Subscriptions & recurring payments

Subscriptions let you charge a customer on a repeating schedule — weekly, monthly, or yearly — instead of just once. They are perfect for memberships, ongoing access to a course or community, software, or anything you want to bill again and again without chasing each payment. Once a customer subscribes, Crevio handles the rest. It charges their card automatically on each renewal date, keeps their access active, and sends them a receipt every time. Each paid renewal also shows up in Orders as its own order, marked Renewal, so it counts in your revenue. See Renewal orders.

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Why use subscriptions

• Predictable income. You know roughly what’s coming in each month instead of starting from zero.
• Less manual work. Crevio bills every renewal for you, on time, every time.
• Sticky customers. People who subscribe stay longer and are worth more over time.

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Set up a recurring price

You turn any product into a subscription by giving it a recurring price.

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Free trials

A free trial lets someone try what you offer before any money changes hands. You choose how many days the trial lasts. When the trial ends, Crevio automatically charges the customer and keeps their access going — unless they cancel first. Trials are a great way to lower the barrier to signing up. People are far more likely to start when there’s no immediate charge.

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Payment plans

A payment plan lets a customer pay for something in a fixed number of instalments instead of all at once — for example, a $300 course split into three monthly payments of$100. Unlike a subscription, a payment plan ends on its own once the full amount is paid. This is a great way to make a higher-priced offer feel more affordable without lowering your total price.

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Managing a customer’s subscription

You can step in and adjust any customer’s subscription at any time.

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Give an existing subscriber a discount

Want to keep a subscriber who’s about to cancel, or thank a loyal one? You can add a discount to a subscription that’s already running — the customer doesn’t have to check out again. The discount starts with the next invoice. Nothing is charged or refunded right away, and the rest of the subscription stays the same. A subscription can have one discount at a time: Change discount swaps it for another, and Remove goes back to the full price from the next invoice.

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Keep subscribers who want to cancel

When a subscriber clicks Cancel subscription on their billing page, you can show them a few things before the cancellation goes through: a personal message, the option to pause instead, a discount to stay, and a short question about why they’re leaving. You choose which of these they see. The steps always come in this order: message, pause, discount, reason, then a final Cancel subscription button. Steps you turn off are skipped. With everything off, the subscriber just confirms.

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What each offer does

• Pause. The subscriber picks how long, up to your limit. The pause starts when their current paid period ends. They aren’t charged while it lasts, their subscription stays active so they keep access, and billing starts again on its own when the pause ends. They can also restart billing early from their billing page with Resume billing.
• Discount. If they claim it, the discount applies from their next payment, the same as when you give a subscriber a discount yourself. Nothing is charged or refunded right away.

A subscriber who sees the discount and carries on to cancel has used up their offer too, so they won’t see it again if they come back and cancel later. If they pause first, they never reached the discount, so it can still be offered next time. The discount isn’t offered when:

• the subscription already has a discount (so a better one is never replaced),
• the discount is inactive, hasn’t started, or has expired,
• the discount is limited to products that don’t include this subscription, or it’s a fixed amount in a different currency.

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See why people cancel

• On the order. Open the subscription’s order in Orders. The Subscription card shows the reason and any note the customer left the last time they cancelled.
• The cancellation report. Under Settings > Advanced, Cancellation report counts how many subscribers paused instead, took the discount, or cancelled, ranks the reasons they gave, and lists the 10 most recent notes.

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What the customer sees

Subscribers get an email receipt after every successful charge. They can also manage their own subscription from a hosted billing page — cancel or renew, update their card, edit their billing address, and download past invoices — without needing to email you. They get there through the Billing link in their account on your site, and sign in with a one-time emailed link, no password required. You can share our plain-language guides with them:

• How to manage or cancel your subscription
• How to update your payment method

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When a renewal payment fails

If a subscription or payment plan renewal can’t be charged, Crevio emails the customer once with the amount due and an Update payment method button. The button opens their billing page, where they can put in a new card. The email comes from your business name, and replies go to your support email. The link in the email works for 3 days. After that, the same email has a link where the customer can ask for a fresh one. The email is not sent:

• for test purchases,
• while your Crevio account is not active,
• to an address that bounced or marked one of your emails as spam (you can see these in the Suppressions tab under Email),
• if you turned it off.

One email goes out per failed payment. When Stripe retries that same payment and it fails again, the customer doesn’t get another email. If a later renewal fails, that’s a new email, even while the subscription is still behind on an earlier one. A customer who unsubscribed from your marketing emails, or whom you added to the suppression list yourself, still gets this one, because it is about a payment they owe, not marketing. To turn it off, go to Settings > Notifications and switch off Failed Renewal Payments under Customer.

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If something goes wrong

• A renewal payment failed. This usually means the customer’s card expired or had insufficient funds. Stripe retries the charge on the schedule set in your Stripe account, and Crevio emails the customer a link to update their payment method (see When a renewal payment fails).
• A customer says they were charged after cancelling. Check the subscription’s status and renewal date. A cancelled subscription stops at the end of the paid period — the last charge may have happened just before they cancelled. If it looks wrong, you can issue a refund.
• You don’t see a recurring option. Make sure you connected your payment account first. See Getting started.

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