Description
Failed Renewals Don’t Have to Mean Lost Subscribers
Flexible Subscriptions Payment Retry gives your WordPress store a schedule for chasing failed renewal payments, and you set that schedule yourself. Retry after a number of hours, retry after a number of days, add extra attempts with a custom flow, and let the plugin run the whole sequence without anyone on your team touching it. It works as an add-on for Flexible Subscriptions Free, so the rules live right next to the subscriptions they protect.
Three things set it apart from a plain “try once more tomorrow” setup. Retry timing is yours to define, in hours or days. The email templates sent around each attempt can be customized. And for subscriptions paid manually, you can switch off the charge attempts entirely and send reminder notifications instead.
The Challenge: Payments Fail for Boring Reasons
A subscription store depends on renewals going through quietly in the background. Most of the time they do. Then a card expires, a bank flags the charge, or the customer’s account is a few euros short on the one morning the payment fires. The renewal fails, and the subscription is suddenly in trouble even though the customer never decided to leave.
Without a retry process, you have two bad options. You can cancel or expire the subscription at the first failure, which loses people who would have paid a day later. Or you can chase each one by hand: open the order, resend the invoice, write a polite email, check again tomorrow. That works at five subscribers. It falls apart at fifty.
The problem gets messier when your store mixes payment types. Customers who pay by bank transfer or another manual method are not charged automatically, so a “retry” makes no sense for them. They need a nudge, not another attempt. A one-size-fits-all retry rule will either do nothing useful for them or generate confusing noise.
How Flexible Subscriptions Payment Retry Helps
The plugin adds a rules layer on top of Flexible Subscriptions. When a renewal payment fails, the retry logic takes over. It waits the interval you configured, attempts the payment again, and sends the email you assigned to that step. If the attempt succeeds, the subscription carries on. If every attempt fails, the subscription is moved to the status you picked for expired subscriptions.
That last setting matters more than it looks. Some stores want a failed subscription to expire outright. Others prefer a status that leaves room for a manual rescue. Because you choose the status, the end of the retry sequence matches how your store actually handles lost subscribers.
Timing You Control
Each retry trigger fires after a set period from the failed payment, measured in hours or days. A store selling monthly software licenses might retry after a few hours to catch temporary bank declines, then again after a couple of days. A store with a longer billing rhythm can space attempts out further. If the default flow isn’t enough, you can add more attempts with a custom flow and decide the exact timing for each.
Emails That Sound Like Your Store
Each attempt can trigger a notification, and the templates are customizable. You can tell the customer a payment failed, explain that another attempt is coming, and point them to update their payment details. Writing these in your own voice beats a generic system message, because customers are more likely to act on an email that sounds like it came from a person who runs the shop.
Manual Payments Handled Properly
Turn on the manual payments option and the plugin stops processing retry attempts for those subscriptions. You can still send extra email notifications, so customers get reminded without the system trying to charge something it can’t charge.
Core Features
- Automatic payment retries after failed subscription payments, with no manual follow-up needed.
- Retry timing in hours or days, counted from the failed payment.
- Custom flow with additional attempts when the standard sequence doesn’t fit your billing model.
- Customizable email templates for the notifications tied to payment attempts.
- Selectable status for expired subscriptions once retries run out.
- Manual payment mode that skips charge attempts and allows extra reminder emails.
- Enable or disable retry features from the plugin settings, so the behavior stays under your control.
- Built to work with Flexible Subscriptions Free as an add-on, keeping settings in one familiar place.
The Flexible Subscriptions Payment Retry WordPress plugin is released under the GPL, which means you can adapt its behavior to your own store’s needs, whether that’s tweaking templates in your theme workflow or having a developer extend it for a particular setup.
Practical Applications
Membership and Content Sites
A membership site that bills monthly loses real revenue when a card lapses. With a short first retry and a longer second one, a declined payment caused by a temporary hold gets a second chance before the member loses access. The email in between tells them what happened in plain language.
Stores Selling Physical Subscription Boxes
If a box ships only after payment clears, a failed renewal can stall fulfillment. Automatic retries mean your team isn’t checking a list of failed orders each morning. When the sequence ends without success, the expired status gives you a clear signal about which boxes not to pack.
Mixed Payment Stores
Plenty of shops accept both card payments and bank transfers. Manual payment mode lets you keep card renewals on an automated retry schedule while sending reminders only to customers who pay by hand. Nobody receives a “we tried to charge you again” message for a payment that was never automatic.
Small Teams With No Billing Staff
When the store owner is also the support desk, packer, and bookkeeper, recurring tasks need to run themselves. Setting the retry rules once and letting them execute is the point of this plugin. You review expired subscriptions instead of chasing every individual failure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this plugin work on its own?
No. It is an add-on for Flexible Subscriptions Free and extends that plugin with retry rules. The subscriptions, billing and statuses come from the base plugin, while this add-on decides what happens after a payment fails.
Can I choose how long to wait between retries?
Yes. Retry triggers run after a period you define, in hours or days, counted from the failed payment. You can also add more attempts with a custom flow and set the exact timing for each one, so a three-hour gap and a three-day gap can sit in the same sequence.
What happens to customers who pay manually?
You can enable the manual payments option. Payment attempts are then not processed for those subscriptions, since there is nothing to charge automatically. You can still send additional email notifications, which makes it useful as a reminder system for bank transfer customers.
Can I change the emails customers receive?
Yes. The email templates tied to payment attempts are customizable. You can adjust the wording to match your brand and the way you talk to customers, which usually gets better responses than a stock notification.
What happens when all retries fail?
The subscription moves to the status you selected for expired subscriptions in the plugin settings. That choice is yours, so you can decide whether a failed subscription should be fully expired or handled in another way that fits your store’s process.
Included With Your Purchase
Your purchase comes with one year of email support and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Plugins added to the bundles over time are also included in ongoing subscriptions, so your collection grows without extra effort.
