Raising your rates: how much notice to give, what to say, and what to do about the clients you already have

Tell them before it happens, name the date, do not apologise, and keep the message short: new price, the day it starts, thanks. How far ahead is the open question. Published advice runs from two weeks to three months, and every one of those figures is somebody's habit rather than a rule; what matters more than the number is whether your clients know your old price at all. Some of mine never did.

How much notice do you actually owe your clients?

None by law that we could find, and by custom anywhere between two weeks and three months. Pick a figure you can keep, then say it once in writing and once in person.

The figures do not agree with each other, and they do not split the way you might expect. Inside the massage niche, MassageBook advises "60 to 90 days advance notice with regular reminders as the countdown to new prices progresses" (Volkmann, 2023); ClinicSense gives two different figures on one page (ClinicSense, 2026); two MASSAGE Magazine columns give two more (Allen, 2017; Radford, 2021). At Peace Media reports what it heard rather than what it recommends: "About a month's notice is customary among massage therapists we spoke to about this" (Gelb, 2014).

The templates written for service companies sit inside the same range, from Anchor's "at least 30 days" (Anchor, 2026) to Jobber's "ideally 1–3 months" (Foster, 2026). So the longest advice on the list is a tie between a massage booking company and a home-service template, the shortest — two weeks — comes from inside the niche, and the spread does not split along niche-versus-corporate lines.

Across the ten published guides we opened, not one gives a study, a regulation or even a reason for the number it picks, and the same magazine's two columns quote the figure in different units without either explaining where it came from (Allen, 2017; Radford, 2021). It is custom, passed hand to hand.

The law, as far as we found, does not settle it either: the US federal rule on negative option plans covers merchandise that ships unless you decline it (16 CFR §425.1), and the UK's subscription regime applies to "an automatically recurring, or continuing, supply" (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, s.254). Both attach their notice duties to recurring contracts. We found no US or UK rule that requires notice before changing the price of a session booked one at a time; that is not legal advice, so check the rules where you practise.

Outside massage the question barely exists in this form. Biddy Tarot's guide for professional readers opens with pricing as a source of "anxiety, self-doubt, and worry", gives five signs it is time to raise rates, and names no notice period and no template (Esselmont, 2014); we found no association or forum guidance on notice for tarot, astrology, reiki or acupuncture. If you work in one of those, every template you have read was written for someone else.

What to say — and what not to explain

The new price, the date it starts, and thanks. No apology. A reason is optional; a paragraph of reasons is a mistake.

On one point the advice is unanimous. ClinicSense: "Whatever you do, don't apologize for your price increase" (ClinicSense, 2026). At Peace Media: "Don't apologize, feel guilty, or overexplain why you need to raise your prices!" (Gelb, 2014). Thryv warns that "an apology may cause your patrons to question the reasoning behind the price hike" (Love, 2025), and Anchor that apologising can "signal that you think the price increase is unfair" (Anchor, 2026).

On explaining, they are not unanimous, so what follows is our position rather than theirs. Jobber lists "The reason for the increase" as a required part of the letter (Foster, 2026), MassageBook says to "provide clear reasons for why this is necessary" (Volkmann, 2023), and Housecall Pro says to "briefly explain" it (Jimenez, 2026). What they warn against is over-explaining, not the sentence. Our template leaves the reason out: a client who has come for years does not need to hear about your rent, and a client who is going to leave over the price will not be argued out of it by a paragraph.

One field experiment is a reason to hold that lightly. A randomised study of 1,626 customers of a Canadian self-storage company, in ten cohorts, found that a market reason — demand is up, competition is down — produced the lowest attrition after a real price rise, the opposite of what practitioner advice and earlier academic work had predicted (Damavandi, Antia and Kopalle, Journal of Marketing, 2026). Those were storage contracts, where the authors point to switching costs; a session with one practitioner has nothing in common with a storage unit on that score. Nobody has run the equivalent for a practice.

One line the massage sources do recommend is how long the price has held. At Peace Media passes on the tip to "post how long it has been since your last price increase" (Gelb, 2014), and The Massage Business Mama's sample email puts it inside the letter: "The last rate change we had was in 2013" (Boehm, 2019). It is a fact, not a plea, and it does the explaining for you.

The written version, for email or a card by the door:

Subject: A change to my session price from [date]

Hi [name],

From [date], a session with me is [new price]. Sessions already booked before that date stay at the current price. The last time this changed was [year].

Nothing else changes: same room, same length, same me.

Thank you for coming, and for trusting me with this work.

[Your name]

The spoken version, at the end of a session or on the phone when someone asks to book:

"Before you go — from [date] my price goes up to [new price]. Anything you book before then is at the current price. I wanted you to hear it from me rather than see it on the booking page."

Both fit in a breath. The line about sessions already booked is the fork in the next section; cut it if you decide the other way. If you feel the urge to add a reason, add one sentence and stop.

What happens to people who are already booked?

That is your call, and no template makes it for you. The honest options are the old price for anything already booked, a dated grace period, or a discount agreed person by person.

A date in a letter creates a fork. Someone booked three weeks ago at the price on your page then, your email says the new price starts before their session, and you decide which side of the line they land on. MASSAGE Magazine's answer is a grace window, and its script names one: "My rate is going up to $80 effective Jan. 1, but because you are such a long-time client, you will still receive the usual rate of $70 until March 1" (Allen, 2017) — the dollars are the column's example, not a suggestion. The same column notes that new clients can be charged the new amount at once, since they never knew the old one (Allen, 2017).

The other device in the massage sources is prepayment. MASSAGE Magazine suggests "Offer existing clients a package deal; give them a coupon" (Allen, 2017); The Massage Business Mama's sample email offers "the opportunity to 'stock up' on massages at our current price" (Boehm, 2019); MassageBook proposes raising single-session prices while discounting multi-session packages (Volkmann, 2023). At Peace Media reports practitioners who skip the blanket rise and instead "work with each of their clients individually to extend loyalty discounts" (Gelb, 2014).

Whichever you choose, the list of people it applies to has to come from you. A booking holds a date and a name; unless your booking tool keeps a price on each booking — check before you assume it does — no report will produce "everyone who booked at the old price". That list lives in a line in each client's notes: who booked when, what you told them, what they said.

The hardest conversation is with the people who paid nothing

Clients from your training years, who came for free, are the ones a first price lands on hardest — and the ones none of the sources above mentions. Some stayed, some left, and both were fine.

My own practice started with 40 unpaid sessions. The school required them for certification, so for months the people on my table were friends, friends of friends, and anyone who answered a message, and every one of them got the work for nothing. That is a normal way into bodywork, and into most of the modalities this blog is for. It also builds a cohort that no price-increase letter is written for: people for whom the number was not low, it was zero.

When a price arrived, there was no percentage to soften it. A rise from something to something more is a change of degree; a rise from nothing is a change of kind, and I could see that some people felt it that way. Some looked at the new number, understood that the work now cost money, and carried on as if it always had. Some left, without a conversation, and some went quiet for a while and then booked again.

I did not chase any of them, and I did not resent the ones who went. "Fine" was the whole of my reaction at the time, and it still is. What made this harder than the conversation with paying clients is that nothing in the sources above applies. Not the notice period, because there was no old price to give notice from; not the "last increase was in" line, because there had never been one; not the package at the old rate, because the old rate was nothing.

All that is left is the plain sentence, said in person: the sessions now cost this, from now. If you trained recently, this cohort is in your phone right now, and it deserves that sentence rather than a mass email.

One practitioner who does none of this

With no website and no posted price list, a new price is not an event. Each person hears the current number when they ask, and the calendar has nothing to do with it. That was my practice, and it will not suit most.

Everything above assumes the rise is announced: a date, a letter, a countdown. My practice had none of that, because it had no website: clients came by word of mouth, and the first thing that happened with any new person was a conversation, in person or on the phone, in which I said what a session cost. They had never seen the old figure, so for them there was no increase, only a price. On a word-of-mouth practice that is not the exception; it is the whole mechanism.

So there was no effective date. The price moved when it was ripe, which is a feeling and not a calendar entry, and the next person who asked heard the new number. "From the first of the month" is a habit of round numbers — nobody announces a price from the 23rd — and there is no method inside it. If the number is ready on the 23rd, it is ready on the 23rd.

Objections came one at a time and were handled one at a time. Somebody said it was a bit steep; that person and I talked about it later, on our own. Somebody else said nothing and did not come back. A price that is never announced cannot be objected to in public, which turns a policy question into a series of conversations, and conversations are what a practice is made of anyway.

One astrology practitioner's public announcement does something halfway similar: it says rates are going up, gives no date and no notice period at all, and mentions charging on a sliding scale (carrasquillo, 2024) — one self-published example, not a norm. My own case has the same limit: no posted prices, word of mouth, and every client had spoken to me before they booked. If your price is on a booking page, it is published, and the canon above is the right one for you.

Do not read my case as a better method. Read it as evidence that the letter is a convention, and a convention can be set aside when the conditions that made it necessary are absent.

When charging less is the decision

In the published guides, charging less survives only as a footnote to a rise. In my practice it was sometimes the decision itself, made person by person, and the criterion was mine.

Every guide in the list above points one way: up. Charging less is not the subject of any of them, but it is there at the edges. At Peace Media suggests extending discounts "to your elderly clients or those who cannot afford to pay more", adding that "Every massage therapist knows their clients best and has to do what is best for her or his business" (Gelb, 2014). One practitioner it quotes puts a line at the foot of the notice: "If this increase causes a financial hardship for you please speak with your therapist about finding an alternative solution" (Gelb, 2014).

MASSAGE Magazine names the groups on whom a rise lands hardest: clients who "tend to be on a fixed income", and "pregnant women, who likely take a few months off work near the end of their pregnancy" (Allen, 2017). I made exceptions too, without a policy. When I could see that someone needed the work and the price was the thing in the way, I charged less, or nothing — my decision, made by looking at the person in front of me rather than at a rule, and not offered to everyone.

That is the criterion, and I cannot state it more precisely than that: a judgement about need, made each time. Two things it was not. It was not a promise about what the session would do for them — I cannot make that promise, and neither can you. And it was not a discount scheme; a posted sliding scale is a policy, and this was an exception.

If you take one thing from this section, take the permission. Charging less is a choice a practitioner is allowed to make on purpose, and it does not undo the price you set for everyone else.

Where does the new price actually have to change?

In one place, on the date you named in the email; the rest is a line in each client's notes.

The email is the hard part; the software part is small. HoldSpace is practice management for holistic practitioners — voice-first session notes, online booking, and client history in one place, built for people who hold space, not for hospitals. The price lives on the session type, so you edit it once in settings and the booking page shows the new number from that moment on. A line in the client's notes — when you told them, what they said — keeps that conversation next to the sessions it belongs to. What it does not do is count the money: nothing here sends a bill, and a booked session does not carry its price. Plans are in the pricing page.

Start on the free plan30 minutes of voice, 10 structurings and 5 clients.

FAQ

How much notice should I give clients before a price increase?

Between two weeks and three months, depending on whom you ask: about a month is what practitioners told At Peace Media (Gelb, 2014), 60 to 90 days is MassageBook's rule of thumb (Volkmann, 2023), and Housecall Pro calls 30–60 days "a standard window" (Jimenez, 2026). None of them derives the number from anything, and we found no US or UK rule that requires notice at all for sessions booked one at a time — the duties we read attach to recurring contracts (16 CFR §425.1; Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, s.254). Pick a figure, put it in writing so the date has somewhere to live, and keep it. This is not legal advice; check the rules where you practise.

Should I raise my rates?

If the price has not moved in years, probably. Biddy Tarot's guide names five signs it is time and opens by saying that pricing "brings up so much anxiety, self-doubt, and worry" that many readers keep the same price "year in and year out" (Esselmont, 2014). For pace, one MASSAGE Magazine column suggests "a five-dollar-per-session increase at stages of 4–6 months" (Radford, 2021) — one practitioner's rhythm, not a rule.

How many clients leave after a price increase?

Nobody has measured it for a one-person practice. The only field experiment we found on real price-increase notices covers 1,626 customers of a self-storage company (Damavandi, Antia and Kopalle, Journal of Marketing, 2026), and storage contracts are not sessions. What exists for practitioners is stories, including the one above.