For the past year, I’ve been enrolled in Massage Envy’s membership program and as my term comes up I decided to do some math and figure out if it’s worth it.  First, the monthly member ship fee is $60 per month then you pay a rate for either 60, 90 or 120 *minute massages.    The table below shows the cost structure and I’ve broken it down to the cost per minute.

MassageEnvy

Time Member Non-Member
50 $39 $78
80 $57 $114
110 $78 $156
     
Per minute $1.98 $1.56
  $1.46 $1.43
  $1.25 $1.42

I was pretty shocked to see that if you only ever got one 60 minute massage per month, it was actually MORE expensive to be a member than a non-member since it would cost $1.98 per minute for member and $1.56 for non-member.    I typically was averaging about 1 visit per month given my heavy travel schedule and usually opted for 90 minute session.   Also note that the massages are truly an hour but more like 50, 80 or 110 minutes since there is prep time involved.     My latest massage started at 1:05 for a 1 pm appointment and finished at 2:25 pm for 90 minutes which was in reality 80 minutes.

Now if you do go and get more frequent massages then membership does have a benefit but at that point all you’re doing is spending more money on massages and the dreaded “diminishing returns” pops to mind but also note that the fees don’t include gratuity either.

Finally, it is important to note that the quality of the masseuses varies greatly and the good ones usually have most of their time booked way ahead of time and most eventually leave the company to start their own massage spas or do out calls to residences.