Why We Built a Benefits Platform With No Subscription Fee
The honest reason Masterhub Wallet has no subscription. You buy credits, you allocate them, you don’t pay for what you don’t use. The business logic, plainly stated.
When we started building Masterhub Wallet, one of the first decisions we made was not to charge a subscription fee.
That is not how most software businesses work. Recurring revenue is the model most SaaS companies optimise for — and for good reasons. It is predictable, it scales, and it is what most investors expect.
We made a different decision. This post explains why.
The problem we were solving for — in our own company first
We built Masterhub Wallet because we had the problem ourselves. Managing employee benefits through a combination of individual subscriptions, informal expense approvals, and a benefits document that HR updated when someone remembered to. At around 20 people, the overhead became real. Multiple vendor invoices. HR fielding questions every week. New hires going three weeks without knowing what they were entitled to. And most importantly: no way to know whether any of it was actually being used.
When we looked at the platforms built to solve this, we found the same problem expressed differently. A subscription fee of £5 to £8 per employee per month — on top of the cost of the benefits themselves. Charged regardless of whether employees engaged with the platform. A recurring cost for access to something that may or may not deliver value. That structure had the wrong incentives built into it.
Why the subscription model has the wrong incentives
A subscription-based benefits platform is paid for platform access, not for benefit delivery. The platform’s revenue is not tied to whether employees are engaging with it. You pay the same monthly fee whether your utilization rate is 80% or 20%.
This means the platform has limited commercial incentive to solve the utilization problem — the problem that causes most of the frustration for companies running benefit programmes in the first place.
When we designed Masterhub Wallet, we wanted the pricing model to reflect the actual value delivered. If employees are not getting benefit from the system, the company should not be paying a platform fee for it. The credit model does this. You buy credits. You allocate them to employees. If you do not allocate, you do not spend.
What “no subscription” actually means in practice
No subscription does not mean free. It means the cost structure is different.
The trust dimension
There is another reason the subscription model did not feel right for us. Masterhub Wallet handles real company money. When an HR director or a founder sets up a credit bundle and starts allocating to employees, they are trusting the platform with something significant. That trust requires the pricing model to be transparent and aligned with the outcome the customer is trying to achieve.
A subscription that charges for access regardless of outcomes is not aligned with that. A credit model — where the company pays for what gets delivered to employees — is. This was not primarily a marketing decision. It was a values decision about how we want to operate as a business.
What we learned from using the product ourselves
The short version
We built Masterhub Wallet without a subscription because the subscription model has the wrong incentives. A platform that charges for access regardless of outcomes is not aligned with the outcome the customer is trying to achieve — which is benefits employees actually use.
The credit model is transparent. You buy what you allocate. You see where it goes. Finance gets one invoice. The cost is tied to the value delivered. That is the reason. It is not a pricing trick. It is the structure we would want from a platform we use ourselves.
Frequently asked questions
A benefits platform with no subscription charges no recurring per-employee monthly fee for platform access. Instead, the company purchases a bundle of credits and allocates them to employees. The cost is tied directly to what is allocated — not to the platform running in the background. Masterhub Wallet operates on this model: you buy credits, you allocate them, and there is no subscription fee charged on top.
The company purchases a credit bundle stored in the company account. Admins set allocation rules (monthly drops, one-off sends, milestone triggers). Credits arrive in employee Wallet accounts automatically. Employees see their balance and spend credits in a marketplace of benefit categories. Finance processes one invoice per credit bundle, not separate invoices per vendor.
Most SaaS businesses are built on recurring subscription revenue because it is predictable and scalable. The limitation for benefits platforms is that the subscription is charged regardless of whether employees engage with the platform. A credit-based model aligns the cost with the actual value delivered — you only spend on benefits that employees receive and use.
The main advantages are: cost tied directly to allocation (you pay for benefits delivered, not platform access), finance simplicity (one invoice per credit bundle), flexibility (adjust allocation without changing a subscription tier), and alignment of incentives (the platform only delivers value when employees use it, and the cost reflects that).
One credit bundle. No subscription. One invoice.
Benefits your team will actually use.
No subscription — buy credits and allocate them.