Two numbers decide whether a loyalty program pays: what the software costs, and what you give away. The first is small and predictable. The second is the one owners get wrong, almost always by overestimating it.

The software

For a single venue, expect somewhere between €15 and €60 a month in 2026. Watch for two pricing models that behave very differently as you grow:

  • Flat monthly. One price per venue regardless of how many members you sign up. Predictable, and it does not punish success.
  • Per-contact or per-member. Common in tools that grew out of email marketing. It looks cheap at 200 members and stops looking cheap at 2,000.

There is also usually a per-message cost hiding somewhere. Ask specifically: how many push notifications are included, and what happens on the message after that.

The reward is cheaper than you think

This is where the maths turns friendly. A free coffee does not cost you the menu price — it costs you beans, milk, a cup and a lid. On a €4 flat white that is somewhere near €0.80. The nine visits that earned it were all full price.

Put roughly: a buy-nine-get-one card gives away about 2% of the revenue it generates. Almost any uplift in visit frequency covers it several times over.

The same logic holds for a free class at a gym (marginal cost near zero if the class is running anyway) and for a free side in a restaurant. It holds much less well for anything with real product cost — a free bottle of wine, a free haircut — so pick the reward with the widest gap between perceived value and actual cost.

The break-even, in one paragraph

Say your software is €49 a month and your average transaction is €12. You need roughly four extra visits a month to cover it. One customer moving from monthly to fortnightly gets you halfway. Two do it outright. Against a member list in the hundreds, that is a low bar — which is why the question is usually not "can this pay for itself" but "will anyone actually use it".

The costs nobody quotes you

  • Printing. Counter QR codes, table tents, stickers. Twenty or thirty euros, once.
  • Staff time. A few minutes per person to learn "scan this". If it takes longer, the tool is wrong.
  • Hardware. Should be zero. Any program that requires a dedicated terminal is quoting you a hidden four-figure cost.
  • Your time. The real one. Setting up takes an afternoon; remembering to message people every week is what quietly fails. This is the argument for a program that does the follow-up automatically.

What to ask before you sign

  1. Is the price flat, or does it rise with members?
  2. How many messages are included, and what do extra ones cost?
  3. Is there a contract, or is it monthly?
  4. Can I export my customer list and leave?
  5. Does it need hardware or a specific till?

If the answers are flat, generous, monthly, yes and no — the pricing is honest. See how Loyalito prices it.