The third eBook in the Offers, Pricing and Packaging category. It assumes you have at least one clear offer and a sensible price, and shows you how to package that offer so different customers can each find the version that suits them - without forcing you to invent a new product every week.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 50 minute read
Chapter 5
Bundles, Retainers and Subscriptions
Three alternative packaging shapes - and an honest guide to which kinds of business each one suits, and where each quietly creates more problems than it solves.
Good-better-best, plus a starter, plus a premium - that's the default package set for most small businesses, and it covers the bulk of cases. But three other shapes turn up often enough to deserve their own chapter. Bundles wrap multiple distinct things into a single price. Retainers turn project work into ongoing monthly engagements. Subscriptions turn one-off products into recurring revenue. Each can be exactly right for a particular business. Each can also be exactly wrong, and the wrongness usually only becomes visible six months in.
This chapter is the honest guide. By the end you'll know which (if any) of these three shapes belongs in your package set, and what the practical traps are if you choose to go ahead.
The full chapter walks through when bundles work, the maths of retainers (and why the customer's saving has to be real), the difference between true and false subscriptions, and worked examples for each.
Bundles: when they work
Bundles work when the customer would have eventually bought several related items separately, and putting them together at a small saving makes them buy now instead of later. The bed bundle (duvet, pillowcases, fitted sheet) works because most people buying a duvet also need pillowcases and a sheet. The bookkeeping plus tax planning plus year-end review bundle works because most serious bookkeeping clients want all three within a year.
Bundles do not work when the items aren't naturally related. The classic mistake is bundling a slow-moving product with a popular one to clear the slow stock. Customers can sense that. The bundle damages trust and rarely shifts much of the slow item anyway. If the items don't belong together, don't pretend they do.
The bundle saving has to be real
If the customer can do the maths and see that the bundle costs the same as buying the items separately, the bundle has no purpose. The saving doesn't have to be huge - ten to twenty percent off the equivalent separate purchases is usually enough to make the bundle the obvious choice for someone who was going to buy more than one item anyway. Anything less feels token. Anything more starts to eat into your margin without buying you any extra purchase commitment.
Retainers: when they work
Retainers turn one-off project work into a predictable monthly engagement. They suit businesses where the customer's need is genuinely ongoing rather than episodic. A small business that needs continuous social media work fits a retainer. A small business that needs a website built every five years does not - they need a project price, and forcing a retainer on them is dishonest.
Retainers also need a clear scope of monthly inclusion, or they become an open-ended trap for both sides. "Two hundred pounds a month for ongoing support" with no boundaries quickly turns into the customer asking for everything and the supplier resenting it. "Two hundred pounds a month for up to four hours of design work, monthly check-in call, response within two business days" gives both sides something to point to when expectations drift.
The retainer maths
For the retainer to be a fair deal for both sides, the monthly price should usually be slightly less per hour than your project rate. The customer is committing to twelve months of work in advance and deserves something for that commitment - say five to fifteen percent below your project hourly rate. Below five percent, the customer wonders why they're committing. Above fifteen percent, you're discounting your time too far and will resent the work by month four. The pricing eBook covers the underlying maths in more detail.
Subscriptions: true vs false
A true subscription is something the customer genuinely needs again and again - bookkeeping each month, dog food each month, a coaching session each month. A false subscription is a one-off product or service dressed up as recurring because monthly revenue is more attractive than one-off revenue. The famous example is software that didn't really need to be a subscription but became one because the company preferred the revenue model. Customers can usually tell the difference and resent the false ones.
Before you turn anything into a subscription, ask: would the customer naturally buy this again at the same frequency, even without the subscription? If yes, the subscription is honest packaging. If no, you're just using subscription mechanics to extract money from people who would otherwise have bought once. Don't.
True vs false subscriptions
True - customer would naturally re-buy at this frequency anyway
False - one-off thing dressed as recurring for revenue convenience
Annual vs monthly billing
For retainers and true subscriptions, offering annual billing at a small discount (commonly two months free for paying twelve months upfront) helps cash flow and reduces churn. Most customers will still pick monthly. The few who pick annual lock in for a year and pay you upfront. Be careful about over-discounting annual - giving away more than two months' value to get the upfront cash usually doesn't pay back.
Pause and cancellation policies
Friendly pause and cancellation policies make the initial yes easier and rarely cost you much in retention. Allow customers to pause for up to three months without losing their place. Allow them to cancel with thirty days' notice without penalty after the first three months. Hard-to-cancel subscriptions feel adversarial and damage trust over time, even with the customers who don't ever cancel.
Worked examples
Bundle that works: the homewares shop's bed bundle - duvet, two pillowcases, fitted sheet at one hundred and ten pounds, versus one hundred and thirty pounds bought separately. About a sixteen percent saving. Most bedding buyers want all three items, the saving is real and the bundle outsells the single duvet cover roughly four to one.
Retainer that works: a freelance designer's monthly support retainer for businesses six to twelve months after launch - two hundred and fifty pounds a month for four hours of design work, monthly check-in, two-business-day response. About ten percent below the equivalent project rate. Three to five clients on retainer at any time, alongside larger one-off projects.
Subscription that works: the bookkeeper's monthly bookkeeping at one hundred and twenty pounds. Customers genuinely need bookkeeping each month. Annual billing at one thousand two hundred pounds (two months free). Pause allowed for up to three months. Cancellation with thirty days' notice.
Subscription that doesn't work: a business coach who tried to turn three one-off intensive coaching days into a twelve-month subscription at five hundred pounds a month. The work didn't actually need to happen monthly. Customers churned at month four when they realised they'd already extracted the value. Returned to one-off pricing within a year.
When the standard good-better-best is enough
Most small businesses don't need bundles, retainers or subscriptions on top of their three-tier menu. The three tiers, with a sensible starter, are plenty. Add one of these alternative shapes only when you can clearly answer two questions: which customer specifically does this serve better than the standard menu, and what does it stop me being able to deliver well? If you can't answer both, leave the menu as it is.
What to do this week
Look at your one-page package menu. Ask three honest questions. Are there two or three items in my main offer that customers naturally buy together but currently have to combine themselves? If yes, consider a bundle. Is my main work genuinely ongoing for typical customers, or actually episodic? If ongoing, consider a retainer with explicit monthly inclusion. Would my customer naturally re-buy at the same frequency without a subscription mechanic? If yes, consider a true subscription. If you don't have a clear yes to any of them, the standard package set is enough.
Now make sure the menu reads cleanly. The next chapter, 'Presenting the Package on a Page', covers how to lay out the choice so customers pick the right option in seconds, not minutes.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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