Compare plans across metrics
In this article, we’ll show you how to use the Plan Comparison view to evaluate the performance of your plans across key metrics like MRR, Paying Members, Net Revenue, and Churn. You can leverage these insights to focus your efforts on high-performing plans and develop strategies to improve underperforming ones.
In this help doc:
Why should I compare plans?
Overall metrics provide a snapshot of your membership business’s performance. However, diving into individual plans offers deeper insights into how each plan is performing. Comparing multiple plans side-by-side can help you identify which plans warrant additional investment or adjustments.
With Memberful, you can easily compare multiple plans across various metrics.
How can I compare plans?
Click Compare Plans from the MRR, Paying Members, Net Revenue, or Churn view to open the Plan Comparison graph.
There is no Plan Comparison view for Trials since trial conversions aren’t attributed to specific plans — the trials metric counts trial conversions to any paid plan.
Click Add another Plan and select one of your plans for comparison. You can select up to 5 plans to compare against each other across a given metric. The graph will update to reflect the chosen metric across all selected plans.
To remove one of the selected plans, click the X next to the plan name.
To switch metrics, click the name of the current metric and select a new one:
How should I use the plan Comparison data?
By comparing plan performance, you can make data-driven decisions, adjust strategies for underperforming plans, or allocate marketing resources to promote top-performing plans.
You’ll be able to gain key insights into your membership performance when comparing metrics for different plans. Below are examples of how you can use plan comparison data to draw the right conclusions about how your membership is performing.
Comparing Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
This comparison is useful for understanding which plans contribute the most to your MRR. This data is extremely useful if you offer multiple plans at varying price points.
As a best practice, you should always ensure your membership is well diversified when it comes to the amount of MRR being generated by each plan you offer. For example, if you offer monthly, quarterly, and annual plans, having a significant amount of your total MRR coming from just one of those plans would represent considerable risk to your membership.
Using the comparison data, you can see how well diversified your MRR is across your entire membership and monitor changes over time. If you notice a significant portion of your total MRR coming from a single plan, you can adjust your acquisition strategy and try to acquire more members in the other plans that you offer.
Maintaining a well-diversified membership will ensure that negative impacts on your membership from external (or internal) sources are minimized. Comparing your MRR enables you to accomplish this with precision.
Comparing Paying Members
This comparison is useful to spot noticeable changes in the amount of paying members within your plan(s). Context is key for this comparison and changes in paying members across different plans don’t necessarily correlate to similar changes in MRR. If you offer multiple plans, seeing a decrease in paying members in one plan wouldn't necessarily indicate a drop in MRR.
For example, if a member upgrades their existing plan to a higher-priced plan, you’ll see a decrease in paying members for the prior plan. But in this case, that resulted in an increase in MRR (since the member upgraded to a higher-priced plan).
Important Point: Paying member trends don’t necessarily correlate with your MRR if you offer multiple plans. Therefore, you should view your paying member trends alongside that of your MRR.
If you notice that your paying members are decreasing within all of the plans that you offer, then you’ll notice a decrease in MRR. But if paying members are decreasing for one plan but increasing in other plans, the net effect on MRR would be determined by the price of the plan(s) that’s showing an increase in members.
On the other hand, if you offer just one plan, a decrease in paying members would directly correlate to a decrease in MRR.
The bottom line: Always view your paying member data in context with your MRR data.
Comparing Net Revenue
This comparison simply allows you to see how much net revenue you realize for each plan that you offer.
Since net revenue accounts for discounts and refunds, this comparison is a great way to find out if certain plans produce a better net income after those factors are accounted for. For example, you may have a plan that sells for a higher price but results in more refunds.
This comparison is a great way to monitor your net income over time for each plan in question and, most importantly, reveal when net revenue trends change.
Comparing Churn
Perhaps the most important comparison, understanding your churn rate across all of your plans directly reveals which plans perform the best.
While you want churn to be as low as possible, understanding the dollar value of your churn is what helps determine the net impact of this metric. For example, for some memberships, a churn rate of 12% might be acceptable for a plan that still produces more income than a different plan with a 4% churn rate that produces less income.
The value in this comparison lies in the trend of your churn over time. Seeing churn rates that steadily decrease over time indicates good membership health. Churn rates that increase and remain high over time invite you to further investigate the cause of that churn and take action when needed.
Churn rates naturally fluctuate month-to-month, therefore we recommend using at least three months' worth of churn data when determining if any action is required.
Related help docs:
- Get an overview of the metrics Memberful tracks.
- Learn more about our MRR metric.
- Learn more about our Paying Members metric.
- Learn more about our Net Revenue metric.
- Learn more about our Churn metric.