Payment banners: Choosing your implementation path
Evaluate the tradeoffs between custom Recurly webhooks and the low-code Recurly Engage platform for deploying in-app payment banners. Discover engineering requirements, real-time webhook events, and no-code prompt configurations to accelerate subscription revenue recovery.
Retain • Payment banners
Choosing your implementation path
Two ways to deploy payment banners — one built by your engineers, one configured without code. Here's how to decide, and what to expect from each.
Navigation Menu
Navigate Home
Choosing your implementation path
Which path fits your situation
Both paths deliver the same result — payment banners that recover subscribers before they churn. The difference is who builds them, how long it takes, and how much control you have over the output.
Webhooks — build it yourself
- You have a custom application or member portal where you can surface in-app notifications to subscribers
- You need full brand control over banner design and placement
- Engineering bandwidth is available and the build cost is justified
- You want banner state in your own analytics or CRM
Recurly Engage — low-code, faster
- No engineering bandwidth available right now
- Speed to value matters — Engage can be live the same day
- Subscribers use Recurly-hosted pages or the subscriber portal
- You also want cancellation save flows without a separate build
Bring this question to Global Office Hours. Our CSMs can help you evaluate the tradeoffs based on your specific subscriber setup, engineering capacity, and timeline.
What to expect from each path
Before you hand this to your team, here's an honest picture of what each path involves — the effort, the key events or tools, and where to go to get started.
Webhooks
Engineering-required — typically a multi-week build
How it works: Your engineering team registers an endpoint in Recurly and builds a listener that receives real-time event notifications — payment failed, card expiring, subscription past due. When an event fires, your backend flags the subscriber and your UI displays the banner on their next login.
Key events to know: cc_will_expire, payment.failed, charge_invoice.past_due, billing_info.updated
What to plan for: Endpoint setup, signature verification, subscriber flag logic, banner UI component, billing update redirect, and end-to-end staging tests. Most teams budget 2–6 weeks depending on existing infrastructure.
Recurly Engage
Low-code — can be live the same day
How it works: Configure payment banners and cancellation save flows from the Pulse console. Engage connects to your Recurly account and automatically creates a Failed Payment subscriber segment — no manual targeting required. Choose a prompt type, write your copy, activate.
Prompt types available: Bottom banners, corner notifications, pop-up modals, interstitials, video prompts, and inline banners.
One thing to know: Recurly Engage is a separate product — confirm it's included in your contract before getting started.
Ready to get started? Bring your team.
Whether you're handing the webhook docs to engineering or logging into Pulse for the first time, our CSMs can walk through your specific setup at Customer Success Global Office Hours. Sessions run weekly and are free for all Recurly customers.
Register for Office Hours →