Automated Dunning
Automated dunning that doesn't spam your customers
Every dunning tool promises full automation. Here's the part they leave out: automation is great at the mechanics of failed payment recovery — and terrible at talking to humans. StayPaid splits the job.
What is automated dunning?
Automated dunning is software that detects a failed subscription payment and follows up on its own: retrying the charge at the right time and emailing the customer to update their card. Done well, it recovers revenue that would otherwise silently become involuntary churn.
Most failed payments aren't customers leaving — they're expired cards, bank hiccups, and bad timing. That's why dunning automation works at all: the customer usually wants to stay. They just need a nudge that actually reaches them.
What automation does well — and where it breaks
Machines win at
- Detecting a failed charge the second it happens
- Retry timing based on the decline reason
- Sequencing: day 1, 3, 7, 14 without you tracking anything
- Never forgetting, never being too busy
Machines lose at
- Emails that sound like a cron job wrote them
- no-reply addresses customers have trained themselves to ignore
- Knowing when a big customer deserves a real conversation
- Knowing when to stop pushing and let one go
The hybrid: automated mechanics, human messages
StayPaid automates everything on the left column and keeps you in the right one. When a payment fails, we detect it via Stripe webhook, schedule the retry, and draft a short personal email — from your address, in your voice. You approve it with one click, or edit it first. The customer gets a message that reads like a founder who noticed, not a billing system that fired.
Want full automation for specific payments? Opt in per payment and we'll run the whole sequence hands-off. That's the founder-in-the-loop approach: manual by default, automated where you choose.
How automated dunning works in StayPaid
- 1
A payment fails
Stripe fires a webhook. StayPaid catches it instantly and reads the decline code — expired card, insufficient funds, SCA friction, or a plain bank decline.
- 2
Automation handles the mechanics
The retry is scheduled based on the failure reason, and the 4-email recovery sequence (day 1, 3, 7, 14) is queued up.
- 3
You review the message
A personal email is drafted from your address. One click approves it. Thirty seconds if you want to add a line about their account.
- 4
The customer updates their card
Because the email came from a human, it gets opened and acted on. The retry lands on a working card. MRR saved.
Full sequence details: failed payment recovery docs · manual vs automated dunning
Automated dunning FAQ
What is automated dunning?
Automated dunning is software that detects a failed subscription payment and follows up without you lifting a finger: retrying the charge at a smart time and emailing the customer to update their card. The goal is recovering revenue you'd otherwise lose to involuntary churn.
Is fully automated dunning worth it?
The automation part, yes — detecting failures instantly and timing retries is where machines genuinely win. The messaging part is where full automation falls apart: template emails from no-reply addresses get ignored. Automated mechanics plus a human-reviewed message outperforms both pure manual and pure automated setups.
Does StayPaid automate the emails too?
By default, no — StayPaid drafts the recovery emails and you approve them with one click, so every message sounds like you. If you want full automation for specific payments, you can opt in per payment. You keep control; the robots do the boring parts.
How is this different from Stripe Smart Retries?
Stripe Smart Retries only retries the charge — it never talks to your customer. Many failures (expired cards, replaced cards, SCA friction) can't be fixed by retrying. StayPaid combines retry timing with personal emails that get the card updated.
Automated where it counts. Human where it matters.
Start Free — First 3 recoveries