Churn Leak Checklist
1/7Frequently asked questions
What is a churn leak in SaaS?
A churn leak is any gap in your retention stack that lets customers or revenue slip away unnoticed. Common leaks include missing dunning emails for failed payments, no cancel flow with save offers, expired card reminders that never fire, and no win-back sequence for churned users. Most SaaS founders have 3-5 active leaks at any time.
How do I find where my SaaS is losing customers?
Start by splitting churn into voluntary (customer chose to leave) and involuntary (payment failed). Check your Stripe dashboard for failed payment rates, then audit whether you have dunning emails, cancel flows, and card expiry reminders. This checklist scores each area so you can see exactly which leaks to fix first.
What's the fastest way to reduce SaaS churn?
Fix involuntary churn first. it's the easiest win. Adding a 3-4 step dunning email sequence recovers 40-55% of failed payments, compared to 35% with Stripe's default retries alone. This alone can reduce total churn by 1-2 percentage points in the first month.
How many churn prevention tools do I need?
You need coverage across 4 areas: payment recovery (dunning), voluntary churn prevention (cancel flows), proactive retention (at-risk alerts), and re-engagement (win-back emails). You can use separate tools for each, or a single platform like SaveMRR ($19/mo) that covers all four from one Stripe integration.
What churn rate means I have a serious leak?
Monthly churn above 7% for B2B SaaS or above 10% for B2C indicates a serious retention problem. If more than 30% of your total churn is involuntary (failed payments), you have a payment recovery leak. If you have zero cancel flow save rate data, you likely have an unaddressed voluntary churn leak.