When a subscription renewal payment fails, Newspack automatically retries charging the reader’s credit card up to five times, following this schedule:

  1. 12 hours after the payment failure
  2. Another 12 hours later
  3. 24 hours later
  4. 48 hours later
  5. 72 hours later

During this retry period, the subscription status remains On-Hold. If all five retry attempts fail, and the “On-hold duration” is reached, it will then transition to Expired.

On-Hold Duration

The default On-hold duration is 30 days. You can extend or shorten the time a subscription stays On-Hold before transitioning to Expired. During this period, subscribers can update their payment details to reactivate their subscription at its current price. After this period ends, a final payment attempt will be made automatically.

This option is useful for targeting readers who may need extra time to update their payment details, such as when their credit card expires.

To configure this setting:

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.
  2. Scroll down to the Newspack Subscriptions Settings section.
  3. Adjust the “On-hold Duration” as desired.

Automatic Status Transitions

  1. If a subscription has exhausted all payment retries and passed the On-Hold duration, it will automatically transition to Expired.
  2. Subscriptions set to manual renewal where the subscriber has not yet completed payment (typically via check) by the end of the On-Hold duration +7 days will transition to Expired. 
  3. Subscriptions intentionally placed On-Hold by the publisher for specific reasons will remain On-Hold for the duration period then moved to Expired.
  4. Subscriptions with failed initial payments that were never activated are moved to Trash. These go straight to Trash and do not sit in the on-hold duration period.

To simplify subscription renewal, Newspack provides a magic link that readers can use to go directly to the renewal payment page. This eliminates the need for readers to navigate to My Account and manually locate their subscription.

The magic link format is: https://<your site url>/my-account/renew-subscription

Replace <your site url> with your site URL.

Note: If a reader has more than one subscription due for renewal, the link will redirect them to their Subscriptions List page instead.

Synching Subscription Cancellation Reasons with your ESP

Newspack tracks subscription cancellation reasons (user-canceled, manually canceled, or expired) and can sync this information with your email service provider (ESP) to help you create targeted win-back campaigns.

To ensure this data is sent to your ESP:

  1. Navigate to Audience > Configuration.
  2. Under Metadata field settings, check Subscription Cancellation Reason.
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