When managing recurring purchases or memberships, you may encounter customers who wish to cancel their use of your service. In those cases, they might opt to cancel or pause their subscription, but how does that affect your business and the customer in question? Let's go over the differences between the two.

Cancelling a Subscription

Cancelling a subscription is a permanent termination, requiring the customer to resubscribe and opt in if they wish to use the service again. Once a customer cancels their subscription through the client portal, the system will automatically stop billing and mark their status as canceled.

Once a subscription is cancelled, even if done manually, you can't revert this status. Clicking the three dots next to it will exclusively give you the option to view the subscription.

Pausing a Subscription

Pausing is a temporary suspension of the service and billing, allowing you to resume at a later date without needing to re-subscribe. It gives you a bigger leeway when it comes to management, as you can reactivate it manually or automatically without needing the customer to undergo the subscription process again.

To manually pause a subscription, click the three dots next to it and select Pause.

Select the pause duration. Selecting indefinite (1) will pause the subscription until further action is taken manually, and selecting custom date (2) will let you set an automated restart date for the subscription.

Select how you want to handle the invoices, then click confirm.

Besides these mechanical differences, you can set your own if needed. For example, you might delete a customer's information upon a subscription being cancelled or remove access to content immediately. However, those additional details are up to you.