Revenue recovery is Commerce's built-in system for recapturing failed subscription payments before they become lost revenue. It combines two complementary tools — Payment Retries and Dunning Campaigns — that run independently and automatically, so every failed payment gets the best possible chance of resolution without your team lifting a finger.

Available on all Recurly plans

1Definition 2Key benefits 3Key details

Prerequisites

You must have an active Recurly Commerce account
Payment Retries and Dunning Campaign settings are configured separately under Settings

Limitations

Merchants can configure only one dunning campaign at a time
The dunning campaign enforces a maximum of one email per day per subscriber

Definition

Revenue recovery is Commerce's built-in system for recapturing failed subscription payments before they become lost revenue. It combines two complementary tools — Payment Retries, which automatically re-attempts failed charges, and Dunning Campaigns, which send targeted emails to keep subscribers informed and prompt them to act. Together, they give every failed payment the best possible chance of resolution without requiring manual intervention.

Key benefits

Automated recovery Payment retries run without lifting a finger, using either Recurly's AI-driven Intelligent Retries or a custom schedule you define.

Subscriber communication Dunning campaign emails keep subscribers informed at every step, prompting them to update their payment method before their subscription is cancelled or paused.

Independent, flexible configuration Retries and dunning campaigns run on their own schedules and are configured separately, so you can tailor each to your business needs.

Full visibility Every retry attempt and dunning email is recorded — retry attempts in the subscription activity log, dunning emails in the notification log.

Automatic resolution When a payment succeeds at any point, both tools stop immediately. No manual cleanup required.

Key details

Why revenue recovery matters

Involuntary churn — subscribers lost not because they chose to leave but because a payment failed — is one of the most preventable forms of subscriber loss. A card decline doesn't mean a subscriber wants to cancel. It means something went wrong at the payment level, and the window to fix it is short.

Commerce's revenue recovery system is designed to close that window as quickly as possible: retrying the charge at the right moment while simultaneously keeping the subscriber informed and in control.

How Payment Retries and Dunning Campaigns work together

When a payment fails, both tools activate independently based on your configuration:

Payment Retries begin immediately, attempting to recover the charge on the schedule you've set — either via Intelligent Retries (AI-driven) or a custom retry schedule
Dunning Campaign emails fire based on the day offsets you configure — send the first email immediately on failure or delay it by any number of days
Neither tool waits for the other. A subscriber may receive a dunning email on day one while a retry fires on day two — or simultaneously — depending entirely on your settings. This independence gives you precise control over both the recovery attempt and the subscriber experience.

If a subscriber updates their payment method and the charge processes successfully at any point, both tools stop automatically. The subscription returns to active and no further emails are sent.

Tool	What it does	Where to configure
Payment Retries	Automatically re-attempts failed charges using AI-driven or custom logic	Settings > Payment Retries
Dunning Campaign	Sends targeted emails to subscribers at defined day offsets after a payment failure	Settings > Dunning Campaign

Our recommendation

To get the most out of revenue recovery, use Intelligent Retries paired with a dunning campaign configured as follows:

Immediately — send a hard decline notification

For hard declines, notify the subscriber right away. These failures won't resolve through retries, so getting the subscriber to act quickly is the priority.

Day 1 — send the first notification

For soft declines, send the first email on Day 1. This gives Intelligent Retries time to attempt recovery while keeping the subscriber informed early.

Day 8 — send the second notification

Follow up with a reminder prompting the subscriber to update their payment method if the issue hasn't resolved.

Day 24 — send the third notification

Send a final warning letting the subscriber know their subscription is at risk of cancellation.

Day 27 — send the fourth notification and cancel

Send the final email and cancel the subscription. This is the default end-of-cycle action and matches Commerce's out-of-the-box dunning campaign configuration.

Learn more

Payment Retries

Configure Intelligent Retries or a custom retry schedule.

Dunning Campaign

Set up email notifications and end-of-cycle actions.