How to raise your prices as a solo beauty pro

June 4, 2026 · 22 min read · back to blog

A booking horizon of six weeks or more is not a capacity problem — it is evidence that your current price is below market clearing price. The market is telling you that demand for your services at your current rates exceeds the supply of your time. Most solo beauty pros misread that signal as validation rather than instruction, and stay under-priced for years after the market has already told them to raise. This guide covers when you are ready to raise, how much to raise, the deposit-first advantage that reduces client loss at every price increase, the two-message announcement sequence that gives clients the minimum notice they need without over-communicating, how to recalibrate your deposit after the new rate goes live, how to handle the three types of client reaction, and the 90-day review window that tells you whether the increase was correctly sized.

Why most solo beauty pros stay under-priced

The under-pricing trap is not irrational. It is a specific response to a specific fear: that raising prices will cost more clients than the higher rate earns back. That fear is almost always wrong, but it is not imaginary. There are clients who will leave when you raise. The question is not whether any clients will leave — some will, regardless of how small or how well-announced the increase is — but whether the clients who stay, paying more, outperform the full pre-increase book financially. In most cases they do, by a margin that becomes obvious within 60 to 90 days.

The under-pricing trap compounds over time in a way that is easy to miss year-by-year. Booth rent increases every year. Product costs increase. Your skill compounds. Your client list fills with more tenured, higher-LTV clients who require more time per appointment. The service you are delivering in year three of running your booth is meaningfully better than the service you delivered in year one, and your costs are higher, but the rate card has not moved because raising it felt like a risk every year you considered it. The trap is that each year you delay, the gap between your rate and the clearing price grows — and the eventual increase required to close that gap grows with it.

There is also a compounding opportunity cost to staying under-priced that rarely gets calculated explicitly: every hour you spend on a client at the old rate is an hour you could have spent on a client paying more or not working at all. A solo booth renter with a six-week booking horizon and a 40-hour work week has zero slack capacity. Adding one hour of revenue per day is not available to them. The only lever for increasing weekly revenue is raising the rate per hour of chair time. A fully booked solo pro who does not raise prices is working harder for the same or lower real income every year as costs rise.

The booking horizon signal

The single clearest signal that you are ready to raise prices is a sustained booking horizon of six weeks or more. If clients are booking six or more weeks out to secure appointments, the demand for your services at your current price exceeds your available supply. That is the definition of under-pricing relative to your market position. The market has already told you that people value your time more than your rate card reflects.

The horizon signal becomes stronger when combined with a waitlist. If you have 10 or more clients waiting for a cancellation slot at your current rates, you are not at clearing price. The number of people willing to wait weeks for a chance to pay you money at your current rates is evidence of a gap between your rate and the rate the market would bear.

A short horizon is the corresponding signal in the other direction. If your booking horizon is under two weeks and you have open slots in the next 10 days, a price increase is not indicated regardless of how long it has been since your last one. A price increase into weak demand accelerates the booking horizon problem rather than solving it. Address the demand side first — through the referral system, IG content, Google Business Profile — and raise prices once the horizon recovers.

The most reliable rule: if your booking horizon has been at six weeks or more for at least 90 consecutive days, and your no-show and late-cancellation rates are at or below your historical averages, you are ready for a price increase. The no-show rate condition matters because a high no-show rate against a long booking horizon could reflect a client mix problem rather than a genuine demand signal — clients booking far out and then not showing up is demand noise, not real demand.

The deposit-first price increase advantage

Deposit-first operators retain significantly more of their client base through a price increase than operators who take no deposit. The mechanism is specific: the deposit gate has been filtering your client list over time. Every client in your current book has completed a Stripe checkout, accepted your policy terms, and committed financially before their appointment. That process selects for clients who plan their schedules, follow processes, and are willing to commit money ahead of time. These are, on average, less price-elastic clients than the clients filtered out by the deposit gate.

The practical difference: deposit-first operators typically see 8 to 12 percent of their client base stop booking after a well-announced price increase. Operators without a deposit system typically see 15 to 25 percent. The gap is not explained by the size of the increase or the announcement quality — it is explained by the composition of the client base. Deposit-first operators have already shed their most price-sensitive clients through the deposit gate itself; what remains is a client base that has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to commit financially and follow a process.

This is the price increase compounding effect of the deposit-first model. The deposit gate improves the quality of your client base every month it is in operation, not just at the original switching point. By the time you announce a price increase, you are announcing it to a filtered population that is structurally more likely to stay.

If you recently switched from Venmo or informal payment to a deposit system, note that the composition benefit takes time to develop. The clients in your book who pre-date the deposit switch have not been filtered by the deposit gate. For a price increase in the first three to six months after a deposit switch, use the non-deposit retention benchmarks (15–25% loss) for planning rather than the deposit-first benchmarks (8–12%).

How much to raise

The size of a price increase involves three considerations: the gap between your current rate and your target rate, how your client base will respond to different increments, and whether you are doing a cost-of-living adjustment or a repositioning increase.

The cost-of-living adjustment

A cost-of-living adjustment is an annual or biannual increase designed to keep pace with operating cost growth: booth rent increases, product price inflation, and general cost escalation. These are typically in the 5 to 10 percent range. A $140 service raised to $150 is a 7 percent adjustment. A $60 fill raised to $65 is 8 percent. These increases are expected, easy to communicate, and carry low churn risk among tenured clients because the increase is perceived as market-standard.

If you have not raised prices in two or three years, a cost-of-living catch-up increase can be 15 to 20 percent without high risk, provided it is the first increase in that period and not part of a pattern of frequent increases. A one-time catch-up after a multi-year gap reads differently to clients than a 15 percent increase the year after a 12 percent increase.

The repositioning increase

A repositioning increase is larger and signals a deliberate change in market position — typically 20 percent or more. These are appropriate when your skill level, clientele, or service offering has outgrown your current rate tier, and when the booking horizon evidence confirms strong demand at or above your current rates. Repositioning increases carry higher churn risk (you may lose 15 to 30 percent of your current book), but they are self-selecting: the clients who stay at the new rate are the clients who value your work at a higher tier, and the client composition typically improves as a result.

Repositioning increases work best when combined with a service upgrade or refinement that justifies the new rate tier in client terms — new technique certification, premium product line, or a narrower service menu focused on your highest-skill services. A 25 percent increase with no accompanying change in service offering is harder for tenured clients to contextualize.

Dollar framing vs percentage framing

When communicating the increase to clients, dollar amounts are clearer than percentages. "Prices are increasing by $10 to $15 per service depending on service type, effective July 1" is more legible than "I am implementing a 9 percent rate adjustment effective July 1." Percentages require clients to calculate what their specific service will cost; dollar amounts do not.

Tiering the increase by service type is also valid and often produces better outcomes than a flat percentage applied to everything. High-demand, high-margin services (your booked-weeks-out services) absorb larger increases without churn. Lower-demand or add-on services (upsells, treatments, shorter appointments) may warrant a smaller increase or none at all to protect conversion rates on those specific line items. Raising a balayage by $30 while keeping a toner touch-up flat is a reasonable tiering decision that reduces the total client impact without giving up meaningful revenue on the high-demand items.

Sizing the increase: a practical framework

For a fully booked solo booth renter running a 35 to 40 hour week, a $10 increase across the service menu generates roughly $350 to $400 in additional weekly revenue, or $1,400 to $1,600 per month, before any client loss. Against a 10 percent churn rate (the low end of the deposit-first estimate), you lose perhaps $300 to $400 per month from the clients who leave — and those slots typically fill from the waitlist or through normal new-client acquisition within 30 to 60 days, since a long booking horizon implies real demand at or above your current rates.

The net math on a $10 increase across a fully booked deposit-first operator is typically positive within the second month. The first month may show a slight dip as churned clients' slots open up and backfill. The second month is typically at or above pre-increase monthly revenue with fewer clients and less total service time.

The deposit recalibration question

When your service price goes up, your deposit amount needs to be evaluated, not automatically carried over. There are two approaches, and the right one depends on how you currently communicate the deposit.

Dollar-amount deposit: hold or adjust?

If you communicate your deposit as a dollar amount ("I take a $40 deposit to hold your slot"), a price increase from $120 to $140 changes the implied deposit ratio from 33 percent to 28 percent — without you changing anything. In most cases, holding the dollar amount after a modest increase is fine. The deposit still covers your opportunity cost for a no-show, and the lower implied percentage is not likely to reduce commitment signals materially among deposit-filtered clients.

If the increase is large — say, from $100 to $140 — and the deposit amount stays at $30, you have dropped from a 30 percent implied deposit to a 21 percent deposit on a service that now commands a higher slot value. In that case, raising the deposit by $5 to $10 is warranted. Announce the deposit change alongside the price change so clients see one announcement covering both, not two separate increases.

Percentage-based deposit: recalibrate automatically

If your deposit is configured as a percentage of the service price in ChairHold, a price increase automatically recalibrates the deposit amount upward with no configuration change needed. The deposit remains the same proportion of the service price. Update the service price in your booking link and the deposit amount adjusts with it.

Check that the new deposit dollar amount is still within a range clients will complete without friction. A $150 service at 30 percent deposit is a $45 hold — reasonable. A $180 service at 30 percent is a $54 hold — still reasonable. A $250 service at 30 percent is $75, which is at the upper edge of what most deposit-first solo pros charge as a hold amount. If the deposit approaches $75 or above, consider stepping down to 25 percent to protect completion rates. The deposit should remain a commitment signal, not a barrier to booking.

The announcement system

The goal of the announcement system is to give every active client who has a relevant appointment in the pipeline enough notice to make their own decision — to rebook at the old rate before the effective date if they want to, or to accept the new rate and continue. Clear notice, a clear effective date, and no apology. That is the complete announcement requirement.

The 30-day minimum window

The minimum announcement window before a price increase takes effect is 30 days. For clients with service intervals of 3 to 4 weeks (lash fills, nail fills), 30 days means their current appointment happens before the effective date and their next appointment — the first at the new rate — is already on their calendar or can be booked at the old rate before the deadline. For clients with longer service intervals (balayage every 8 to 12 weeks, PMU touch-ups), 30 days gives them time to decide whether to pull their appointment forward to beat the increase or accept the new rate.

Announcements shorter than two weeks are operationally unfair to high-frequency clients. A lash client whose appointment is in 10 days and who books on a 3-week cycle has no ability to get in before the effective date under a 2-week window. Clients notice this, and it damages the announcement's received tone.

Message 1 — the announcement (30 days out)

Send Message 1 as a personal DM or text to your active client list — not an IG Story, not a mass email blast. The personal channel signals that this client specifically is being notified, not that they happened to see a public post. Template:

Hi [Name] — wanted to give you advance notice that my prices are going up effective [date]. [Service] will be [new price] starting that day. If you'd like to get in before the increase, here's the booking link: [link]. Thanks for being a great client — looking forward to seeing you soon.

What this message does: states the fact (price increase), names the specific service and new price, includes the booking link, and closes with a genuine but brief client acknowledgment. What it does not do: apologize, over-explain, ask for the client's understanding, invite negotiation, or signal that the increase is conditional on client acceptance.

The apology is the most common mistake in price increase announcements. "I'm so sorry to do this, but..." and "I hate having to raise my prices, but..." are both apology framings that undermine the legitimacy of the increase. An apology signals that the operator is uncertain whether the increase is warranted. If you have done the booking horizon analysis and the timing is correct, the increase is warranted. State it directly.

The over-explanation variant is nearly as common: itemizing booth rent increases, product cost inflation, continued education expenses, and industry rate benchmarks in the announcement message. Clients do not need an economic justification for a rate increase — they need the new price and the effective date. Over-explanation reads as defensiveness, not transparency. One sentence of context at most if you feel any rationale is needed: "Rates are going up across the board to keep pace with rising costs." That is the complete rationale required.

Adjust the template for multi-service menus. If you are raising all services, list the two or three most common ones with their new prices rather than a complete menu. "Color from $[old] to $[new], cuts from $[old] to $[new]" covers the clients who need to know without requiring them to read a price sheet.

Message 2 — the reminder (14 days out)

Send Message 2 only to clients who have not yet rebooked since the announcement and who have an appointment scheduled after the effective date. This is the segment of clients who saw Message 1, have not acted on the pre-increase booking window, and are next scheduled to experience the new rate.

Quick reminder — prices go up [date], about two weeks away. [Service] will be [new price] after that. Link here if you want to get in before: [link].

Message 2 is shorter than Message 1. It does not repeat the full announcement. It states the date, the price, and the link. The shorter length is intentional: clients who read Message 1 and did not act have processed the information once already. A shorter reminder requires less of their attention and is more likely to convert to action than a second full-length announcement.

No third message

Do not send a third pre-increase message. Two messages — an announcement at 30 days and a reminder at 14 days — is the complete sequence. A third message is over-communication that reads as pressure and damages the tone of the announcement. Clients who have seen two messages and not acted have decided to pay the new rate or to stop booking; a third message will not change that decision and may push borderline cases toward the latter outcome.

IG Stories and public posts

An IG Story or feed post announcing the price increase is optional, not required. It serves new inquiries who have not started booking yet and gives them accurate rate information from their first contact. For existing clients, the personal DM sequence is the primary communication. An IG Story that goes up alongside Message 1 is a clean combination: existing clients get a personal message, new inquiries get the public post, and nothing is said twice to the same audience.

What an IG Story should not contain: apology language ("sorry, rates are going up"), over-explanation, or a call to comments ("let me know if you have questions!"). Price increases generate comment activity that is almost never productive. Direct people to DM you directly if they have specific questions.

How to handle the three types of client response

Client responses to a price increase fall into three categories: silent acceptance, explicit pushback, and silent drop-off. Each requires a different response.

Silent acceptance — the majority outcome

The majority of a deposit-first client base will accept a well-announced price increase without comment. They continue booking at the new rate, the relationship is unchanged, and the transaction is cleaner because the new price is stated clearly rather than discovered at checkout. No response is required from you for silent acceptors. The normal booking cadence continues.

If you want to acknowledge the transition with a long-tenured client who has been with you for years, a brief personal note after their first appointment at the new rate is appropriate: "Thanks as always — glad to have you as a client." Nothing elaborate. The relationship absorbs the price change without needing to reference it.

Explicit pushback — "can I get the old price?"

Some clients will ask, directly or implicitly, whether they can continue at the old rate — be grandfathered in, get a one-time exception, or be otherwise exempted from the increase. The answer to this question should be consistent across your client base and stated without apology.

The correct response to a grandfathering request from a tenured high-LTV client:

I appreciate you asking — I'm not doing individual rate exceptions, but I want to keep you as a client. The new rate is [price] starting [date]. If you'd like to lock in one more appointment at the current rate before then, here's the link: [link]. After that, new rate applies.

This response offers one final appointment at the old rate as a courtesy to a tenured client without creating an indefinite exception. An indefinite exception is the outcome to avoid: a client who is on an old rate for years while new clients pay more creates a two-tier pricing structure that becomes harder to unwind the longer it continues.

For clients who push back more than once or who frame the conversation as a negotiation, hold the line. "The new rate is [price] — I'm not able to go below that." One sentence, no explanation. Operators who extend exceptions under pressure signal to clients that the announced price is a starting position, not a real price. That signal is extremely difficult to correct later.

How many clients will push back explicitly varies. Among a deposit-first client base that has been filtered for commitment and follow-through, direct pushback on a price increase is typically low — under 5 percent of the active book. The clients who push back are not necessarily leaving; many are testing whether the price is flexible. When they see it is not, most accept and continue.

"I can't afford that anymore" — the graceful off-boarding

Some clients will tell you directly that they cannot afford the new rate. This is distinct from negotiation: it is honest, and it deserves a respectful response rather than a counter-offer. Template:

I completely understand — I appreciate you being direct about it. It's been great having you as a client. If your situation changes and the timing works, the booking link is always open. Take care.

Do not offer a discounted rate to a client who has explicitly said they cannot afford the new price. A discounted rate creates a two-tier system and, once offered, sets the expectation for the relationship going forward. The client who cannot afford $140 but can afford $120 will expect $120 again at your next price increase. The graceful off-boarding script closes the relationship with goodwill and leaves the door open without compromising your rate structure.

Silent drop-off — the most common form of churn

The most common form of price-increase churn is not explicit pushback — it is clients who stop booking without saying anything. They receive the announcement, stop responding to links, and fall into the dormant client category without any stated reason. Among a deposit-first client base, this is the 8 to 12 percent estimate: clients who simply stop appearing in the booking system after the effective date.

Silent drop-off does not require a specific response during the 30 to 60 days after a price increase. Clients are deciding. Some who go quiet will return when their service interval makes the need pressing enough to outweigh the rate sensitivity. Do not send a follow-up message to a client who has gone quiet after a price increase announcement within 45 days of the announcement — it reads as either pressure or insecurity, and it is unlikely to change the decision.

At 90 days post-increase, clients who have not rebooked enter the normal dormant re-engagement protocol. At that point the price increase is not recent context — it is simply the current rate. Treat them as a dormant client, not as a price-increase dropout. The re-engagement message does not reference the price increase; it is a normal check-in with the current booking link.

The 90-day review window

A price increase is not fully evaluated until 90 days after the effective date. The first 30 to 45 days are transition noise: some churned slots are not yet filled, some wavering clients have not yet made their final decision, and the financial picture is incomplete. Evaluate at 90 days.

The booking horizon re-check

The most important metric at 90 days is the booking horizon. If the horizon is still at four weeks or more, the price increase was correctly sized or undersized. The market absorbed the new rate and demand remains above your supply. A horizon above six weeks at 90 days is a signal to consider another increase.

If the horizon dropped from six weeks to one or two weeks after the increase, the increase was too large for your current market position. This is not a catastrophe — it is information. The correct response is to hold the new rate (do not discount back to the old rate), invest in the demand side of the equation (referral activation, Google Business Profile, consistent IG content), and let the book refill naturally over the following 60 to 90 days before evaluating again. Reversing a price increase is almost never the right move; it signals instability and does not reliably recover the clients who left.

No-show rate as a quality signal

A price increase that improves client composition — filtering toward more committed, higher-LTV clients — should hold or improve your no-show and late-cancellation rates. If your no-show rate rises meaningfully after a price increase (say, from 4 to 8 percent), there are two possible explanations: the increase attracted less-committed new inquiries who are less likely to follow through, or the announcement process created operational disruption that let appointment details fall through the cracks. Neither explains the rate staying elevated at 90 days. If no-show rates are higher at 90 days than before the increase, review your confirmation message timing and deposit configuration — not the price itself.

Deposit completion rate

Check your deposit completion rate against the pre-increase baseline. If the deposit dollar amount increased with the service price and completion rate drops by more than five percentage points, the new deposit amount may be too high for your current client mix. Step it down by $5 to $10 and monitor for 30 days. A deposit completion rate above 85 percent is healthy. Below 75 percent, the deposit amount is creating booking friction that the slot urgency of your time_to_live_hours setting is not overcoming.

Monthly revenue comparison

At 90 days, compare your monthly revenue to the three-month average immediately before the increase. For a 10 percent increase with 10 percent churn (a typical deposit-first outcome), you should be running at approximately net zero at 90 days: the gain from higher rates per appointment is offset by the lost appointments from churned clients. If churned slots have refilled by 90 days — which is typical when the booking horizon remained positive — you should be running modestly above the pre-increase baseline. If you are running significantly below the pre-increase baseline at 90 days, check booking horizon, churn rate, and new-client acquisition rate before concluding the increase was a mistake.

Special cases

Raising prices on variable-scope services

Services with variable scope — corrective color, complex nail art, new lash clients with significant correction needed — are priced differently because the deposit amount and the final service price are determined at consultation, not at booking. A blanket price increase announcement applies to your base rates for standard services. For variable-scope services, the announcement should note that consultation pricing for complex work is evaluated individually, and that your minimum rate for the service is [new minimum]. Do not promise a specific price for variable-scope work in the announcement; that creates a pricing commitment before you have seen the work involved.

The variable-scope deposit guide covers how to collect a deposit on services where the final price is not fixed at booking time — the same logic applies when that base price increases.

First-time price increase as a new booth renter

If you are raising prices for the first time, having originally set rates as a new solo booth renter building a client base, the increase carries a specific context: your clients booked you at introductory rates. Many of them understand that introductory rates are not permanent. Still, the announcement is more important for this cohort than for clients who joined after your rates were established, because these clients have a specific price expectation based on their entire relationship with you.

For a first-time increase among a tenured client base, a brief contextual line is appropriate — not an apology, but an acknowledgment: "I've kept my rates steady since I opened my booth, and they're going up for the first time starting [date]." This contextualizes the increase without apologizing for it. Clients who came in at introductory rates know what the current rates are. The increase from first-time rates to market rates is expected and professionally appropriate. Acknowledge the history once, in one sentence, and move on.

Frequency of increases

An annual review of rates is standard. An annual adjustment is not always necessary — if your booking horizon is under four weeks and new-client acquisition is slow, skip the year. But the review should happen regardless, because the decision not to raise is a decision that should be made deliberately based on current data, not by default.

The cadence that creates the most client friction is irregular large increases at irregular intervals. A 5 to 8 percent annual adjustment is easier for clients to absorb and contextualize than a 20 percent increase every three years. Annual increases become expected. They get their own implicit rhythm: clients understand that in January (or whatever month you have established as your increase month), rates are reviewed. That predictability reduces the friction of the announcement each time.

How deposit-first changes the pricing conversation

There is a broader observation about the relationship between deposit-first booking and pricing that is relevant to the price increase decision: the deposit gate is, in a small way, a continuous pricing test. Clients who complete the checkout at your current deposit amount have demonstrated willingness to commit at that financial level. Clients who abandon the checkout at the deposit step have revealed a threshold. If your booking link has a high completion rate, you have not found the top of the range the market will bear. If your completion rate is declining, you may be near it.

When you raise your service price, you are testing the market's response to both the service price increase and the resulting deposit increase simultaneously. Separating these effects is difficult, which is why the 90-day review uses multiple metrics (booking horizon, no-show rate, completion rate, monthly revenue) rather than a single number. A price increase that holds booking horizon while dropping completion rate slightly suggests the deposit level needs adjustment downward. A price increase that improves booking horizon while holding completion rate is clean evidence that the increase was correctly sized.

What not to do

Five operational mistakes that reliably produce worse outcomes on a price increase:

1. Announcing with less than two weeks' notice. High-frequency clients (lash, nail) may not be able to get in before the effective date, making the announcement feel less like a courtesy and more like a notification after the fact. Thirty days minimum.
2. Apologizing for the increase in the announcement. The apology signals uncertainty about whether the increase is warranted. A professional service price is not something that requires an apology.
3. Extending indefinite exceptions to persistent askers. One final appointment at the old rate for a tenured client is a reasonable courtesy. An open-ended exception creates a two-tier pricing structure that compounds and becomes progressively harder to normalize.
4. Reversing the increase if the horizon drops. A short-term drop in booking horizon after a price increase is expected and usually temporary. Reversing the increase is almost never correct. Hold the new rate, invest in demand, and re-evaluate at 90 days.
5. Raising prices without rechecking deposit calibration. If your service price increases and your deposit dollar amount stays fixed, the implied deposit percentage drops. Verify that the deposit amount still represents a meaningful commitment relative to the new service price, and that the completion rate post-increase is holding above 85 percent.

Quick-reference checklists

Pre-increase checklist

• Booking horizon confirmed at 6+ weeks for 90+ consecutive days (or meaningful sustained demand signal)
• No-show and late-cancellation rates at or below historical average
• New rates set for all affected services
• Deposit amount reviewed and recalibrated if needed (target 25–30% of new service price, completion rate ≥85%)
• Effective date set — minimum 30 days from announcement
• Message 1 drafted and reviewed (no apology language, new price named, effective date clear, booking link included)
• Message 1 sent to all active clients as personal DM or text
• ChairHold service price updated effective the announced date
• IG Story or feed post live with new pricing (optional — aligns with Message 1 send date)

Mid-announcement checklist (14 days out)

• Identify clients who have not rebooked since Message 1 and have appointments scheduled after the effective date
• Message 2 sent to that cohort only (shorter than Message 1, same structure: date, price, link)
• No third message sent to any client

90-day review checklist

• Current booking horizon: is it 4+ weeks? (if yes: increase was correctly sized or undersized; if under 2 weeks: too large, hold and build demand)
• No-show rate vs pre-increase baseline (should hold or improve)
• Deposit completion rate vs pre-increase baseline (target ≥85%; if below 75%, reduce deposit $5–10)
• Monthly revenue vs three-month pre-increase average (should be at or above baseline at 90 days)
• Dormant client re-engagement: any silent drop-offs who have passed the 90-day window enter normal re-engagement protocol
• Next annual review date set

ChairHold integration

ChairHold integrates with the price increase process at two points: the deposit recalibration and the booking link update.

• Update service price in your booking link on the effective date — not before, so pre-increase bookings through the link are still captured at the old rate during the announcement window.
• Recalibrate deposit_percent if using a percentage-based deposit, to verify the new dollar amount is within the 25–30% target range. If using a fixed-dollar deposit, manually verify the implied percentage after the price update and adjust if needed.
• Use standard time_to_live_hours (24h) for pre-increase booking links in Message 1 and Message 2. The pre-increase window creates its own urgency — you do not need to shorten TTL to reinforce it.
• At 90 days, check completion rate in your Stripe dashboard. A completion rate below 75% is an indication the deposit amount is creating booking friction, and the deposit should be stepped down by $5–10.

The service pricing guide covers how to set your initial rates and deposit structure — the framework there is the foundation the price increase decision builds on. The deposit calculator guide covers specific deposit sizing by service type, which applies directly to the post-increase deposit recalibration step. And the client retention system covers the full re-engagement protocol for clients who go dormant after a price increase, which is the same protocol used for any dormant client at 90 days.