Team OctoSwimEvery swim school platform has a pricing page, and most of them lead with a small monthly number. The interesting part is usually in the footnote: “plus 3.1% per booking”. Three percent sounds like a rounding error. It isn't.
Run your own numbers
Take a modest school: 200 swimmers paying £32 a month. That's £76,800 of lesson revenue a year. At 3.1%, the platform quietly collects £2,380 - on top of its subscription, and on top of the card fees Stripe charges anyway.
A percentage fee is a business partner you never hired, taking a share of lessons you taught.
Why platforms love percentages
Because they scale with your effort, not theirs. Serving 200 swimmers costs a software platform pennies more than serving 100 - but a percentage fee doubles. Your growth becomes their revenue line.
It also hides well. Parents pay it invisibly inside the lesson price, so it never appears as a line item on the school's bank statement. £198 a month leaks out without ever looking like a bill.
What we do instead
- £20 flat covers your first 50 swimmers.
- 40p per swimmer after that - 200 swimmers is £80, full stop.
- Parents pay your Stripe account directly. We never touch the money.
If you're on a percentage platform today, spend two minutes with our calculator. The number it shows you is real, and it compounds every year you grow.
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