Add A Setup Fee

Separate the heavy first-month work into a paid setup fee so onboarding stops being subsidised by future subscription revenue.

Pro simple Offer Improvement Recipes

What it adds

Fixes the recurring offer whose first month costs far more to deliver than it collects, making early cancellations directly unprofitable. The AI builder quantifies the front-loaded work from delivery notes and cost data in the source files, then splits it into a separately priced setup step with its own deliverable. The outcome is recovered onboarding cost and a subscription price that reflects steady-state service.

What your builder is told to do

The actual instructions, in order.

1
Inspect the source files and separate first-cycle activities from steady-state activities, recording the effort or cost attached to each.
2
Quantify the front-loaded cost and check it against early cancellation records to see how often that cost is never recovered. That figure justifies the fee.
3
Define the setup as a deliverable, not a charge: name what the buyer receives from it, when it is complete, and what state their account is in afterwards. A fee without a deliverable reads as a toll.
4
Price the setup at or near documented cost rather than as a profit centre, and reduce or hold the recurring price so the total first-year cost stays defensible against the previous structure.
5
Separate structural changes from copy changes: structural work is the two-part billing, the setup completion milestone, and how the recurring cycle starts relative to it; copy work is the setup deliverable description, the first-payment breakdown, and the total-cost comparison.
6
Show the buyer a first-payment breakdown and a first-year total before checkout, so the added fee is never a surprise at the payment step.
7
Specify responsive behavior: on mobile, setup fee and recurring price stack with a combined first-payment total directly above the action; on tablet, the two amounts render side by side with the first-year total beneath; on desktop, setup, recurring, and first-year total appear in one row adjacent to the deliverable list.
8
Define tracking: measure conversion rate, first-payment value, share of buyers completing setup, and cancellation rate within the first three cycles. Rollback rule — fold the fee back into the recurring price if conversion falls enough that total first-year revenue per visitor drops below the pre-change baseline.

Edge cases it handles

The things an agent skips when you only say "build a add a setup fee".

Existing customers must not be charged a setup fee retroactively; state clearly that it applies to new accounts only.
Preserve the documented onboarding scope; the fee prices work already performed and must not silently expand it.
If cost records are missing, report that gap and mark the fee amount as an unresolved assumption rather than picking a round number.
Where the setup deliverable cannot be described as something the buyer receives, reconsider the fee rather than dressing up a charge.
Never present the setup fee as waivable for urgency reasons or as a limited-time exception.

Definition of done

Your builder is required to check every one of these before reporting the work finished.

First-cycle and steady-state activities are separated with documented effort or cost for each.
The setup fee is justified against recorded cost and early-cancellation exposure.
Setup is described as a named deliverable with a defined completion milestone.
Before and after pricing structures are shown, including a first-year total comparison.
Mobile, tablet, and desktop presentations of the two-part price are each specified.
Tracking of first-payment value and early cancellation is defined with a written rollback trigger.
The builder reports which source files it used and flags any cost figure it could not verify.

Related offer files

Offer Improvement Recipes

Create An Order Bump

Insert a single low-friction add-on at checkout that completes the purchase without pulling attention off the main decision.

Offer Improvement Recipes

Split Into Tiers

Break a single take-it-or-leave-it offer into tiers that capture buyers at different budgets without gutting the core promise.

Offer Improvement Recipes

Remove False Urgency

Strip resetting countdowns and invented scarcity from an offer and replace them with real reasons to act now.

How it works

1

Copy the link

Grab the Markdown blueprint URL for this offer type.
2

Give it to your builder

Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or whatever AI builder is already working in your app.
3

It maps, then builds

Your agent reads the blueprint first, then builds the offer into your app around the product, audience, and stack.

Works with your stack

These blueprints are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and use your source files instead of guessing the offer.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the offer file and tell it exactly which source docs and stack to use.