Retention and Cancel Survey

The Leaky Paywall Recurring Payments extension includes a cancellation flow designed to help you retain subscribers who are about to cancel. It has two parts: a reason survey that captures why someone is leaving, and an optional retention offer that gives you one last chance to save them with a discount.

How the cancel flow works

When a subscriber clicks "Cancel your subscription" on their account page, they see a modal with up to three steps:

Reason survey — they select a reason for canceling from a dropdown you configure
Retention offer (if enabled) — a discount offer is shown before they can proceed
Confirmation — they confirm the cancellation

If retention is disabled, the subscriber goes straight from step 1 to step 3.

Configuring the cancellation reason survey

Go to Leaky Paywall > Settings > Payments > Recurring Payments. In the Cancellation Settings section:

Cancel Modal Survey — enable or disable the reason survey
Cancel Reasons — one reason per line. These appear in the dropdown.
Allow "Other" Reason — adds an "Other" option that reveals a free-text field

A good starting list of reasons:

Too expensive
I don't have time to read it
Not enough content
Technical issues
I'm changing interests

The reason is saved to the subscriber's record and appears on their admin detail page, so you can review why individual subscribers left. You can also see an aggregated breakdown on the Retention page (see below).

Setting up a retention offer

The retention offer shows a discount coupon to subscribers after they select a reason and before they confirm the cancellation. If they accept, the coupon is applied to their next renewal and the subscription stays active.

1. Create a retention coupon

Go to Leaky Paywall > Coupons > Add New Coupon and create a new coupon with:

Coupon Type — "Retention Offer"
Discount Amount — the percentage or flat amount you want to offer
Max Use Limit — how many times this coupon can be used total (leave blank for unlimited)

Retention Offer coupons can only be used in the cancel flow. They won't apply at signup and don't appear in the standard coupon field on the registration form.

2. Enable the retention offer

Go to Leaky Paywall > Settings > Payments > Recurring Payments > Retention Offer and:

Check Enable Retention Offer
Select your Retention Coupon from the dropdown
Customize the Headline, Description, Accept button text, and Decline button text

The default copy is a starting point; feel free to adjust the tone to match your publication.

3. Subscribers see the offer

When a subscriber clicks cancel, they go through the reason survey, then see your offer with the configured copy and an "Apply discount and stay" button. If they accept, the coupon is applied to their Stripe subscription as a one-time discount on their next invoice. If they decline, they proceed to the cancel confirmation.

Tracking results

The Retention admin page

Go to Leaky Paywall > Retention to see how the cancel flow is performing. The page shows stat cards for any date range:

Saves — subscribers who accepted the retention offer and stayed
Retention Offers Shown — how many subscribers saw the offer
Cancellations — subscribers who went through with canceling

Below the stat cards, you'll see a list of saved subscribers with links to their profiles, and a breakdown of cancellation reasons with a bar visualization so you can see patterns at a glance.

The dashboard Saves card

The main Leaky Paywall dashboard includes a Saves stat card that summarizes retention offer acceptances for the current period. Click the card to go to the Retention page for the full report.

Per-subscriber detail

On any subscriber's detail page, you can see:

Cancellation Reason — what they selected when they canceled (or attempted to)
Retention Offer Status — whether they saw the offer, and whether they accepted or declined

Important notes

The retention discount can only be used once per subscriber. Once a subscriber accepts the offer, they won't see it again on any future cancel attempts. Declined offers can be shown again if the subscriber comes back to cancel later.
Retention offers work with trial subscribers. A trial subscriber who accepts the offer stays subscribed and gets the discount applied to their first paid renewal.
The coupon "usage" counter increments each time the offer is accepted, so you can track total saves on the coupon detail page alongside regular coupon usage.

Tips

Start with a modest discount (20-30%) and increase it if needed. You can adjust the coupon at any time.
Use the cancellation reason data to guide product decisions. If "too expensive" is the top reason, consider a lower-tier option. If "not enough content" dominates, it's a signal about your publication rather than your pricing.
Review the Retention page monthly. A healthy save rate is 10-20% of subscribers who see the offer.