Baseline: What are you actually Paying?

Price Positioning

Baseline trades a low SaaS fee for a $2.79 fixed transaction fee that destroys margin at the session sizes facilities actually operate at. TFA charges a fair SaaS fee with a fixed fee of $0.70, 4x lower per transaction, so your payment costs scale predictably, not punitively.

Their pitch (what you'll hear)

• "Our base plan is free"

• "We're all-in-one: scheduling, memberships, payments, AI, keyless entry"

• "Voted #1 in customer service 2 years in a row"

• "No negotiated deals: same transparent rate for everyone"

The fee trap

Baseline: 3.9% + $2.79 per transaction TFA: 4% + $0.70 or 4.9% + $0.70

The fixed fee is the kill shot. At small transaction sizes (where facilities actually live) $2.79 vs $0.70 is $2.09 per transaction, every transaction, forever.

Effective rate comparison at common transaction sizes:

TFA is 2.5–3.5 percentage points cheaper at the $60–$100 range. On session-based facilities, that's the entire transaction range.

The script:

"Their base plan is free but that $2.79 fixed fee means a $75 session booking costs them 7.62% in processing. We charge $0.70 fixed. That's $2.09 less on every single transaction. On 400 sessions a month, that's over $10,000 a year, just from the fixed fee difference alone before you even get to the percentage rate."

Annual fixed-fee delta by monthly transaction volume

This is fixed-fee delta only the % rate savings stack on top of this.

Annual total cost comparison (avg $85 transaction)

UX / product objections to raise

Customer-facing booking experience:

• Baseline's booking pages are dark-themed, operator-focused UI, not designed for parent-facing conversion

• Pricing not visible without login, creates friction before a family commits

• Scheduling, registration, and booking are fragmented across separate nav items

• First impression looks like "SaaS software," not the facility's brand

Now What?

If you are a facility, the fact of the matter is your services are likely $60-$150 per session, which means your blended rate is between 8.55% and 5.67% per transaction. You get outside of that range a touch if you are on a higher priced membership model, but this is the math you must figure out.

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