[cersa8]

I like this a lot even though my primary reason is unexpected subscription renewal. I started a membership site and tried to use every single thing I would want as a customer. One of the things was a reminder that my yearly membership was about to expire, and by doing nothing this would indeed happen. No automatic renewal (but keeping the account in an inactive state). Confident customers can renew for 3 years with a discount, but nothing will automatically renew. Turns out, customers love this attitude and happily renew when it's time.

[tailspin2019]

This is a nice approach. Have you considered giving customers the option to turn on automatic renewal?

There are certain specific things that I would want always to auto renew (like domain names, hosting related stuff etc)

If I ever get round to building a subscription SaaS I might consider “off by default” auto-renewal and leave it to customers to turn it on if want it… though this does add a bit of complexity I guess.

[cersa8]

Have considered and have been told many times this is costing me revenue (which I think might be true). But I've never had a customer ask for it. Which is an important signal for me to consider a feature. Online payments are very easy for my target audience (mostly Dutch retail customers) with iDEAL so the benefits of automatic renewal is low.

[zdkl]

In some circles that'll count against you if you try to sell the product/company. Investors are interested in recurring revenue and will value it very differently than your loose-relation clients. Not saying it's a thing you should always do, but worth keeping in mind.

[kalleboo]

Right, if your product is your company, this is the wrong attitude. But if you product is your product, then it's fantastic.

[shanecleveland]

I use Stripe to manage payments for a subscription site with both monthly and annual options. I have renewal reminders turned off, because it seems like overkill for a monthly renewal – no option to only have it on for yearly plans. I worried about issues with yearly renewals, so I set up my own service to send a renewal reminder for yearly subscribers. I would rather have more customers not renew on friendly terms than deal with surprise charges. And I figure it may prompt some to check and update payment methods or spur them back into actively using the service more.