What Customers Can Do from My Account

Updated November 7, 2026

Every “please cancel my plan” or “can I move to the yearly option” email costs you time, and every one that waits too long turns into a chargeback or a churned customer. Subscribers want to handle these things themselves, right away.

The Subscriptions module adds a Subscriptions tab to My Account. Customers see every subscription, pay a missed renewal, renew early, pause, skip a renewal, cancel, switch plans and change the card that renews them. You decide which of these they get under Stackless → Settings → Subscriptions.

The Subscriptions Tab

The tab sits right after Orders. Its URL slug comes from the Account endpoint setting, subscriptions by default.

The list shows each subscription’s number, status, items, next payment and recurring total, with a View button. A subscription page shows:

Status, Start date, Trial ends, Last payment, Next payment and Ends, where they apply
Billing, the recurring price and schedule
Renewal: Automatic, or “Manual: we email you an invoice”
Payment method
Subscription totals, Related orders (Signup, Renewal or Switch) and the addresses

The Customer Actions

Buttons appear only when the action fits the subscription:

Pay renewal: one for each unpaid renewal order. This always shows when something is owed.
Renew now: bills the next period today and moves the following payment date forward. Needs Early renewal turned on, an Active subscription and no unpaid renewal.
Resume subscription: undoes a cancellation that’s waiting for the end of the period.
Resume subscription on a paused subscription: billing and access start again today. Customers can resume any paused subscription, including one you paused.
Skip next renewal: covered below.
Pause: covered below.
Turn off auto-renew / Turn on auto-renew: needs the Auto-renew toggle setting and a product set to “Automatic when the gateway supports it, otherwise manual.” Turning it on needs a saved payment method.
Cancel: covered below.

Let Customers Pause

Turn on Customer pause in the Customer account section. It’s off by default. Longest pause (months) sets the choices, from 1 month up to that many, and it’s 3 by default. Set it to 0 and customers pause until they resume.

Pause shows on Active subscriptions with nothing unpaid. It opens the Pause your subscription form, where the customer picks a length, such as “2 months (resumes on November 8, 2026)”, or “Until I resume it”, then clicks Pause subscription. Keep it running goes back without pausing.

While a subscription is paused:

Nothing is charged, and access pauses too.
The paid time left is kept. On resume, the next charge comes that much time later, or straight away if none was left.
A fixed-length plan’s end date moves by the time spent paused.
It resumes by itself on the chosen date, or when the customer clicks Resume subscription.
The customer gets the Subscription paused email, and the Subscription resumed email when it starts again.

Subscriptions billed by Paddle or Stripe Managed Payments pause at the provider, which sets the next charge when they resume. If the provider refuses, the customer sees “The payment provider could not pause this subscription. Try again in a minute.”

Let Customers Skip a Renewal

Turn on Skip a renewal in the Customer account section. It’s off by default, and it’s meant for deliveries a customer doesn’t need this time.

Skip next renewal shows on Active subscriptions with the next renewal still ahead and nothing unpaid. Clicking it asks the customer to confirm: “Skip the renewal on November 8, 2026? You won’t be charged for it, and the next one will be on November 8, 2026.”

The next payment moves one billing period later, and the skipped period isn’t charged.
A fixed-length plan ends one period later, so no paid period is lost.
One skip at a time: the renewal a skip produced can’t be skipped again.
The subscription gets a note with both dates.

Choose How Cancellation Works

The Customer account section has two settings for timing. Customer cancellation turns cancelling on or off, and it’s on by default. When customers cancel decides when a cancellation takes effect. With Ask why they cancel turned off, it also decides the buttons:

At the end of the paid period (default): one Cancel button. The subscription becomes Pending cancellation and access continues until the paid period ends.
Immediately: one Cancel now button. Access ends right away and unpaid renewals are cancelled.
Let the customer choose: both Cancel at period end and Cancel now.

On-hold subscriptions only offer Cancel now, because there’s no paid period left to run out. Paused subscriptions also cancel straight away.

Ask Why Customers Cancel

Ask why they cancel is on by default. Customers then get one Cancel button that opens the Cancel your subscription form instead of cancelling on the spot:

Why are you cancelling?: one choice from your Cancellation reasons, plus Other.
An optional comment of up to 500 characters. Other needs one.
When should it end? when When customers cancel is set to Let the customer choose. Otherwise the form says when access ends.
Cancel subscription to confirm, or Keep my subscription to go back.

Cancellation reasons takes one reason per line, and the first 12 are used. The defaults are It costs too much, I don’t use it enough, I found something else, It’s missing something I need, and I had problems with it.

With Offer alternatives on, which is the default, the form starts with “Before you go:” and a Pause instead button when the customer can pause, plus a Change plan instead button when there’s a plan to switch to.

The reason and comment are saved on the subscription. You see them as Cancellation reason on its edit screen and in its notes, and Find Billing Problems with Billing Health counts the reasons given in the last 30 days.

Set Up Plan Switching

Switching needs two things: the Switching setting (on by default) and a switch path on the product. Paths are set on the product’s Advanced tab:

Switch between variations: subscribers move between this variable product’s subscription variations.
Subscription switch group: a slug like hosting-plans. Subscribers move between all products that share it.

Customers with an Active subscription then see a Change plan section. Each option shows the new price, the amount due now, any adjustment on the next renewal, and a note when a new billing period starts today.

How Proration Works

The Proration setting has three modes:

Credit unused time and charge the difference now (default)
Credit unused time and apply the difference at the next renewal
No proration: new price from the next renewal

On the same schedule, the price difference is scaled by the unused part of the current period. An upgrade is charged now with the first mode, or added to the next renewal with the second. A downgrade becomes a credit on the next renewal.

Moving to a different schedule, like monthly to yearly, with the first mode credits the unused time against the new plan. The new period starts today. If the credit is bigger than the new price, the rest carries to the next renewal.

Switch fee adds a one-time charge in your store currency to every switch.

Every switch creates a switch order. A zero total applies right away. Otherwise automatic subscriptions charge the saved method, and manual ones send the customer to pay. The plan changes when the switch order is paid, and the Subscription switched email goes out.

Carried amounts show on the next renewal as a “Plan switch credit” or “Plan switch adjustment” line. A credit never takes a renewal below zero, and whatever is left carries to the one after.

Change the Payment Method

When the Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie or Razorpay gateway is enabled, active, trial and on-hold subscriptions show a Payment method for renewals section. Customers can:

Pick a saved payment method and click Use this payment method.
Or click Add a new payment method, add it on WooCommerce’s Add payment method page within the hour, and they’re sent back with the new method attached to the subscription.

Picking a saved method also turns automatic renewal on, unless the product is Manual only. A failed renewal that’s waiting for a retry gets the new method too, and it’s charged within a minute.

Limits

Switching is for Active subscriptions. Subscriptions in a free trial can’t switch.
Pause and skip work on Active subscriptions only: not during a free trial, and not while a renewal is unpaid.
Polar, Dodo Payments and Creem subscriptions can’t be paused. No subscription billed by its payment provider can skip a renewal.
A paused subscription can’t switch plans, renew early or change its payment method until it resumes.
Switching one item of a multi-item subscription to a different schedule moves that item to a new subscription.
With the next-renewal proration mode, a switch to a different schedule gets no credit for unused time.
Polar subscriptions are billed by Polar. Customers can cancel them, but can’t renew early, resume a pending cancellation, toggle auto-renew or change the payment method here. See Sell Through Polar as Merchant of Record.