Sometimes a card expires, gets declined, or simply stops working. When a payment for your churn.io subscription fails, we don't lock you out — instead we keep retrying, warn you, and (if the retries don't succeed) gently move you down to the Free plan rather than cutting off your access. This article explains exactly what happens to your subscription, your live flows, and how to get back to Pro.
When a payment first fails
If a renewal charge doesn't go through, your subscription isn't cancelled right away. We mark it as past due and send you an email letting you know the payment failed. Your card issuer is automatically retried over the following days, so a temporary issue (such as a momentary decline) often resolves on its own without you doing anything.
During this retry window you keep full access to Pro. The best thing you can do is open Billing in your settings and make sure the card on file is valid and up to date — updating it gives the next retry the best chance of succeeding.
💡 Fix it early
Updating your payment method while the subscription is only past due is the easiest path — it avoids the downgrade entirely and keeps all your flows live.
The payment-failure banner
If the automatic retries are exhausted and the payment still hasn't succeeded, your subscription is cancelled and your workspace is moved down to the Free plan. At that point a red banner appears across the top of the app:
Your payment failed and your subscription has been canceled. Reactivate Pro to restore your flows.
The banner gives you two choices: Reactivate Pro and Stay on Free. It stays visible until you pick one or until you successfully return to a paid plan.
What happens to your live flows
The Free plan allows one active cancellation flow per workspace. So when your workspace is moved down to Free after a failed payment, we keep your most recently created live flow active and automatically pause every other live flow. Any A/B tests you had running are stopped at the same time.
Pausing does not delete anything. Your paused flows — along with all their surveys, offers, and settings — are kept exactly as they were. They simply stop intercepting cancellations until your workspace returns to a paid plan. We also quietly remember which flows we paused, so we can bring them back later.
⚠️ Only the auto-paused flows are remembered
If you manually delete a paused flow, or manually re-activate it yourself, it won't be part of the automatic restore later. Restore only brings back flows that we paused for you and that are still paused and not deleted.
Reactivate Pro vs. Stay on Free
From the banner you decide how to proceed:
Reactivate Pro — takes you to the Billing page so you can return to a paid plan. Once you do, your subscription becomes active again and the flows we paused during the downgrade are restored.
Stay on Free — dismisses the banner and keeps you on the Free plan. Your single active flow keeps working; the rest stay paused. You can come back and upgrade at any time.
Choosing Stay on Free only hides the banner for this particular event — it doesn't delete any of your paused flows, and you can always reactivate later. If a future payment fails again on a new subscription, a fresh banner will appear.
How reactivating Pro restores your flows
When you return to Pro, here's what happens:
Your new paid subscription is created and charged.
The flows we paused during the involuntary downgrade are automatically switched back from paused to live — no need to re-publish them one by one.
Any team members who were deactivated during the downgrade are reactivated too.
Restoration is for the specific flows that were paused during your most recent payment-failure downgrade. Flows you deleted in the meantime, or ones you'd already re-activated yourself, are left as they are. If you'd rather not bring everything back, you can pause individual flows again from your flows list after reactivating.
💡 Need help?
If you've updated your card and still see the banner, or your flows didn't come back as expected after reactivating, reach out to us from the Support button and we'll sort it out.