ChurnWard
Type: tool
Stage: Stage 5: Payment Proof
Difficulty: intermediate
Automated dunning and failed payment recovery for bootstrapped SaaS founders on Stripe. Flat $29/month. Detects expiring cards before failure, retries on an intelligent schedule, sends recovery email sequences, and tracks MRR, churn rate, and recovery metrics in one dashboard. Average 5x ROI.
Overview
ChurnWard is automated dunning for bootstrapped SaaS founders — a system that detects failed payments, retries them intelligently, sends recovery email sequences, and tracks the results. It integrates with Stripe and Dodo Payments. It costs $29/month flat. Most founders cover the monthly fee by recovering one or two payments in the first week. At Stage 5, before you spend a single hour improving your product, you should confirm that your billing system is recovering every recoverable payment. ChurnWard does that automatically after a one-time setup.
What it does
When a subscription charge fails, ChurnWard triggers an automated recovery flow: a soft retry within 24 hours (catches temporary processing errors), a recovery email with a one-click payment update link on day three, a final warning email on day seven. It also sends proactive expiring card alerts 30 days before a card expires, preventing failures before they happen.
The built-in dashboard tracks MRR, churn rate, recovery performance, and upcoming annual renewals in one place. You don't need a separate analytics tool.
How to set it up at Stage 5
Sign up for a ChurnWard account. Connect your Stripe account with an API key. Review the default email templates — they're sensible starting points — and adjust the tone to match how you communicate with customers. The entire setup takes under 30 minutes.
Once it's running, you don't need to touch it. ChurnWard runs in the background and reports recovery activity to your dashboard.
What to watch
After your first 30 days, look at two numbers: how many failed payments occurred, and what percentage were recovered. An optimized dunning system recovers 45–70% of initially failed payments. If your recovery rate is below 30%, review the email timing and copy. If it's above 50%, you're running a healthy dunning system.
The ROI calculation is simple: compare your monthly recovery revenue against the $29 subscription fee. If you're recovering more than $29, the tool is paying for itself. For most products above $2k MRR, it covers its cost within the first week.