Subscription pausing for WordPress: pause instead of cancel

An online course or coaching membership can retain students who need to step away during exams, holidays, or busy work periods. Instead of canceling and losing their progress and community, students pause for a month or two and come back to the same account.

Fitness, wellness, and seasonal memberships often see members drop off at predictable times of the year. Letting them pause through the off-season, an injury, or travel keeps them on your books and brings them back paying, without having to win them over again.

Publishers, communities, and content subscriptions can offer pausing as a retention step for members on a tight budget. A short, no-charge break is often all it takes to turn a cancellation into a returning subscriber.

Beyond those examples, the addon is useful for:

• Membership sites reducing churn by offering a pause before a member cancels.
• Clubs and associations whose members are away for part of the year.
• Subscription boxes and services where customers want to skip a few billing cycles.
• Support teams who need to pause a member’s billing during a dispute, outage, or special circumstance.

Members choose how long to pause for, like “Until December 23”, and confirm. Before they confirm, they’re told exactly when the membership pause ends and how long they keep access.

Paused subscriptions show when they resume, with a Resume button for members who want to come back early:

• Resume while the paid period is still running, and billing simply continues from the paid-until date.
• Resume after it ends, and billing restarts straight away. Access returns as soon as the payment goes through.

Decide how pausing works on your WordPress membership site:

• Maximum Pause Length: the longest a member can pause for, from 1 to 12 billing periods.
• Pause Limit: how many times a member can pause the same subscription, or no limit at all.
• Pause Until Resumed: optionally let members pause with no end date and resume whenever they like.

Every membership plan can follow your global settings, turn pausing off, or have its own rules.

For example, let monthly members pause up to twice, for up to 3 months each time, and don’t let members on a discounted plan pause at all.

Pause any member’s subscription yourself from the subscription screen in WordPress by changing its status to Paused and choosing how long to pause it. Your pause limits don’t apply.

Each paused subscription shows when and by whom it was paused, when it resumes, how long the member keeps access, and how many times it has been paused.

Members get an email confirming their subscription is paused, how long they keep access, and when it resumes.

A reminder email goes out a few days before a pause ends, so billing never surprises them. You choose how many days before, and both emails can be edited in the ProfilePress email settings.

Stripe

Pauses payment collection. Pauses made in the Stripe dashboard or Stripe customer portal sync back.

PayPal

Suspends the subscription and reactivates it when the pause ends.

Razorpay

Suspends the subscription and reactivates it when the pause ends.

Paddle

Schedules the pause with Paddle, which resumes the subscription at the end date.