Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
11 tactics from Alice
Five App Monetization Trends for 2025
Watch the full episode“if monthly plans creep towards like $6 to $10 then an annual an annual at $40 to $60 feels like a bargain in comparison um so the relative saving obviously justifies that higher anchor”
Monthly anchor makes $40–$60 annual plans feel like bargains
Set your monthly plan at $6–$10 so that your annual at $40–$60 reads as an obvious deal — not a luxury. The relative saving does the persuasion work without requiring additional copy. Inflation psychology reinforces this: users primed by Spotify, Netflix, and grocery price increases are already conditioned to accept rising prices, making the annual anchor easier to defend.
“the upper quartile there was there was an uptick of around 5% for annual plans... we see even Tony Robbins app it's going for $99 a month... where I've been seeing this more is around like the fitness space uh education as well health apps”
Premium pricing leads in fitness, health, and influencer apps
Upper-quartile annual plan prices rose ~5% YoY (State of Subscription Apps report) and the Tony Robbins app now charges $99/month — proof that premium floors have risen sharply. This trend is strongest in fitness, education, health, and influencer-led apps, and weak in price-sensitive markets like Turkey, India, and southern Europe. The middle-ground is disappearing: apps polarize toward cheap or luxury, and straddling the middle creates positioning risk.
“an app that actually reminds you at the end of the month what your usage was and aligns that with what your next recurring billing cycle should be... if someone's battery is almost dead you can then see like well let's give them an offer they can't refuse”
Battery triggers and usage summaries make upsells feel helpful
Two high-converting upsell triggers that feel like service rather than a sales push: (1) an end-of-month usage summary showing which tier the user actually needs, with messaging like 'switching to the higher tier this month would have saved you X'; (2) a contextual paywall triggered when the user's battery is nearly dead — a high-urgency moment when decisions happen fast. Both reframe the upsell as solving the user's problem.
“some apps are even offering like a pause option um so not only are higher prices kind of becoming the norm like if we want that to work we need to give them that feeling of control”
Pause option at cancellation reduces churn without discounting
Offering a pause option at the moment a user intends to cancel gives them a lower-commitment exit that preserves the subscriber relationship for future reactivation. Users retain a sense of control without fully churning — and the app avoids losing the billing relationship entirely. This is especially effective for seasonal or lifestyle apps where usage naturally ebbs and flows.
“when we drive users from web to app we often see retention gains there as well and this works really well for apps like things like notion or even like Canva you know these kind of like creativity or even like um productivity type apps”
Driving web subscribers into the app lifts long-term retention
When users sign up via web funnel and are then encouraged to download the mobile app, long-term retention improves — Notion and Canva are named examples where taking the product on the go creates daily habits that lock in the subscription. Web funnels already deliver better tracking and lower payment fees; the retention gain from cross-platform engagement makes the case even stronger. Measure retention months out, not just initial conversion rate.
“ExpressVPN that's really gone hard on this 30-day guarantee and they even have on like their homepage you know why does this beat a free trial... that whole percentage that you lose in trial period is often uh more than what you would then lose with that money back guarantee”
Money-back guarantees beat free trials on web — ExpressVPN proves it
ExpressVPN limits free-trial features and pushes users toward a paid purchase backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, arguing on its homepage that this beats a free trial. Hard purchases send stronger optimization signals to ad platforms than trial starts, improving campaign ROAS. Users psychologically perceive claiming a refund as effortful — fewer actually do it — so effective churn is lower than with free-trial cancellations.
“subscriptions by themselves they're just a bit outdated in a sense that we're seeing kind of more and more brands offer some variation... BetterMe where they add on Pilates uh kind of different props and stuff like that when you get a subscription with them”
Subscription-only is becoming outdated — hybrid models are rising
All 11 subscription experts independently named hybrid monetization as the top 2025 trend. BetterMe ships physical Pilates props alongside its digital subscription; AI apps layer usage-based credits on subscriptions to handle LLM cost variability; niche apps add brand partnerships; utility apps use ads as a subscription conversion driver. Subscription-only revenue is increasingly seen as leaving money on the table, especially when funding is tight.
“an app that organized kind of school kids uh team sports brand partnerships was a really interesting part of their revenue strategy um another one was a sort of social social networking app for beer lovers they also um had a lot of brand partnership opportunities”
Niche audiences are a brand partnership asset, not a limitation
A school kids team sports app and a beer lovers social app both landed brand partnerships specifically because their audiences were tightly defined and identifiable — something a broader app cannot offer. Niche audience positioning is not just a user acquisition constraint; it is a business development asset that unlocks a second revenue stream without growing the user base. Founders should articulate their audience's identity in positioning to attract brand partners.
“with a younger audience compared to an older audience who are more aware of the fact that you know these things usually go through the app store that younger audience... it could even come across as like a bit spammy or um disingenuous in in in some in some ways”
Younger users see non-App Store checkout as spammy or disingenuous
Younger users are conditioned to pay through the App Store, so web checkout flows that bypass it can feel spammy or disingenuous — lowering trust and conversion. RevenueCat's own 4-variant $40k experiment returned 'mixed' results for app-to-web checkout; results depend heavily on audience demographics and product category. Know your audience before adopting web-first payment flows, and measure long-term retention rather than conversion rate alone.
“we need to make sure that we have infrastructure that enables teams to move fast with testing uh so that we can speed up that test and learn process and be moving as quickly as these trends are moving”
Build fast testing infrastructure — set-and-forget monetization is dead
Alice's closing takeaway from synthesizing 11 subscription experts: the single most important investment for 2025 is fast testing infrastructure for pricing and packaging. Monetization used to be a set-it-and-forget-it decision; now pricing norms, payment flows, and hybrid models shift fast enough that the inability to test quickly is a competitive disadvantage. Speed of iteration on monetization is a moat, not just an operational nicety.
“you really want to be smart about what each individual user is seeing and making sure that it's not too much... if you're running like you know four or five different like packages in terms of like weekly monthly quarterly annual um and then you're also doing like three different monetization methods it can become a lot”
Serve one monetization model per user segment, not all at once
As hybrid monetization grows, the risk is overwhelming each user by showing every model simultaneously — weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual plans plus ads plus usage credits. The fix is to run many variants but ensure each user sees only one clear, well-matched offer at a time. One well-chosen offer for the right segment converts better than three mediocre options fighting for attention.