Churnahead vs Paddle Retain (ProfitWell Retain)
Last updated 1 November 2026
Paddle Retain and Churnahead are both about keeping subscription revenue, but they work at different moments and on different kinds of churn. Retain acts after a payment has failed, on the customer, automatically. Churnahead acts before the subscription ends, on you, with a list. Details about Retain below are as published by Paddle on the date above.
What Paddle Retain is
Retain is Paddle’s payment recovery product, the former ProfitWell Retain, acquired with ProfitWell in 2022. When a card payment fails, it retries on a schedule tuned by failure code, card type, day and location, emails the customer with a link to a no-sign-in page where they can update their card, and reports what it recovered. On the date above it is available to businesses billed through Paddle, and Paddle does not publish a list price; third parties describe pricing as a share of recovered revenue or as part of an enterprise agreement. Check with Paddle for current terms.
What Churnahead is
Churnahead reads Stripe, Paddle or Lemon Squeezy with read-only access, scores every paying customer with published rules covering scheduled cancellations, failed payments, expiring cards, downgrades, refunds and disputes, trials and discounts ending and more, and sends you the at-risk list each morning with a reason and an action for each. It never retries a payment and never emails your customers; it tells you, and leaves the conversation to you. Free up to 25 paying customers.
Side by side
| Paddle Retain | Churnahead | |
|---|---|---|
| The job | Recover failed payments automatically | Warn you about every account at risk, in time to act |
| Kinds of churn covered | Involuntary (failed payments) | Involuntary and voluntary: cancellations scheduled, downgrades, disputes, trials and discounts ending, usage drops, plus failed and expiring cards |
| Acts before the payment fails (expiring card) | No, it starts at the failure | Yes, expiring cards are flagged weeks ahead |
| Retries the charge | Yes, with a tuned schedule | No |
| Emails or texts your customers | Yes | Never |
| Tells you who is at risk and why | Recovery reporting | Yes, a daily list with reasons, and instant alerts |
| Backtest on your own churn | No | Yes |
| Billing providers | Paddle | Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy |
| Access | Part of Paddle Billing | Read-only; nothing is written |
| Pricing (on the date above) | Not published; reported as a share of recovered revenue | Free to 25 paying customers; $39 to 500; $99 to 3,000 a month |
When Retain is the better choice
- You bill through Paddle and want failed-payment recovery handled for you, end to end, with no one on your team involved.
- Involuntary churn is your main problem and you are comfortable with a vendor emailing your customers.
When Churnahead is the better choice
- You bill through Stripe or Lemon Squeezy.
- You lose customers who chose to leave, not only ones whose cards failed, and want to hear about them before the period ends.
- You want to be the one who writes to the customer, with a draft to start from if you like.
- You want to see, on your own history, what the warning would have caught before you trust it.
Using both
If you bill through Paddle, Retain can handle the automated recovery while Churnahead gives you the list of everyone else at risk and the expiring cards Retain hasn’t seen fail yet. They don’t overlap in what they do to the account. If you bill through Stripe, Stripe’s own Smart Retries and dunning emails play Retain’s part, and Churnahead adds the warning on top; see involuntary churn.
If anything on this page about Paddle Retain is out of date, write to hello@churnahead.com and it will be corrected.