Here's the answer up front. A flat fee costs the same at every revenue level. A revenue share scales with your success — the better your program performs, the more you pay for the software running it. And the crossover comes early: at a 10% share (the rough midpoint of the range this category quotes), a program driving about $3,000 a month already costs as much as our entire Solo plan.
The two models, in plain terms
A revenue-share platform charges a percentage of the gross revenue moving through your loyalty program — memberships, packages, drops, gift cards. In this category the share commonly runs 5-15%. Sometimes it's called a rev share. Sometimes it's buried in a payment-processing markup so the percentage never shows up on an invoice. Same model either way: your bill is indexed to your revenue.
A flat-fee platform charges a fixed monthly amount. Loyalty Flow is $299 a month for Solo or $599 for Studio, and we keep zero percent of your program revenue — membership dollars, drop sales, and gift cards are yours. Processing fees go to Stripe or Payroc directly, with nothing added on top. Full plan detail is on the pricing page, and the program mechanics are on how it works.
The math at three revenue levels
Three illustrative program-revenue levels. The rev-share column uses the 5-15% range common in the category. The effective rates are simple division — Loyalty Flow's flat fee as a percentage of that month's program revenue. No other assumptions.
| Monthly program revenue | Rev-share platform (5-15%) | Loyalty Flow Solo ($299 flat) | Loyalty Flow Studio ($599 flat) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $250–$750 every month | $299 · 6.0% effective | $599 · 12.0% effective |
| $15,000 | $750–$2,250 every month | $299 · 2.0% effective | $599 · 4.0% effective |
| $40,000 | $2,000–$6,000 every month | $299 · 0.7% effective | $599 · 1.5% effective |
Effective rate = flat fee divided by monthly program revenue. Revenue levels are illustrative; the rev-share range is the 5-15% common in the category.
Read the first row honestly: at $5,000 a month, a platform at the bottom of the range charges $250 — less than Solo. That's the one scenario where the percentage wins, and it only wins while your program stays small. By $15,000 a month the flat fee is a 2-4% effective rate and falling. The percentage never falls.
Where the lines cross
Use 10% — the rough midpoint of the quoted range — as the assumption. At 10%, a program driving about $3,000 a month costs $300 a month in rev share. That's essentially the entire Solo plan. And a loyalty program doing $3,000 a month isn't a success story; it's a starting point.
So for almost any program that actually works, the percentage model costs more from the early months and grows from there. Everything above that $3,000 line is the loyalty tax — a fee that exists because your program performed.
Year one vs year three
The flat fee is the same number every year: $3,588 a year on Solo, $7,188 on Studio — that's $299 and $599 times twelve. Year three looks exactly like year one, no matter how big the program gets.
The rev share grows with the program. Hold the same 10% assumption: a program at $5,000 a month pays $6,000 that year. Grow it to $15,000 a month by year three and the software bill is $18,000 a year — a bigger bill precisely because you did the work. Nothing about the software changed. Only your success did.
The honest case for a revenue share
There is one. If your program is tiny and you want zero commitment, a percentage is close to free when nothing happens — $5,000 a month at the bottom of the range is $250, cheaper than either of our plans. If you're not sure you'll ever run a drop or sell a membership, that's a rational way to test.
The problem is what happens next. The percentage stops being defensible at the exact moment the program starts working, because the fee is indexed to the outcome, not the service. Serving a clinic doing $40,000 a month doesn't cost a software platform meaningfully more than serving one doing $5,000. The percentage doesn't price the software — it prices you. I've written the longer version of that argument in why we'll never take a revenue share and the cut everywhere else.
One disclosure, so you can weigh this page properly: I sell the flat-fee side of this argument. I'm also an operator — Loyalty Flow runs every day at my own clinic in Sioux City, Iowa. Since we moved to weekly drops, our average Tuesday is up roughly 38% on a same-month basis. That's one owner's clinic, not a benchmark. But it's why the model matters to me: if a percentage platform had been sitting on that recovery, the software bill would have grown with every Tuesday we fixed.
— Robbie
Questions operators actually ask
Loyalty Flow is a flat monthly fee — $299 for Solo, $599 for Studio — and you can leave any month. Founding clinics get their first three months waived and founder pricing locked for life.
The full platform: branded iOS and Android patient apps, a patient web app with magic-link sign-in, the clinic admin portal with the no-code App Builder, points, tiers, rewards, digital membership cards, flash drops, memberships, referrals, gift cards, and push notifications. Studio adds multi-location support, unlimited members and drops, the Sage AI advisor, Stripe Terminal POS, scheduler sync, and API access. White-glove setup is an optional $499 one-time service.
Processing is separate from the software fee under either model. With Loyalty Flow you connect Stripe or Payroc and their fees go to them directly — we add nothing on top. When you compare platforms, ask for the software percentage and the processing rate as two separate numbers, because some pricing bundles them together.
Solo includes 500 SMS per month and Studio includes 2,000. Push notifications go through your branded patient app, which is why the plans lean on push first.
Loyalty Flow stores no PHI by design — loyalty data only. A BAA is available on request for clinics that want one anyway.
The first five clinics get their first three months waived, founder pricing locked for life, white-glove onboarding included, and a direct line to the founder. All five spots are open, and they're hand-picked.