Movement Review

How we rated Movement

Movement sells one thing in four sizes, and the size is set by how many people use the app rather than by how many can be built. The five scores below follow that ladder: what the builder gives you at each step, where the member count starts to cost money, and what the contract does to the bill when it moves.

The basis for those scores is the record Movement publishes about its own product. An app was not built on the platform for this review, so what is weighed here is the pricing table, the platform terms and the product pages, read against what someone would need to know before paying. Every page that fed these scores is listed at the end, with the date it was read.

Building and customizing an app without code

An app is made by dragging content into a layout, picking from the template library and setting the colours, and the result opens from a link on any device. Every plan carries a custom app icon, an unlimited content allowance and push notifications, so the logo on a member’s home screen belongs to the creator from the free plan upward, and nothing has to go through a store for the app to exist.

The ladder is about how much of the platform the app still shows. Removing Movement’s branding arrives on Pro, alongside a custom code block, and a domain of the creator’s own, custom CSS and code, and an App Store listing all arrive on Business. A working app is therefore cheap to make, while an app that carries none of the platform’s name and sits on its own domain is the most expensive published tier.

4.4 for building and customizing. The builder is the part of the product that is not rationed: templates, layouts, the icon and push notifications are on every plan, and the free tier makes a working app rather than a preview. The score stops short of the top because the last step of the ladder, the one where the app stops looking hosted, is the most expensive published tier.

Community and engagement features

The other half of the product is the member base. Movement offers one-to-one messaging and group chat, push notifications, comments and feeds, and frames the arrangement as connection the creator owns rather than one an algorithm arranges. Push notifications sit on every plan including the free one; one-to-one messaging and group chat begin on Base, together with private access, private apps, in-app search and multiple teammates, and scheduled notifications and campaigns begin on Pro.

Because the tier lists name one item at a time, most of what sits where is settled. The exception is the two surfaces that carry the most daily traffic, comments and feeds, which the product pages describe while the plan ladder does not place them. For a platform whose second pillar is member conversation, where those two sit is worth asking about directly rather than inferring from the tier above.

4.3 for community and engagement. The member-facing features are the platform’s second argument and most of the gating is stated plainly, which makes a plan easy to read. It sits below the builder because the two surfaces members open most often are the two the tier table leaves open.

Selling and payouts

Selling is built into the same app. A creator can list as many products as they like, charge once or on a weekly or monthly subscription, run coupons and free trials, and take Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout. Payments run through Stripe, and the split is published: on a paid plan the creator keeps 97.5% of each sale, less Stripe’s own fee, and on the free plan 85%.

That gap is the clearest argument the pricing page makes. Fifteen per cent of every sale on the free plan against 2.5% from Base upward means that at $1,000 of monthly sales the free plan gives up $150 where a $49 subscription gives up $25, so the subscription pays for itself well before that level and the difference widens with the takings. Stripe’s fee is separate and depends on the seller’s location, and Movement points to Stripe’s own rate card rather than quoting a number of its own.

4.6 for selling and payouts. The share is written on the page instead of quoted in a call, the payment rail is a named processor with a public price list, and the point at which a paid plan starts to pay for itself is arithmetic a reader can do from the pricing table.

Plan limits and how the bill scales

The meter is the member count. The free plan covers 100 active members and each paid plan covers 1,000, and an active member is anyone who used the app in the last 30 days, so the number follows use rather than sign-ups. Beyond that ceiling a creator buys more capacity. Base is $49 a month and Pro $99, with Business at $299, or $39, $79 and $239 on annual billing, which is 20% below the monthly view, and every paid plan opens with a 14-day trial.

Two clauses decide what the bill does when the app grows or stops. The terms tie the fee to the number of active users and state that passing a threshold upgrades the account to a higher tier with a corresponding charge, which is how a busy month can cost more than the plan that was chosen; reducing the member count is how the account comes back down. Cancelling moves the app onto the free plan, which changes the member limit, the number of video and audio uploads and the fee on every sale. Money already paid for a period is not returned when a plan is stopped unless the software has failed in a major way, and the terms say that position does not displace statutory rights, naming the Australian Consumer Law.

4.1 for the bill. The meter is legible, the entry price is low, and a free ceiling of 100 active members is generous enough to run a small app on. The score is held down by the two clauses that move the number without a decision being taken at that moment, and both belong in the calculation before a plan is chosen.

Support and onboarding

Support is presented as part of the product rather than an add-on. Movement advertises an assistant called Mai that answers at any hour with a person reviewing the replies, states that live support is standard on every plan, and backs it with a template library, a learning centre, a creator community and a bookable setup session. Priority support is the one support item the plan ladder names, and it arrives on Business.

The contract answers the same question in a different register. The platform terms put support at the vendor’s discretion and describe staffed help on business days during business hours as something Movement will endeavour to provide, without a guarantee. A buyer weighing the two published statements is comparing a product page with a contract, and for a business that expects an answer within a working day, the second document is the one that binds.

4.2 for support and onboarding. The published support layer is broad for the price and reaches the free plan, which is more than most platforms at this level offer. The score stops short of the top because the obligation sits at the vendor’s discretion in the document that governs the relationship.

Who Movement is for

The buyer this fits is one who already has an audience and something to sell, and who wants the app to exist without a developer, a store review or a wait. The product list reads as a stack a creator would otherwise assemble from separate subscriptions: online courses, digital downloads, a community, coaching, a blog and website, a link in bio, memberships, events, videos and audio, and workouts, with messaging apps named as the thing members stop needing. Because the app runs from a link rather than an installation, it works on any device the day it is made, and the pricing page sets its own fee beside the 30% commission it says the app stores charge, where a creator keeps about 70%.

The buyer it fits less well is one whose app has to look like a product of their own. That is a real position under the ladder, but it is the top of it: removing the platform’s branding begins on Pro, and a domain, custom code and a store listing begin on Business at $299 a month, where a build of their own becomes the honest comparison. A business that needs a bill it can forecast months ahead should also weigh the member meter, because the terms let a rise in active users lift the tier without anyone choosing it at the time.