Smart payment recovery automatically retries failed subscription payments and sends your customers timely emails with a one-click way to fix their card — so you recover revenue that would otherwise be lost to failed cards, without chasing customers yourself.
What Smart payment recovery does
When a subscription payment fails, Smart payment recovery looks at why it failed and responds with the right strategy. A temporary problem like insufficient funds is retried automatically over the following days. A card-related problem like an expired card is not blindly retried — instead the customer is emailed a clear way to switch to another card. Throughout, your customer receives a short series of emails that explain what happened and how to fix it.
It also works ahead of time: when a saved card is about to expire, Smart payment recovery can email the customer before the next charge even runs, so the payment succeeds on the first try.
Which stores get it, and which plan unlocks what
New Subi stores get the Short recovery window active automatically — there is nothing to turn on. Stores that are already using Subi's older classic recovery keep working on classic and switch to Smart payment recovery whenever they choose (see "If your store is on classic recovery" below) — no store is migrated automatically.
Longer recovery windows and the advanced controls are tiered:
All plans — the Short recovery window, automatic retries, and customer recovery emails.
Subi plan — the Standard recovery window, a custom sender name and reply-to address, and per-row actions on the sequences list.
Subi Plus — the Aggressive recovery window, proactive card-expiry (pre-dunning) emails, advanced email customization, and bulk actions plus CSV export on the sequences list.
Locked controls are still visible on the page with an upgrade prompt, so you can see what a higher plan unlocks.
Where to find it
Open Retention → Payment recovery in your Subi admin. At the top of the page a short performance strip shows how recovery is doing; below it the settings are grouped into two sections:
Recovery behaviour — how and when Subi retries a failed payment: the Recovery window, If recovery fails (the fallback action) and Recovered billing orders.
Customer messaging — what the customer receives, and through which channel. Under Email you will find Sender identity, Pre-dunning and Customer emails; under SMS, the SMS reminders box.
The page header shows a status badge and a More actions menu at the top right that holds View all sequences, Deactivate recovery and Learn more. If your store is on classic recovery, this same page is also where you switch to Smart payment recovery.
Choosing a recovery window
The recovery window controls how long Subi keeps trying to recover a failed payment and how the customer emails are paced. You choose one of three presets:
Short — the briefest retry and email schedule. Active by default on every new store and available on all plans.
Standard — a longer schedule that recovers more payments. Available on the Subi plan.
Aggressive — the longest schedule for maximum recovery. Available on Subi Plus.
The recovery window sits in the Recovery behaviour section. Each tile shows a preview of its retry timeline. Pick a tile, then save with the bar that appears at the top of the page.
Setting your sender identity
In the Sender identity box under Customer messaging → Email, on the Subi and Subi Plus plans you can set the From name and Reply-to email used on recovery emails — for example "Sarah from Acme Subscriptions" instead of a generic store name. A recognizable sender improves open rates and helps customers trust the email. On the Free plan, recovery emails use your store name and a default no-reply address.
Choosing a fallback action
If every retry is used up and the payment still has not recovered, the fallback action — set in the If recovery fails box under Recovery behaviour — decides what happens to the subscription. You can have Subi pause or cancel the subscription, and a final email is sent to the customer letting them know and inviting them to update their card to resume.
If you use Subi's Klaviyo integration, the moment recovery ends without the payment being recovered Subi can also send a Subscription Recovery Ended event to Klaviyo, so you can follow up with your own win-back flow — see How do I connect Subi with Klaviyo?
What your customers receive
Customers receive a short, escalating series of recovery emails — typically on day 0, day 3, and (on longer windows) day 7 and day 14. Each email leads with the specific reason the payment failed and gives a clear way to fix it: a primary Update payment method button, and — when the customer has another card saved — one-click buttons to switch to that card and retry immediately.
Customers can also act from their subscription portal: a failed-payment banner shows the card that failed, an Update payment method button, and any backup cards on file — so they can fix the payment without waiting for an email.
You can preview every customer email before anything is sent. Under Customer messaging → Email, the Customer emails box lists the templates by name — Day 0 — Payment failed, Day 3 — Reminder, Day 7 — Reminder, Day 14 — Final notice and Pre-dunning — Card expiring soon. Select the … menu at the end of a row to Preview that email or, on plans that unlock customization, to Edit it; a template your plan does not unlock shows Upgrade to unlock instead.
The Email customers about failed payments checkbox at the top of the same box controls the Day 0 to Day 14 emails for your whole store. Turn it off to keep retrying failed cards silently — those emails stop sending, including to customers whose card was declined outright. Pre-dunning keeps its own setting.
Proactive card-expiry alerts
On Subi Plus, Smart payment recovery can email customers before a saved card expires — a "your card may be expiring soon" message sent ahead of the next billing date. This often prevents the failed payment from happening at all. It is a switch in the Pre-dunning box under Customer messaging → Email, so you can turn it off for your store if you prefer. On plans that do not include it, the box shows a padlock and reads Available on Subi Plus.
SMS reminders
The SMS reminders box under Customer messaging → SMS lets Subi text the customer on Day 3 and Day 7 with a link to update their card, on top of the recovery emails. Turn on the Send recovery SMS reminders switch to enable it. Texts go only to customers who opted in to SMS, they are billed to your account per message, and a customer can reply STOP to opt out.
While the switch is off, the box reminds you that no recovery texts are sent and that email recovery still runs, and links to Notifications, where you manage your SMS sender, consent and templates. If SMS is not yet set up for your store, or not included in your plan, the box says so and the switch stays locked until it is.
Monitoring recovery
There are three places to keep an eye on recovery:
Payment recovery page — the performance strip at the top of the page shows your recovery rate, recovered revenue and at-risk MRR for the selected period.
Sequences list — open it from More actions → View all sequences at the top right of the page. It is a full, filterable list of in-progress and finished recoveries. From here you can retry, skip, or mark a sequence as lost, and (on Subi Plus) apply actions in bulk or export to CSV.
Subscription detail — each subscription shows a Payment recovery panel with the failure reason, the current step, and the next scheduled action.
The payment section of your Analytics overview also adds an active-recovery figure, a failure-reason breakdown, and a retry funnel.
Pausing and resuming Smart payment recovery
You can pause all Smart payment recovery activity for your store at any time — for example during a billing review or a quiet period — without losing your configuration. Open Retention → Payment recovery; the page header shows a status badge, and the More actions menu at the top right holds Deactivate recovery. When recovery is off, an Activate recovery button takes its place in the header.
To pause, open More actions, select Deactivate recovery and confirm. The badge changes to Deactivated, a banner appears at the top of the page, and the change saves immediately. While recovery is deactivated:
No new card retries are attempted, and no recovery emails are sent.
Recovery sequences that are already in progress stay paused the whole time recovery is off, and resume only when you reactivate — they are not cancelled.
All of your recovery settings — window, fallback action, sender identity, and email content — are preserved.
Deactivating is not the same as switching back to classic recovery: your smart settings stay exactly as they are. Note that a payment which fails while recovery is deactivated is not retried by Smart payment recovery or by classic recovery until you turn recovery back on.
To resume, select Activate recovery from the page header or the banner. Recovery turns back on immediately, with no confirmation step, and any paused sequences continue on their next scheduled run.
If your store is on classic recovery
Stores that were already using Subi's older classic recovery keep working exactly as before — nothing changes automatically. When you are ready to switch, open Retention → Payment recovery: a "Smart payment recovery is available" banner sits right above your classic recovery settings. Selecting it shows a before-and-after comparison, and on confirming you move to Smart payment recovery with the Standard window — all from that same page.
Next steps
Open Retention → Payment recovery to review your recovery window and sender identity, or to switch over from classic recovery. If you have questions or need help choosing a window for your store, contact our support team and we will be glad to help.