When a subscription renewal payment fails, WooCommerce Subscriptions can retry it automatically — but the retry system ships
switched off, its schedule is
hard-coded (5 retries across 7 days), and changing it officially requires writing PHP against a filter. Most store owners never see any of it.
Renewal Rescue is the cockpit for that machinery:
Recovery cockpit
- Every retry in the pipeline: which renewal, how much, when the next attempt runs.
- Recent outcomes: which retries recovered the payment, which failed.
- "Needs a human": renewals that failed every automatic retry and are still unpaid — nothing further happens on its own for these.
- Recovered-revenue counter: renewals and amount that came back through retries in the last 30 days.
- Which of your gateways can actually run an automatic retry (manual methods like bank transfer can't).
- One-click enable for the retry system itself if it's off (it writes the standard WooCommerce Subscriptions setting).
Retry schedule editor — no code
- Edit the number of retries, the wait between attempts, which attempts email the customer or the store owner, and the order/subscription status applied while waiting.
- Live "runs at T+X" preview of the whole schedule.
- Applied through the retry system's own documented
wcs_default_retry_rules filter — WooCommerce Subscriptions keeps doing the retrying; you finally control the schedule.
- Hard safety bounds (each wait 1 hour–14 days, up to 8 retries, whole schedule inside 30 days) and one-click reset to the built-in rules.
Watchdogs
- Digest email (daily or weekly): exhausted retries needing action, what runs next, what got recovered. Only sent when there's something to say.
- Site Health checks: retry system off, exhausted unpaid renewals, retry actions sitting past-due in the queue.
- WP-CLI:
wp rrwc status --format=json.
- Event log history is your setting, defaulting to keep everything. It is housekeeping, not a tier: no build removes the bound for you.
Renewal Rescue Pro (in-dashboard upgrade, 14-day trial, no card):
- Gateway-specific retry schedule (treat PayPal failures differently from Stripe).
- Retry timing windows — run retries in business hours, skip weekends.
- Card-expiry pre-dunning: email customers to update their card before the renewal fails.
- Your own recovery email at chosen attempt numbers.
- Slack / webhook alerts when retries are exhausted (HIGH VALUE flag above your threshold).
- REST status endpoint and CSV export for agencies.
Read-mostly by design. Renewal Rescue never edits orders, subscriptions or retry records. The only WooCommerce settings it can write are the standard "Enable Automatic Retry" toggle (when you click the button) and the retry schedule you save — applied through the documented filter.
Renewal Rescue helps you monitor and recover failed renewal payments; recovery always depends on your gateway, your customers and the retry system itself. No plugin can guarantee a payment succeeds.