For Ghost publishers with paid members
Recover failed Ghost membership payments automatically
Ghost bills your paid members through your own Stripe account, so every expired card and bank decline shows up there first. Creator Dunning watches that account and emails the member in your name until the payment goes through.
What Ghost does today
Ghost relies on Stripe's automatic retries and shows the member a banner the next time they visit your site. Members who don't visit never learn their card failed, and the subscription quietly ends.
How Creator Dunning connects
Ghost stores your Stripe connection in Settings → Membership. Creator Dunning connects to that same Stripe account with a read-only OAuth authorization; nothing changes inside Ghost and no theme code is touched.
Common questions
- Does this work with Ghost(Pro) and self-hosted Ghost?
- Yes. Both use your own Stripe account for paid memberships, which is all Creator Dunning needs.
- Will members get duplicate emails?
- Stripe's own failed-payment email is optional and off by default for most accounts; if you have it on, you can turn it off in Stripe Billing settings so members only hear from you.
- Do I need to change my Ghost portal or theme?
- No. The payment link in our email goes to Stripe's hosted invoice page, where the member updates their card in a few seconds.
Roughly one in ten renewals fails. Most are fixable.
Industry data puts involuntary churn at 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.
Connect your Stripe account