RevGuard retries failed Stripe and PayPal payments based on the decline reason, emails the customer a card-update link, and stops as soon as they pay. A daily check warns customers before their card expires, and a dashboard shows why each payment failed. It runs on your own server or computer, so billing data stays with you.
Vathsalya and NeurAI are early RevGuard users who agreed to share these figures.
Sources: Baremetrics, involuntary churn data across subscription businesses (about 9% of monthly recurring revenue lost to failed payments). Retry and recovery rates are the benchmarks published by dunning vendors, so treat them as directional.
Vathsalya and NeurAI run RevGuard on their own Stripe accounts and agreed to share these figures.
Using RevGuard and want your results listed here? Email us your first cycle and we will write it up with you. hello@revguardlabs.org
Stripe recovery, PayPal recovery and an expiring-card watchdog, plus a dashboard showing what each one did. They import into n8n, which you run yourself, and take about 15 minutes to set up.
When a charge fails, it reads the decline code, retries on a schedule that suits that reason (including cards Stripe's own retries skip), emails the customer a card-update link, and stops as soon as the invoice is paid.
PayPal retries a failed charge, then suspends the subscription. RevGuard continues from there: verified events, a customer email sequence, and a record of each outcome.
Runs daily, finds Stripe cards expiring within about 45 days, and emails the customer an update link before a charge can fail.
One page served by your own n8n. No account to create, and nothing on it leaves your machine.
Each workflow has an observe-only switch. For two weeks it retries and sends nothing, then writes a loss report: what failed, what came back on its own, what is still unpaid, which cards your provider is not retrying, and what the sequence would have recovered.
Everything listed is built and tested against the real API.
Stripe: retries, emails and the watchdog. PayPal: verified events, the email sequence and re-checks before every send. Other providers with webhooks and an API can be built to order. Email us before you buy.
Every case ends in one record: what failed, why, what brought the customer back, and how long it took. Alerts on Slack, Telegram or Discord are optional.
Each case ends with an access signal your app can act on: restore on payment, degrade to read-only if unrecoverable. RevGuard never cancels an account itself.
Hosted recovery tools charge monthly and hold your billing keys. RevGuard runs on your machine and is bought once.
It runs on your own server or computer and talks directly to your payment provider. Nothing routes through us, and no third party sees your customers.
No percentage of what you recover and no monthly fee. Six months of maintenance (fixes and new versions) are included. Extending costs $69 per six months, optional.
Retries stay within Visa and Mastercard retry limits by default.
It re-checks with your provider before every retry and email. Once the invoice is paid, by retry or by the customer, everything stops.
If recovery fails, it signals your app to move the account to read-only instead of cancelling it.
Import the workflow, connect your provider and your email. A step-by-step guide covers every field. No code to write.
Emails go out from your own address and name, with your product in the subject line, instead of carrying the processor's branding.
Every email is a plain template. Change the wording, timing, sign-off or button text. The included copy is a starting point.
Every case ends in one record: the decline reason, whether a retry or an email recovered it, and how long it took. Send it to a sheet to see patterns.
Your payment provider pings RevGuard. The signature is verified and forged events are dropped.
It asks the provider why the card failed and routes on the decline code.
On Stripe: retries timed to the reason, within network limits, before any email.
An email sequence with a payment-update link. Stops on payment.
Writes one record per customer: what failed, why, and what recovered it. Signals a soft downgrade if it cannot.
Prices as published by each vendor on 2 September 2026, including what they offer that RevGuard does not.
| Tool | Price | First year | What they have that we do not | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Churnkey | $250 / monthStarter, billed yearly. Higher tiers on request. | $3,000 | Machine-learning retries, cancel-flow offers, SMS and in-app dunning, analytics. | Your Stripe keys live on their servers. The bill never ends. |
| Churn Buster | $149 to $249 / monthPlus a $1,000 one-time advisory fee. | $2,788 or more | Cancel flows, a hosted card-update page, recovery analytics, a team that has done this since 2012. | Hosted. Monthly, forever. |
| Baremetrics Recover | +$129 / monthAdd-on. Needs a Baremetrics subscription too. | $1,548 plus Baremetrics | Seven-email dunning, SMS, in-app paywalls, a branded card widget, metrics dashboards. | Cannot buy it alone. Hosted. |
| Paddle Retain | Percentage of recoveredContact sales. Free only if Paddle is your merchant of record. | Depends on churn | ML retries, card updater with Apple Pay and Google Pay, dunning in 19 languages, win-back flows. | A cut of every dollar recovered, or moving your whole billing to Paddle. |
| Stripe Smart Retries | Free with Stripe BillingStripe Billing itself costs 0.7% of billing volume. | 0.7% of billing | Zero setup. It is already on if you use Stripe Billing. | Basic emails, no logic you control, no PayPal, and some cards it never retries at all. |
| Free community templates | $0Community-made flows on automation hubs. | $0 | Free. A fine starting point if you enjoy building the rest yourself. | One basic flow. No signature checks, no re-checks, no card-update link, no watchdog, no support. |
| RevGuard | $179, onceThe complete kit. Single parts from $49. Six months of support and updates included; $69 per six months to extend. | $179 | Four tested workflows, decline-code retries, PayPal, the expiring-card watchdog, a dashboard with the reason behind every outcome, and a human on email at any hour. | No ML, no SMS, no cancel-flow surveys. The dashboard runs on your own n8n, not on our servers. |
If a price above has changed, email hello@revguardlabs.org and we will correct it the same day.
Email hello@revguardlabs.org. A person replies within 12 hours, any day, and stays with you until it runs on your setup. Six months of maintenance and updates come with every purchase. Extending costs $69 per six months.
No. You import a file and paste an API key. The guide covers every field and there is no code to write. Setup takes about 15 minutes, and we help if you get stuck.
n8n (free automation software) on a small cloud server or your own computer, plus your Stripe or PayPal account and an email sender. The guide shows the setup.
Stripe and PayPal today. Other providers with webhooks and an API (Chargebee, Braintree, Mollie, GoCardless or in-house billing) can be built to order: send a test key before you buy. If you sell through a merchant of record such as Paddle or Lemon Squeezy, it already runs its own recovery and RevGuard is not needed.
Businesses that bill subscriptions directly through Stripe or PayPal: SaaS, memberships, newsletters, courses, subscription boxes and retainers. If a platform such as Patreon, Substack or Kajabi handles your billing, or you use a merchant of record, it already runs its own recovery.
It runs on your own infrastructure and never handles a full card number. Only you and your provider see customer data.
Yes. The done-for-you install is a $99 add-on. You send a temporary login and test-mode access, and within two business days it is imported, connected, reworded in your name and tested. If it does not run, you pay nothing. Most people do not need it, since the guide takes about 15 minutes.
The nine email templates are free. The paid editions add the rest: retries by decline code, re-checks before every send, fresh card-update links, the expiring-card watchdog and the outcome record.
Yes. You pay once and keep the workflows. There is no percentage of recoveries and no expiring licence. Six months of maintenance are included.
When your provider changes something or we fix a bug, you get the new version for free, with email support. That is included for six months. After that everything keeps running as it is. Extending costs $69 per six months, and nothing switches off if you do not.
From you. They go out through your own mail server, from your own address and name, and you can rewrite every word.
No. It checks your provider before every action, stops when an invoice is paid, and stays within card-network retry limits.
Email hello@revguardlabs.org. A person replies within 12 hours, any day of the week. Setup help is included.
We will tell you. If you need SMS, cancel-flow surveys or a hosted dashboard, one of the tools in the comparison is the better choice.
Buy the whole kit or a single workflow. Six months of maintenance included. Nothing to renew to keep it running.
The Stripe workflow and the dashboard. Retries by decline code, the email sequence with a fresh card-update link, stop-on-success, and the loss report.
The PayPal workflow and the dashboard. Picks up where PayPal's retries stop, emails the customer in your name, and re-checks before every send.
Emails customers a fresh card-update link before their card expires, so the renewal never fails in the first place. One notice per card, never repeated.
We set it up for you. You send a temporary login to your automation software and test-mode access to Stripe or PayPal. Within two business days everything is imported, connected, reworded in your name and tested on a declining test card. You then publish it.
Done over email, with no call unless you ask for one. If it does not run, you pay nothing for the install.
The email templates used inside RevGuard: five for a payment that can be retried, three for a dead card, and one that warns before a card expires. They use plain placeholders and work in any email tool. Includes eight rules for writing a dunning sequence.
You set up the sequence yourself. The editions above run it automatically.
If the workflows are close but not quite right for your billing, tell us what is missing. We build a version for you and test it against your provider before you pay.
Set it up once. It retries, emails and records every outcome.
Get RevGuard, from $49 once
RevGuard 