Auto-downgrade on failed payment
Recover revenue you’d otherwise lose — when a renewal fails and grace runs out, move the customer to a cheaper plan instead of cancelling.
- Failed renewal → cheaper plan
- Beats outright cancellation
- Pro plan switching
When a renewal ultimately fails, the default is cancellation — but a cancelled customer is $0 of recovered revenue. With auto-downgrade on payment failure (Pro), ArraySubs instead moves the customer to a cheaper plan they can afford, keeping some revenue and the relationship. This recipe links a paid plan to a cheaper one and enables downgrade-on-failure as the endgame of your grace period.
- Failed renewals fall back to a cheaper plan, not cancellation.
- You keep partial revenue instead of losing the customer.
- Runs after the normal grace/retry window.
- Customer is notified of the plan change.
The exact configuration
Enter these values and you have the setup live. Every field maps to a real ArraySubs setting.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Linked downgrade productProduct → Linked Products | Cheaper plan (e.g. $9 Basic) |
| Auto-downgrade timingPlan switching settings (Pro) | On payment failure |
| Active Grace DaysGeneral Settings → Renewals | 3 (default) — retry window first |
| On-Hold Grace DaysGeneral Settings → Renewals | 7 (default) — before downgrade fires |
When to use this setup
Set it up in 3 steps
A step-by-step guide drawn from the ArraySubs user manual. Open the linked page for the full walkthrough and screenshots.
Set up a cheaper target plan
Create or identify the lower-tier product the customer should fall back to (e.g. a $9 Basic plan).
Create & Configure Subscription ProductsLink it as the downgrade target
On the paid product’s Linked Products, set the cheaper plan as the downgrade target.
Plan Switching & RelationshipsEnable downgrade on payment failure
Turn on auto-downgrade with timing ‘on payment failure’ so it fires when the grace period would otherwise cancel the subscription.
Recovery & Grace Flows
This recipe is built from these ArraySubs user-manual guides:
Notes & edge cases
Modules behind this recipe
The ArraySubs modules this setup relies on.
Billing and Renewals
How ArraySubs creates, schedules, communicates, and collects recurring payments from first invoice to final renewal.
Subscription Products
Create and manage simple or variable subscription products with trials, signup fees, plan logic, and lifecycle behavior.
Related setups to explore
Other configurations you can build with the same modules.
Trial → auto-downgrade to free
When a trial ends without payment, automatically move the customer to a free plan instead of cancelling.
Lenient failed-payment recovery
Give customers a long, forgiving grace period after a failed payment before anything is cancelled.
Offer a cheaper plan
Instead of losing a customer, offer a downgrade to a cheaper plan during cancellation — keeps revenue on the table.
Questions, answered
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