Stripe Billing + Churn Buster

What Churn Buster does automatically when Stripe payments fail, the settings we recommend, and what stays in your control.

How it works

Churn Buster is a revenue recovery layer for subscription businesses. Connected to Stripe Billing, it watches your account for failed recurring payments, past due invoices, card updates, and canceled subscriptions. When a customer with a payment method on file fails a recurring subscription payment, Churn Buster opens a recovery campaign and sends a timed sequence of emails. When a payment succeeds, the campaign closes on its own.

Churn Buster works inside your existing billing. It never creates subscriptions or invoices, never changes invoice amounts, and never charges a canceled subscription or a forgiven invoice.

Get set up

Contact us and we'll create your Churn Buster account. For the best experience, schedule a kickoff call and we'll make sure you get off to a great start. Or email support@churnbuster.io.

Once your account is created, connect Stripe from the Sources page in Churn Buster, then apply the settings below in your Stripe dashboard.

Required Stripe settings

On Stripe's Revenue Recovery page, configure what happens after Stripe's retries finish.

• Choose mark the subscription as unpaid.
• Set the invoice status to leave the invoice past-due.

This keeps the subscription alive for Churn Buster to recover. If Stripe cancels it instead, the campaign ends prematurely, and in the worst case a customer updates their card intending to renew and the subscription never bills again. If you'd rather mark invoices uncollectible than past-due, contact us and we'll enable a setting in your campaign to support it.

Leaving subscriptions as-is keeps new invoices generating and failing each cycle, so customers repeat campaigns over and over. If your billing model requires the as-is setting, extend your campaign end to at least Day 45 so next month's failed invoice lands inside an active campaign. Either way, enable cancellations at the end of campaigns (see "What stays in your control" below) so churn registers at a definite point and your subscription data stays clean.

Retry settings

On the same Revenue Recovery page, we recommend Smart Retries set to 4 times over 2 weeks. Churn Buster sequences its own retries throughout the full campaign after that, timed around your recovery emails, so the card on file gets every reasonable chance to clear. Retry timing responds to the decline, and Churn Buster skips reattempts Stripe Radar has blocked as do-not-retry, which protects your account from excessive-retry flags.

Turn off Stripe emails

Disable Stripe's failed payment and expiring card emails. Churn Buster runs the customer-facing recovery messaging, and two tools emailing the same customer about the same failed payment creates a confusing experience and erodes trust. The upcoming-renewals email can stay on for annual plans.

Card updates

When a customer updates their card on a Churn Buster capture page, Churn Buster validates it in real time, SCA compliant (3D Secure 2.0), charges it immediately, adds it to the customer record in Stripe, and sets it as the default. Existing payment methods stay in place, and every future invoice bills the new card. Churn Buster hosts the capture page; you can also self-host it on your own domain.

Subscription reactivations

When a default payment method changes in Stripe, whether via a capture page, your dashboard, in-app, or the automatic card updater, Churn Buster immediately reattempts the most recent invoice on every delinquent subscription. This covers both delinquent states: past_due, where Stripe would otherwise wait for the next scheduled retry, and unpaid, where Stripe never bills again on its own. Once the payment clears, the subscription returns to active.

By default, Churn Buster collects only the most recent unpaid invoice per subscription; collecting up to 6 older unpaid invoices is available on request. Churn Buster never charges invoices older than 6 months, forgiven invoices, free-plan subscriptions, or subscriptions set to cancel at period end. Voiding an invoice in Stripe stops the associated campaign immediately, so Churn Buster stops contacting the customer.

Cancel flows

Churn Buster Cancel Flows install on your site with a snippet and present cancel reasons and targeted save offers before a customer confirms a cancellation. Discounts apply through your existing Stripe coupons, and a one-click cancel option covers regulated locations.

What stays in your control

• Whether unrecovered subscriptions cancel at the end of a campaign. This is an account setting we configure with you, and most Stripe merchants turn it on. Either way, you can receive a webhook when a campaign ends.
• Campaign timing, content, and sending domain. We configure these with you.
• Access. You can disconnect Churn Buster from Stripe anytime, from your Stripe dashboard or from the source page in your Churn Buster settings.

Common questions

A customer updated their card in Stripe. Why did they fail again the next month? When a customer updates their card through Stripe's failed payment invoice link, Stripe charges that one invoice but doesn't save the new card to the subscription, so the next cycle can fail on the old card. Churn Buster's capture page charges the new card immediately and writes it back to the customer record, so future invoices bill correctly.

Does Churn Buster cancel my subscriptions? Only if you enable cancellation at the end of campaigns, and only when a campaign ends without a recovery. Otherwise subscriptions stay unpaid, per your Stripe settings.

Will a failed first payment start a campaign? No. Campaigns start on recurring subscription payments, not signup payments. If first-payment failures matter to your model, a 1-day trial makes the first charge a recurring payment, which Churn Buster covers.

Why don't Stripe's recovery numbers match Churn Buster's? The two measure differently. Stripe reports raw payment outcomes as they happen; Churn Buster waits for campaigns to resolve and reports recovery on rolling windows of completed campaigns. We'll walk you through how to read the numbers any time.

Questions?

Email support@churnbuster.io and we'll look at your configuration with you.