Updated: March, 2025
Why let customers cancel when they can pause a subscription? Learn how giving customers a break can reduce churn, improve retention, and protect your revenue. Discover best practices for effective implementation.
For subscription businesses, retention isn’t just important—it’s essential. Relying solely on new acquisitions is unsustainable, making it critical to keep existing customers engaged.
Why Subscription Pause Matters in 2025 More Than Ever
Budget constraints, too many subscriptions, increased desire for personalized experiences (“how I want it, when I want it”), and changing priorities are driving even loyal subscribers to churn.
When cancellation is the only option, you don’t just lose revenue – you lose the relationship you’ve worked so hard to build. Our findings show that around 10% of customers who cancel an auto-renewal subscription would rather pause their subscriptions, if it was an option. This percentage increases significantly when considering all subscription types, not just auto-renewals. Also, subscription pause usage increased 68% in 2024, showing an increased need for businesses to offer this option.
When You Offer Subscription Pauses, Your Customers Gain:
- Peace of mind and convenience – Instead of canceling and re-subscribing later, and having to go through the entire signup process again, customers can pause their subscription and resume seamlessly within your set limits.
- Financial flexibility – They manage subscription costs within personal budget constraints
- Control – Personalize their subscription experience as they need it.
- Customer delight – You show you care about your customers and their needs by offering extra flexibility.
How Your Business Benefits From Offering Subscription Pauses:
- Reduce churn & increase customer lifetime value (CLTV) – Pausing gives customers an alternative to canceling, keeping them engaged and reducing lost revenue. And, let’s face it, if customers want to cancel only temporarily, they may even forget later to re-subscribe or may be lured in by a competitor.
- Maintain customer relationships & lower customer acquisition costs (CAC): Subscribers remain in your ecosystem rather than disappearing completely
- Minimize involuntary churn – Subscriptions with temporary payment issues that are likely to get resolved quickly can be paused until the payment goes through.
- Get alternative revenue sources – Request fees for access to certain product-related information or offer downgraded products for the duration of the pause period.
- Gain valuable insights: Learn why customers are pausing and use those reasons to inform packaging, pricing, promotions, etc.
10 Best Practices in Pause Subscription Options
1. Integrate pause into your cancellation flow and keep the option visible and easily accessible.
Within the Billing area of your app, place pause options prominently within the cancellation journey.
Tip: Present pausing as an appealing alternative before they reach the final cancellation button.
Source: Easy steps to cancel Canva Pro, Funnelgraphic.com
2. Let the customers set the pause period they need, within your terms.
While flexibility matters, boundaries are essential – offer pause limits that make sense for your customers and your business and adjust these in time based on the most successful combinations.
Tip: Typical options include: 1 month, 3 months. Longer pauses – 6 months, or even one year, may work for seasonal products.
Source: 2Checkout – Pause subscription option offered in the Billing & Payments area
3. Ask for feedback regarding why they want to pause – do this via free text, or a quick drop-down list.
Tip: Here are some survey option examples:
- Don’t use the service as much// Need the product less often
- Need to reduce my costs
- Using this seasonally, don’t need it now
- Other
4. Once set, clearly confirm the pause, its duration, and any billing implications—both in-app and via email, for the customer to have a record and to know what to expect.
5. Remind the customer about the value of the pause, instead of cancelling:
- Locking in existing pricing
- Keep account history and preferences
- Avoid reactivation fees
- Reserve access to exclusive content or features
- Getting access to perks.
6. Offer a freemium alternative during the pause.
Instead of going completely inactive, give paused subscribers the option to stay engaged with a free or limited-access version of your service. This keeps your brand top of mind, maintains product familiarity, and increases the chances of reactivation.
Tip: Allow access to basic features, past content, or limited usage while highlighting features they can only access with a paid version, and the benefits of a full subscription.
7. Offer downgrades, upgrades or alternative billing cycles.
Sometimes, customers don’t need a pause to their subscription, they may need a different product tier or more predictability in managing their budget.
8. Communicate value throughout the pause.
Send email campaigns to remind customers about the value of the subscription, and include incentives to restart sooner.
Tip: Personalize incentives based on pause reasons you collected before. Price sensitivity? Offer downgraded plans during pause periods | Too many products? Suggest reduced frequency options.
9. Send reminders when it’s time to resume the subscription, reinforcing the value they’ll regain and clearly outlining upcoming charges – be transparent!
10. Double-down on the incentives to stay.
If at the end of the pause period, they want to go ahead and cancel altogether instead of resuming the subscription, offer even more flexibility: continue the pause, or offer additional discounts.
The Behind The Scenes of Subscription Pause
If subscription billing was not complex enough, subscription pause adds another layer of complexity – for example, when subscribers request to pause a subscription, this should remain active until the end of the current billing cycle and then move into a paused status for a pre-defined time period.
Just ensure your subscription billing and payments provider has the capabilities for subscription pause, offering your customers and your support team the tools they need to manage subscription pause seamlessly. Look for solutions that enable pausing through multiple channels—API calls, customer account interfaces, and merchant control panels—to provide maximum flexibility.
Measuring The Impact of Subscription Pauses
Implementing subscription pauses is just the beginning—measuring their impact is crucial for optimizing your retention strategy. Track key metrics like:
- Pause-to-resume rate: The percentage of paused subscriptions that eventually resume
- Average pause duration: Understanding how long customers typically pause helps with revenue forecasting
- Churn prevention rate: Compare cancellation rates before and after implementing pause features
- Pause reason analysis: Identify patterns in why customers pause to address potential product or pricing issues
- Lifetime value impact: Calculate how paused subscribers affect overall customer lifetime value
Subscription pauses create a new customer segment requiring specific analysis and targeting. By understanding this segment’s behavior, you can continually refine your approach to maximizing retention and revenue.
Making Subscription Pause Part of Your Retention Strategy
In your efforts to retain subscribers, always remember that offering excellent customer experience plays a huge part. Offering subscribers the alternative to pause their subscriptions is one foolproof way to improve your customer experience.
Subscription pauses are just one piece of a larger retention strategy—combining product engagement, customer experience, and perceived value. Most importantly, it’s something you can directly influence and improve with the right tools.
Source: 2Checkout
Check out more tried and tested retention strategies effective for your subscription business. Read our eBook on How to Maximize Recurring Revenue and Grow Your Subscription Business to find out more tactics that you can use to improve your retention efforts.
