Subscription Payment Recovery System
Custom Dunning Workflow for WooCommerce Subscription Renewals
Skills applied to this project
Built a custom dunning and payment-recovery workflow for WooCommerce Subscriptions that significantly reduced involuntary churn — through smart retry logic, customer communication sequences, and graceful access management.
What was the problem?
A membership site using WooCommerce Subscriptions was losing a meaningful share of its subscribers each month due to failed renewal payments — expired cards, insufficient funds, and temporary bank blocks. WooCommerce's default behavior sent one failure email and then cancelled the subscription. Many of these were recoverable with a smarter retry strategy and customer communication flow.
How I solved it
I built a custom dunning plugin that intercepts WooCommerce Subscriptions' payment failure flow and replaces it with a configurable multi-step recovery workflow. Step 1: silent retry after 24 hours. Step 2: friendly card-update email + retry after 3 days. Step 3: urgency email + retry after 7 days. Step 4: suspend access (not cancel). Step 5: final notice, then cancellation after 14 days. All steps are logged and the admin can override at any step per subscriber.
Measurable results
Involuntary churn from failed payments dropped significantly in the first full quarter, recovering meaningful monthly recurring revenue. Subscribers appreciated the grace period, and many updated their payment methods within the first retry window.
- Involuntary churn from failed payments reduced significantly
- Recovered meaningful monthly recurring revenue
- Most recoveries happened within the first retry window
- Majority of failed payments recovered before access suspension
- Full admin visibility into dunning status per subscriber
Technical highlights
- Custom dunning plugin built on WooCommerce Subscriptions hooks
- WP Action Scheduler for retry queue management and scheduling
- Configurable workflow steps with time delays and email templates
- Subscription access management: suspend vs. cancel separation
- Admin dunning dashboard with per-subscriber status and override controls
- Webhook support for payment gateway retry response handling
My process applied to this project
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Diagnose
Understand the real business problem, user flow, and technical constraints before touching code.
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Plan
Choose the cleanest technical approach, identify dependencies, and define what success looks like.
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Build
Create custom WordPress/PHP solutions, plugins, integrations, or automations using best practices.
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Test
Validate edge cases, staging behavior, logs, checkout flows, order statuses, and user roles.
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Deploy
Release carefully with rollback awareness, staging verification, and clear documentation.
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Improve
Monitor, optimize, and refine based on real usage, client feedback, and production behavior.
Tech used in this project
How AI accelerated this work
AI tools helped me review error logs, trace query patterns, and generate diagnostic hypotheses in minutes rather than hours — so I could focus on fixing, not searching.
I used AI to audit integration logic, catch silent failure paths, and validate that custom hooks would hold up under different WooCommerce states before going live.
AI-assisted documentation made the final plugin handoff clear and actionable for the client's internal team — reducing support questions after delivery.
Have a similar challenge?
I help e-commerce teams solve the technical problems that cost them time and revenue. Let's talk about yours.
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