In this episode of the Launch Your Box podcast, host Sarah Williams examines whether a monthly or quarterly subscription box model is better. She draws on her own experience of running and shutting down a quarterly kids monogram box in 2021, explaining that stagnant subscriber numbers and limited marketing content led her to focus on her thriving monthly boxes. Sarah then breaks down the pros and cons across four key dimensions: (1) Revenue – quarterly boxes can command higher prices but create cash‑flow gaps, whereas monthly boxes provide steady recurring income; (2) Curation & Products – quarterly boxes require curating only four boxes a year and give subscribers more time to use products, reducing churn; (3) Frequency & Recency – quarterly boxes suffer from lower engagement, fewer content opportunities, and “out‑of‑sight” subscriber fatigue; (4) Time – quarterly schedules free owners from the relentless monthly fulfillment grind, offering a less hectic workflow. She recaps the cons (no monthly recurring revenue, engagement and content gaps) and the pros (higher per‑box price, reduced curation workload, lower subscriber overwhelm, and operational breathing room). Sarah shares poll results from her LauncherBox community showing 68% run monthly, 15% bimonthly, and 17% quarterly boxes, and suggests a bimonthly model as a middle ground for those torn between the two extremes. The episode ends with a call for podcast reviews.
Hey Sarah, is it better to have a monthly or a quarterly subscription box? I can't decide what I want to do. Well, let's talk about it on this episode. Come join me.
Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.
Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today I'm going to answer a common question that I get asked, and that question is, is it better to have a monthly or a quarterly subscription box? And there isn't a clear yes or no answer to that. So let's walk through some of the pros and cons of having a quarterly subscription box. I used to have a quarterly subscription box. I don't know if you know that about me or not, but let me tell you about it. I shut it down in 2021 so I could focus on my other subscriptions that were monthly and really thriving. And I wouldn't say that it wasn't successful because it was quarterly instead of monthly, because there were other factors to it. It was a kids quarterly subscription, so it was a kids monogram box and I had a couple hundred subscribers in it, but it just wouldn't grow. I had those same couple hundred subscribers in it the whole time. And it felt like it just was not growing. And there were lots of reasons because it was a struggle to keep it top of mind in my feed, in my marketing, when I only had a box coming out every 3 months. And the other really struggle for me, and I wouldn't say it was because it was quarterly, but I didn't feel like I had enough content to really market it the way I wanted to. I could have done a better job with it. I could have focused on it more. I could have built more content for it. But at the end of the day, I have these other 3 subscriptions that were monthly, took a lot of my time, and I always felt like this quarterly one was like the black sheep of the subscription box family lineup that I had for my business because it was the last one that I would work on. Sometimes it would be thrown together last minute and I just didn't feel good about it. And if you don't do something with all your ability, like I am an all or nothing person, when I realized I couldn't give it my full attention and I wasn't doing it justice, I needed to stop it. So that's why I made that decision. I ran it for about 3 years and decided to shut it down in 2021 so that I could focus on other things. But that's my only experience with a quarterly subscription. Now, I know that we have lots of quarterly subscription owners inside our membership. And so many of them are thriving and doing a really great job. So I just want to take the time today to give you a rundown of some of the pros and cons of having a quarterly subscription box. Okay, so the first one that really comes is— this is like the first pain point, and it's revenue. And this is really a big one, and this is really a reason why people tend to not do quarterly subscriptions. Because the con here is that, I mean, I love having monthly revenue, and a quarterly subscription can really put a strain on your finances and your cash flow in between months of those payments running. So that revenue goal, that revenue stream, that recurring revenue that you have, that could really put some strain on your cash flow by not having it consistently every single month like a monthly subscription. A pro when we talk about the revenue aspect is that you can typically charge more for a quarterly box than you could a monthly box, and this allows you to have higher profits, more revenue than just a monthly box. In reality, this could even be the same amount of revenue. You would just need to manage it effectively so that you didn't run out between the 3 months of when your payments would process again. So revenue is the top one, and there's a con to that because I love having monthly recurring revenue, and there's a pro to that because you can actually charge more for a quarterly box. So those are some things that I want you to think about. The second topic that I want you to think about is the curation and the products. And here I just give two pros. There are no cons here. So let's talk about that. This is one of the biggest benefits of having a quarterly subscription is the curation and the products that you need. So pro number 1 is that you only have to curate 4 boxes a year. 4 boxes a year, y'all. Those of us that have monthly boxes, we are curating 12 boxes a year. And so if you take that and you just cut that into 1/4 and you have a fraction of the workload, the fraction of the follow-up, the fraction of dealing with manufacturers and all of those things, So that's a really big benefit to have a quarterly box is that you only have to curate 4 boxes a year. Another pro to the quarterly box is that your subscriber only gets 4 boxes a year to consume versus a monthly subscription where they're getting new products each month and having the time to consume all of them. A quarterly subscriber is more likely to use all or most of the products before the next quarter arrives. This is going to help you with churn and consumption of those products. So not only are you— you have less on your plate to curate, but then there's instantly less on their ability to consume, and that will create more retention and less churn. The third— this is probably the main reason of why I stopped my quarterly subscription— but number 3 is frequency and recency. It's really like out of sight, out of mind. Okay, so the con here is that you're going to have lack of engagement. The time lapse between each box for a quarterly subscription creates a sense of disengagement for your subscriber. I see this a lot with boxes like FabFitFun. They are a quarterly box and their social media will literally go silent between their box launches. Like, it will be nothing at And then all of a sudden, you know, their next box is about to release because you will see them in their feeds everywhere. But people aren't getting a constant reminder and they're not having that constant feeling of excitement that something new is coming. It's like up and down, up and down, up and down. And there's not a continuation of it. And I see that as a huge lack of engagement. The other con that I put on frequency and recency is having enough content. One of the best things about having a monthly subscription box is that you constantly have new content for your marketing and social channels. You always have new products, you always have new subscriber reviews, you always have new behind the scenes processes. And with a quarterly subscription, you really have to stretch out the content from that one box to last for 3 months long. And you tend to get stale if you aren't creative enough. So with frequency and recency, you're going to have a lack of content and ultimately a lack of engagement, which really puts a dip in between the boxes. And it's almost like you're starting fresh every single quarter and you don't have a lot of momentum to build on. And that's why a company like FabFitFun spend a lot of money with affiliates and influencers and a lot of money on Facebook ads. They need a quick infusion rush on the market right before that next quarterly box is going to be released, and that can get really pricey. So I want you to think about that. The fourth category here, and probably the reason that people do choose to start a quarterly box, is time. That's really the one of the main reasons, the main benefits that people choose to start a quarterly box over a monthly is because they don't have the frequency. The monthly grind of the curation process, the fulfillment process, and customer service is a full-time job. And having a quarterly box gives you the space and freedom to do other things. And live a less hectic lifestyle. It gives you more time for curation, fulfillment, and customer service throughout those months. And they're not crammed into weeks. They're built into months. Let me just walk you through what our monthly process is, and you can kind of get a sense of a little bit of the hecticness of it. So usually week 1 of the month, we are in fulfillment mode. So we do that the first 2 weeks of the month. We have 3 subscriptions. We are folding, packing, packaging, shipping the first 2 weeks, all of our thousands of subscriptions. And so that's really happening the first 2 weeks of every single month. Once those go out the door, we kind of have that third week of the month. We call it our lull week, our downtime week. We kind of get caught on everything else. And that might be like receiving new inventory, counting products that have come in from overseas, prepping boxes. Like, it's kind of our low week where we're just prepping and catching up, catching our breath really with the business. And then week 4, we're really prepping hard for our subscriptions. We're typically folding and counting shirts, prepackaging things, prepping all the things that need to be prepped for the next month's box. So when you look at kind of that rat race, It's good and bad. Like, yes, that means I can employ people full time and every month, every week they have work to do for the next month. But it also means that we don't really get a break. We don't really get a break as business owners or employees because every single month we have to do this process again. And so it really depends on what you're looking for. But that's one of the reasons, it's probably the main reason that people choose to do a quarterly box over a monthly box. So those are my 4 big heavy-hitting kind of areas when I think about a quarterly subscription. Number 1 is revenue. Number 2 is curation and products. Number 3 is the frequency and recency. And number 4 is your time. Let's just recap our cons first. The cons of having a quarterly subscription box is 1, No monthly recurring revenue. Number 2, lack of engagement in your community. Number 3, lack of content to market and promote your box and brand consistently. Now let's look at the top pros for the quarterly boxes. Number 1, you can charge more for a quarterly box, thus increasing the revenue per box. Number 2, you only have to curate 4 boxes a year. Sounds amazing. Number 3, your subscriber is less likely to cancel due to overwhelm. And number 4, you get a break in the curation, fulfillment, and customer service aspect of your subscription box business. Now, we've compared both monthly and quarterly subscriptions in this episode, but what I'm seeing more and more are bimonthly subscriptions, meaning one every other month. I recently did a poll inside my community LauncherBox, and I asked what the frequency of their subscriptions were. From that poll, I discovered that the people that answered it, we had 68% said that they run a monthly subscription box, 15% said they run a bimonthly subscription box, and 17% say they run a quarterly subscription box. Again, there is no right or wrong answer to this question. Is it better to have a monthly or a quarterly subscription? It all depends on your goals and what's most important to you to build your business. If you're struggling on whether you should do a monthly or a quarterly box and you've listened to the pros and cons and you're still feeling torn, Maybe the answer is something in between by doing a bi-monthly subscription box. It increases the frequency and recency. It still gives you time back so they're not in the constant rat race every single month. You're curating 6 months worth of boxes a year instead of 12, and you're getting revenue more frequently, so every other month versus quarterly. So I want you to consider running a bimonthly if you're still torn between the pros and cons of what you should do. If you're loving the Launch Your Box podcast, I'd be honored if you'd take a second to give me a review right from your podcast app.
