We want music lessons to stay within reach of the families who want them. A teacher’s livelihood depends on students who can keep coming back, week after week. When lessons become too expensive, students stop, and the teacher loses income too. Affordable lessons and sustainable teaching are two sides of the same goal.
A luxury many cannot afford
Our founder learned this the hard way. He picked up the guitar at about six or seven, but his family could not pay for regular lessons. He learned from people who gave him the odd lesson for free, and later from a teacher who taught him regularly in his teens. That teacher shaped the musician he became. He tells the story in Are Instrumental Lessons just a Luxury?
The same essay records something teachers still tell us. When the cost of living goes up, some families have to stop lessons. People clearly value lessons. For many households, though, they are one of the first things to go when money is tight.
Every cost reaches the family in the end
You set your own prices, and you know your students far better than we do. Still, every cost of running your practice ends up somewhere. Software fees, payment fees and the hours you spend on admin all have to come out of what families pay you, or out of what you take home.
We want Soniq Studio to make that sum smaller, not larger. That idea shapes three decisions we have made.
A free plan that does the essentials
Soniq Studio has a free plan for every teacher. It covers your timetable, invoicing and payments, and messaging your students. The Professional plan adds more when your practice grows, such as invoice auto-reminders.
We chose this shape on purpose. A teacher with a handful of students should not pay a monthly bill before the practice can support one. You can see what each plan includes in Subscription plans and fees.
Low, open payment fees
The way a family pays you has a cost too. Card payments usually carry a fee on every transaction, and on a modest lesson fee that adds up over a year. We looked at a number of payment providers and chose GoCardless for online payments. It offered the lowest fees, and the best fit for most teachers using Soniq Studio.
GoCardless collects payments by bank debit, straight from the family’s bank account. We explain how that works, and what it costs, in How the billing model works, and why. We do not hide fees inside the price of a lesson. The current figures are always in Subscription plans and fees.
If you prefer manual bank transfers, Soniq Studio supports that as well. Your bank details appear on the payment page, and you record the payment when it arrives.
Less admin, less pressure on your prices
Your time is the biggest cost of all. Every hour spent on invoices and reminders is an hour you cannot teach, or an hour you work for free. When the paperwork takes less time, you have more room to keep your prices fair.
That is why we put so much care into the routine jobs: generating invoices from the lessons you taught, collecting payments on time, and following up gently when one is late. You can read more about the reasons behind this in Why Soniq Studio exists.
Keeping the door open
We cannot set your prices, and we would not want to. Some teachers keep a lower rate for families who are struggling. Some offer shorter lessons, or group lessons, to bring the cost down. Others charge what the work is worth and put their time into fewer students. Each of these is a fair choice.
Our part is to keep the tools affordable, the fees low and the admin light. Then you have the freedom to keep your door open to the next student who could not otherwise afford to walk through it. Our founder was that student once.