Getting Started with the Churn Buster API
The Churn Buster API integrates with any subscription management tool, saving engineering teams time with easy setup and little-to-no maintenance.
What is Churn Buster? It's a drip campaign, and an events scheduler, deeply integrated with your subscription billing system. Using any failed recurring payment as the trigger to launch a "campaign," Churn Buster resolves temporary billing issues with optimally-timed retries, automates customer outreach with the right messaging, and schedules events like critical alerts, in-app lockouts, or whatever your business may require.
Non-technical staff can manage failed payments via a unified dashboard, making changes without code requests or bug fixes—it's all handled by Churn Buster and our responsive team. Everything is monitored with accurate metrics so your process improves over time.
To get started:
- First, sign in to your Churn Buster account (or create a new one here).
- Your test API keys are located here—please use test keys until ready to go live.
If you have any questions about which of the following API endpoints to set up, or would like to review these steps with our team, feel free to contact us at support@churnbuster.io.
The instructions below detail what actions to perform, why they are necessary, where to find the events in your subscription billing system, and how to send them to Churn Buster.
1. Start campaigns when payments fail
When a recurring payment fails, notify Churn Buster. This will start a recovery campaign if there isn't already one active.
Instructions:
2. Stop campaigns when payments succeed
When a recurring payment succeeds, notify Churn Buster. This will end any active recovery campaign and track it as successful.
Instructions:
3. Stop campaigns when subscriptions are cancelled, paused, or skipped
When a subscription is cancelled, paused, or skipped, notify Churn Buster. This ensures customers are only contacted when they need to be, with any active recovery campaigns ended automatically when subscription billing dates change.
Instructions:
4. Track Changes to the Payment Method
When a customer's default payment method is updated, notify Churn Buster. This ensures customers are billed after a payment method update, and that recovered payment methods are properly tracked.
Instructions:
Note: while using a test account, test campaigns will be created in response to failed payments sent to Churn Buster, and no emails will be sent. When setup is finished, please request a QA review to coordinate an account launch.
- Important: disable existing dunning AND pre-expiry emails at launch
For help, please contact us anytime at support@churnbuster.io or via your dedicated Slack channel.
When using an in-house subscription management system:
Important:
- Wherever you see source in the API docs, set it to "in_house"
- Wherever you see source_id in the API docs, set it to the ID from within your in-house system for the Customer, Subscription, Payment Method, etc.
When integrating with Chargify:
Subscribe to the following webhook:
- renewal_failure
- renewal_success
- subscription_state_change
- subscription_card_update
Important:
- Wherever you see source in the API docs, you should set it to "chargify"
- Wherever you see source_id in the API docs, you should set it to the ID from within Chargify for the Customer, Subscription, Payment Method, etc.