Subscription Lifecycle

A SIPSTACK subscription moves through a small set of well-defined states. This page explains each state, what triggers a transition, and what action (if any) you need to take. You can always see a subscription’s current state as the status badge on Account → Subscriptions.

States at a Glance

State	What it means	Service running?
Trialing	14-day free evaluation before the first paid cycle.	✅
Active	Paid and current — the normal steady state.	✅
Past due	Shown in specific cases, such as a new subscription whose first payment failed. Service keeps running while reminders escalate. Most unpaid invoices — including a declined autopay card or an account with no card on file — keep the subscription Active while reminders run, until suspension (see below).	✅
Paused / suspended	Extended non-payment (or an agreed pause). Suspension starts with outbound calling only — inbound continues — before escalating to full suspension. Configuration and data are retained.	⚠️ partial
Cancelling (cancel at period end)	You’ve asked to stop at the end of the current paid period. Undoable until then.	✅ until period ends
Canceled	Ended — by you, or by the platform after long-running non-payment.	❌
Expired	A trial ended with no payment method on file — a soft lockout that preserves your configuration.	❌

Past-due and trial-ending situations also surface as banners on the Subscriptions page and dashboard.

Trial → Active

Trial-eligible plans (see Plans) start in Trialing: a card is vaulted at signup, $0 is charged today, and you get full feature access for 14 days.

About 3 days before the trial ends, and again at 1 day, you receive a reminder email offering three choices: keep the plan, downgrade to the tier below, or cancel. Downgrading mid-trial keeps the original trial end date — you convert at the lower tier.
At trial end, with a valid card on file, the subscription auto-converts to Active: the first paid period starts that day and the first invoice is charged. Each later renewal lands on the same day of the month (the billing anchor).
If no valid card is on file at trial end, the subscription becomes Expired — a soft lockout. Nothing is deleted; add a card and re-subscribe to pick up your configuration where you left off.

Active — the Steady State

While Active, an invoice is generated each renewal and (on autopay accounts) charged automatically; receipts go to your billing email. Mid-period changes behave as follows:

Upgrades & seat additions — immediate, with a prorated charge for the rest of the period.
Downgrades & seat removals — scheduled for the next renewal. The renewal invoice bills the new plan and seat count.

See Invoices & Billing Concepts for proration details and Managing Subscriptions for the how-to.

Past Due — What Happens When a Payment Fails

When a payment isn’t collected, service is not interrupted immediately — payment is retried and reminder emails escalate over a dunning window.

When your card is declined

If the automatic charge for an invoice is declined (expired card, insufficient funds, a bank decline):

You get a Payment Failed — Action Required email right away. It gives the reason, the date of the next retry, and a link to update your card on Account → Billing.
The card is retried automatically about 3, 5, 7 and 10 days after the decline.
If none of the retries succeed, you get one more email — We couldn’t collect your payment — please update your card.
The dunning timeline below runs from the day of the decline.

Your subscription stays Active throughout, with full service, until the suspension step. Paying stops the process at any point: update your card and pay the open invoice, or update your card before the next retry and let that retry charge it.

The dunning timeline

Under the standard policy:

Phase	Standard timing	What happens
Grace period	first ~7 days	Payment retried automatically (card retries continue to about day 10, followed by one “We couldn’t collect your payment” email); reminder emails; portal shows a past-due banner with Pay now.
Warning period	~day 14	Escalated reminders, then a final notice ahead of suspension.
Suspension — outbound first	~day 30	Outbound calling is suspended — outbound call attempts hear an account-suspended announcement. Inbound calls keep ringing, phones stay registered, and the portal remains accessible. Configuration and data are retained.
Termination — full suspension	~day 60	The account becomes eligible for termination, applied after review: the subscription is canceled and service stops fully (phones de-register, inbound stops). Standard post-cancellation data retention applies.

While a subscription is past due, SMS beyond your included allowance is paused. Messages within the allowance keep sending and inbound messages keep arriving. Paying the open invoice turns overage back on straight away. See SMS Usage, Limits & Billing.

To resolve at any point: go to Account → Billing, update your card if needed, and pay the open invoice (or use Pay all past due). A successful payment immediately returns the subscription to Active and lifts any suspension.

Cancelling

A single subscription

Cancelling a product subscription (from its card or detail page) sets it to cancel at period end:

Service continues to the end of the paid period — you’ve already paid for it.
No further invoices are generated, and you can undo the cancellation any time before the period ends.
While the cancellation is scheduled, SMS beyond your included allowance is paused. Messages within the allowance continue until the period ends.
At period end the subscription becomes Canceled: service stops, and phone numbers attached to it are eventually released back to inventory.

Numbers shared with another plan are kept. If a number on the cancelled subscription is also used by another active plan (for example, the same number for Nova calling and Flare texting), it isn’t released. The cancel screen lists it as Kept: (number) is still used by your (plan) plan, so it won’t be released. The number moves to that plan. If it takes the plan over its included numbers, it’s billed as a number add-on, and the cancel screen shows the add-on before you confirm. A shared number is released only when the last plan using it ends.

Before the period ends, decide what happens to any phone numbers on the subscription: move them to another active subscription, start a port-out, or let them be released. For US 10DLC messaging, ending your last Flare subscription also ends the associated brand/campaign registration.

The whole account

Closing the account is a separate, owner-only flow with more protection: a 30/60/90-day pause is offered as an alternative, and proceeding starts a 30-day cooling-off window during which everything stays active and you can reactivate with one click, followed by a 30-day grace period before numbers are released. See Cancelling Your Account.

Reactivating

Configuration and data are retained for 30 days after a cancellation takes effect. Re-subscribe within that window (via Add Nova PBX or Add Flare SMS on Subscriptions) and your setup is restored — though released phone numbers may need to be re-acquired. After 30 days, expect to start fresh; contact support first if you need data recovered or exported.

Lifecycle Emails

All lifecycle transitions are accompanied by transactional email to your billing contact — trial-ending reminders (3-day and 1-day), payment receipts and failures, dunning escalations, renewal reminders, and cancellation confirmations. If these aren’t arriving, check spam and confirm your billing email on Account → Billing.

Frequently Asked

Can I pause instead of cancelling? Account-level pauses (30/60/90 days) are offered inside the account cancellation flow. Per-subscription pause isn’t self-serve — contact support.

Can I undo a cancellation? Yes — while the subscription still shows Cancelling, you can re-enable it from the Subscriptions page. Once it’s Canceled, re-subscribe instead.

What happens to call/SMS history when I cancel? Retained for at least 30 days after cancellation. Reactivate within the window and it’s preserved; contact support for an export.

Does cancelling remove my card? No — SIPSTACK simply stops charging it. Remove it yourself on Account → Billing if you want it gone.