Paused subscriptions
Many billing systems let a customer pause a subscription instead of canceling it: billing stops for a while, and the subscription picks up again later. GrowPanel shows the subscriptions that are paused right now as paused, not as paying customers and not as churn.
What happens to MRR
A paused subscription isn't being billed, so it carries no MRR while it's paused.
- The MRR leaves as a Paused movement when the period the customer already paid for runs out. A customer who pauses halfway through a paid month keeps counting until the end of that month.
- A customer whose subscriptions are all paused gets the status Paused. They don't count as a subscriber while paused, so your subscriber count, ARPA and MRR describe the customers who are actually paying.
- If a customer pauses one of several subscriptions, they stay Active with the remaining MRR.
- If the billing system knows when the pause ends, the comeback is scheduled in committed MRR (CMRR). So is a pause that only takes effect when the current paid period ends.
Paused isn't churn, so it doesn't affect your churn rates. It's its own line next to churn in the MRR breakdown, so your MRR always adds up.
Current pauses only
GrowPanel reads pauses from the subscriptions in your billing system, and billing systems only tell what's paused right now. Stripe and Recurly keep no record of earlier pauses that GrowPanel could import. So:
- A subscription shows as paused for as long as it's paused in your billing system.
- When it resumes, GrowPanel treats the pause period as if the customer had kept paying through it. When it's canceled instead, the customer counts as churned from the end of the last period they paid for.
This keeps your numbers identical every time your data is re-imported, including for history imported when you first connect.
Where you see pauses
Pauses only show up when you have them. Accounts without paused subscriptions won't see any of this.
- Dashboard: a Paused MRR widget with how much MRR is paused right now, how many subscribers, and how much is due back soon.
- Subscribers → Paused: who is paused right now, the MRR they paid before pausing, since when, and when they're expected back.
- MRR breakdown and MRR movements: a Paused line next to churn.
- Customers: a Paused status and status filter.
- Latest activity and MRR alerts (email, Slack, Teams, webhooks): pauses and resumes get their own wording. Pause alerts follow your contraction threshold and resume alerts your expansion threshold.
Billing systems
| Billing system | What counts as paused |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Paused payment collection (void, keep as draft or mark uncollectible) and subscriptions with the status paused. A subscription that's paused because a free trial ended without a payment method was never paying, so it's handled as an ended trial. |
| Chargebee | Subscriptions with the status paused, plus scheduled pauses and resume dates. |
| Recurly | Subscriptions with the state paused, plus pauses scheduled for the next renewal and resume dates. |
Pauses made with a 100% discount coupon aren't pauses to the billing system, so they follow the Keep zero-MRR subscriptions active setting as before.
FAQ
Why did my MRR change when this feature arrived? Before, a subscription with paused payments in Stripe often kept its full MRR, sometimes for months, until GrowPanel counted it as churn. Now it shows as paused from the end of the last paid period.
Can I see how much MRR was paused last year? No. Billing systems don't keep pause history that GrowPanel can import, so GrowPanel only shows what's paused right now.
Can I count paused subscriptions as active MRR instead? No. MRR is what you're billing right now, and a paused subscription isn't billed. The Paused report and the dashboard widget show exactly how much MRR is waiting to come back.
