best) and then poll your coworkers as you get going.  They'll tell you what works best.  Good luck!

Shannon at Skylight Coworking

www.skylightcoworking.com

[Justin Harley]

Hi guys 

Love the questions about pricing!!

We are developing a software to run and promote coworking spaces and my experience so far is to choose pricing schemes that you can automate and are consumer lead !! 

As you grow ( which i know you will) and add new spaces with different shareholdings and entities the issue of simplistic pricing with accurate income reporting will become an important issue - especially when seeking finance!

Be careful not to do too many bespoke pricing schemes ! Please - !!!

Some questions to ask are 

How do we track and monitor usage against a plan? 

Online pricing must be simple - how do we make people purchase online with simple easy to understand pricing !

How do we manage meeting room allowances?

What services should we include on the membership and what are extras ? 

What is the cost of recording and billing the extras ?

These are just my experiences to date of implementing software in many buildings and coworking spaces

Just don't get to bespoke and make it easy to understand for the consumer yet simple to manage and automate !

Look forward to meeting you in Paris 

Justin

Sent from my iPhone

On 30 Oct 2012, at 19:27, "Matt Gorecki" <goreck...@gmail.com> wrote:

So does this mean you have an office manager on staff to punch these?  Are they only good for a regular hours, like 9-5?

Matt Gorecki

On Tuesday, October 30, 2012 11:16:50 AM UTC-6, ShannonSkylightCoworking wrote:

Hi Melissa,

 At our coworkers' requests, I've introduced "Drop-In Punchcards."  Coworkers can buy 5-Packs, 10-Packs, and 20-Packs... and this seems to be the popular option now.

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[Alex Hillman]

Justin's points (!!!) about going "bespoke" are important, but I think need a bit of clarity:

1) As has already been said before, choose pricing that is based on YOUR members' participation levels, and be prepared to adjust as you learn them better over time. 

2) Choose pricing that can be combined for what would otherwise become a "bespoke" request. For a concrete example of this:

We often get requests for two people to split a full time membership since "the two of them will rarely be there at the same time". 

Rather than create a special "sharing" plan, we combine our existing rates to ensure that everybody sharing the desk has a membership. So in this example, it would be:

1 x full time membership

1 x basic membership

$15 extra per day (our member additional day rate) for the 2nd person any time both of them were at Indy Hall at the same time. 

This kind of "combo" is what keeps our menu of options from getting too long, keeps participation the primary thing that they're paying for (instead of thinking about it as renting a desk which could just be split in half).

We've only ever once added a new membership and it was in the name of efficiency. Our book keeper noticed that we had a growing number of basic members who were coming in 5-6 times a month. To cut down on transactions that we needed to enter (and payments that they needed to make), we created a new membership between our basic ($25) and lite ($175) for those members. There was no cost savings, just time-savings in record keeping for both parties. $100 ($25 + $15*5) = 6 days, which we dubbed the "six pack." 

The nice thing about this model as opposed to a punch card is that it's recurring. Even if a 6-day punch card was $100, you'd be banking on them buying a second one in a month. They can always cancel/downgrade with a subscription too, but it's much much much less often than you'd think. :)

-Alex

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

building a community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

[Justin Harley]

Alex

Good points especially about recurring income v one off transactions . 

point taken about the (!!!!)  Apologies.

Justin

Sent from my iPhone

[Alex Hillman]

Heh, no need to apologize. 

I smiled the whole way through your email and I'm sure I'm not the only one ;)

--

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

building a community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

[Jeannine]

Hi, Shannon,

I had exactly the same experience, and went with a 10- punch for desking and an 8- punch for workshops.  It works out well here because there is a 10-punch card for the bus so everybody immediately gets the concept.   Well, actually there was, the bus has recently gone to a swipe card.  But people still load the swipe card in increments of 10, hard to lose the habit. :-)

The 8-punch for the workshops is because the standard for longer classes and so forth seems to be 8.

The puchcards work very well for people who work on contract or project basis, because they can come every day for a week and then not at all for two weeks or what have you.  Also, it removes the problem of the extra person.  Though I don't have an actual card, it works through booking in via the calendar.

In essence I have a separate pricing plan for everybody; but these are based on my standard plan + a discount or - a premium.

Laters,

Jeannine

[Frank DePalma]

We aren't open yet, but are taking applications for "Founding Memberships" -- the features and pricing of each membership level was difficult to understand, so I created a graphic which really helped clear it up for folks: http://www.ptcolab.com/become-a-member. Please let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Frank DePalma

CoLab Northwest

[Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking]

Melissa,

I'm repeating much of the stuff that Alex said.

I think you have too many pricing options. Many coworking spaces go two ways with their pricing - unlimited use or tiered pricing. Creative Density and many others use a tiered pricing system and it generally breaks down to 1 day/week, 3 days/week, and unlimited use. 

As for printing, I've opened two spaces and tried both printing charge options. In Toronto we went with pay per charge and it just felt like nickel and diming and most people printed less than 5 pages per month. In Denver I've made printing free and just give the disclaimer that people shouldn't print a book. It's much simpler to explain and matches my goal of putting fewer barriers between the space and the members because I want Creative Density to be there workspace and not constantly feel like a business transaction. Overall, printing costs less than $1 per member per month.

Congratulations on moving forward with your new space.

Craig

Creative Density

Denver, CO

[John Wilker]

At Uncubed we started with the lots of options idea and have been boiling it down to the basic use cases we see. It's 2-3 days a week. 5 days, and Full time perm desk. We have a corporate plan but that's negotiated based on need a lot of the time.

We do the exact same thing Craig does RE: printing. It's no charge, but if you print War and Peace we'll bust your knee caps :) Most of our members haven't ever printed a single thing. the rest print a few pages a month typically. 

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences | Partner, Uncubed
(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

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