Voluntary churn
Also known as: Active churn
Subscribers who intentionally cancel. This is what a save flow targets.
Voluntary churn is a customer decision — they clicked cancel because of price, fit, life changes, or a competing product. Only voluntary churn is addressable by a cancellation save flow. Reducing voluntary churn by 20% (from 5% to 4% monthly) roughly doubles LTV; reducing it by 30% nearly triples LTV.
Worked example
A WooCommerce store has 8% monthly gross churn. 2 points are involuntary (payment failures) and 6 points are voluntary. A save flow that catches 25% of voluntary cancellations brings voluntary churn from 6% to 4.5% and total churn from 8% to 6.5%.
Related terms
- Involuntary churn- Subscribers who lose access because of payment failures — expired cards, insufficient funds, chargebacks — not a deliberate cancel.
- Save rate- The percentage of cancellation attempts that a save flow keeps as active subscribers.
- Cancellation flow- The UI sequence a subscriber goes through when they click cancel — survey, offer, confirm, cancel.
Related reading
Reduce churn with ChurnStop
Free WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin. Intercept cancellations with targeted offers, stay click-to-cancel compliant, report MRR preserved.
Download churnstop.zip