For Circle communities with paid memberships
Recover failed Circle paywall payments automatically
Circle paywalls bill each recurring membership as a Stripe subscription in the Stripe account behind your community. When a renewal fails, Creator Dunning emails the member in your name with the amount and a link to pay, then every three days for 30 days, and it stops when they pay.
FromJane's Field Notes Billing
Reply-tojane@example.com
SubjectYour $8.00 payment to Jane's Field Notes didn't go through
Hi Sam,
We couldn't process the $8.00 payment for your Jane's Field Notes subscription. Your subscription stays active for now, but we'll need an updated payment method to keep it that way.
Update your payment method and pay now
If you've already resolved this, you can ignore this email. Reply to this message if you have any questions.
Jane
$8.00 recovered
Sam updated their card · 2 days later
Circle today
Circle's own paywall emails cover signups, trials and trial expiry. When a renewal fails, Stripe retries the card on the schedule in your Stripe settings, and it emails the member only if you've switched on its failed-payment email. The member keeps access while the payment is past due, then loses it when Stripe cancels the subscription after the last retry.
How Creator Dunning connects
When you set up paywalls, Circle creates a Stripe business for your community, under your existing Stripe login if you have one, and your members' subscriptions live there. Connect that business to Creator Dunning through Stripe; we read its subscriptions and invoices. Nothing changes in Circle, and when a member pays, Circle sees the renewal from Stripe like any other.
Common questions
Before you connect.
Which Stripe account do I connect?
The business Circle created for your community. If you connected an existing Stripe login, Circle added a separate business under it, and your paywall subscriptions are there rather than in your main one, so pick that business when Stripe asks. If you're not sure, connect and the audit will show whether your renewals appear.
What happens when Stripe cancels the subscription?
Reminders stop, because paying after that wouldn't restore the membership, and Circle removes the member's access. So the retry window in your Stripe settings is how long a member has to fix their card, and how long we keep reminding them, up to 30 days.
Will members get two emails?
Only if Stripe's own failed-payment email is on (Stripe: Settings, Billing, Subscriptions and emails). Keep both, or switch Stripe's off so members hear from you every three days and nothing more.
Where do members update their card?
The link in our email goes to Stripe's hosted page for that invoice, where the member updates their card and pays without signing in to your community. Paying it makes the subscription active again in Stripe, and because Circle keeps access open while a payment is past due, the member never loses it.
Roughly one in ten renewals fails
Most of them are fixable.
Involuntary churn is 20–40% of all subscription churn, and Stripe's default retries recover only 25–35% of failed consumer payments. A timely, personal email closes most of that gap. See the numbers and sources.