ReCurr Plus Tutorial Series — Part 6: Pause & Resume

ReCurr Plus feature — Requires an active ReCurr Plus licence (RECPLUS-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX). New in v2.7.0.

Pause & Resume lets a customer freeze their subscription for a while and pick it up later, instead of cancelling and re-subscribing. Nothing is charged during the pause, no value is lost, and when they resume, every date simply shifts forward by however long they were paused.

It’s off by default — turn it on with a single setting.

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Before You Begin

• ReCurr Plus is installed and your Plus licence key is active
• Decide whether pausing suits your product (great for seasonal or “taking a break” scenarios; less relevant for pure access licences)

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How Pause & Resume Works

Pause is a freeze-and-extend, not a discount:

• Pausing sets the subscription to a new Paused status and records the moment it was paused. The renewal system only ever charges active subscriptions, so a paused subscription is simply never billed — no special handling, no missed-payment dunning.
• Resuming measures how long the subscription was paused and pushes every forward date by exactly that amount:
  • the next payment date moves forward by the paused duration,
  • the end date (if the subscription has one) moves forward too,
  • the licence expiry is extended by the same number of days.
• The term length and any discount are unchanged — the customer resumes exactly where they left off. Nothing is banked or forfeited.

Because access is enforced by the licence expiry date, a licence naturally lapses if a customer stays paused past their original expiry — and revives automatically on resume when the expiry is pushed back into the future. (Keys you’ve manually blocked are never revived.)

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The 90-Day Auto-Resume Cap

To stop subscriptions sitting frozen forever, pauses are capped at 90 days. If a customer doesn’t resume within 90 days, ReCurr auto-resumes them: billing restarts, all dates shift by the 90 days, and the “resumed” email notes that the cap was reached.

• The cap is adjustable by developers via the crb_pause_max_days filter.
• Set it to 0 (or any value ≤ 0) to allow unlimited pauses.
• Auto-resume runs on the normal hourly renewal check and never double-charges: a just-resumed subscription’s next payment date is always in the future.

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Turning It On

The setting lives under Subscriptions → Settings → General:

Setting	Default	Effect
Pause & resume	Off	Shows the Pause/Resume controls to customers and admins

Screenshot 1: Subscriptions → Settings → General showing the Pause & resume toggle.

Important — resuming always works. If you later switch the feature off, any customer who is currently paused can still resume. Disabling the feature can never strand a paused customer; it only hides the Pause action for everyone else.

See Tutorial 8: Settings Reference for the full settings list.

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What the Customer Sees

On an active subscription in My Account → Subscriptions → View, a Pause Subscription action appears (for eligible subscriptions).

1. The customer clicks Pause and confirms.
2. The subscription status becomes Paused, and a “paused since” date is shown. They receive a subscription paused email.
3. While paused, no payment is taken and the next-payment date is held.
4. When ready, the customer clicks Resume Subscription. Every date shifts forward by the paused duration, the status returns to Active, and they receive a subscription resumed email.

Pausing is available on active, non-trial subscriptions with no payment currently being retried. It works on any billing period and any payment method (unlike refunds and immediate switching, which are card + quarterly/annual only).

Screenshot 2: Subscription detail (My Account) showing the “Pause Subscription” action.

Screenshot 3: A paused subscription showing the Paused badge, “paused since” date, and the “Resume Subscription” action.

Screenshot 4: The “subscription paused” and “subscription resumed” customer emails.

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Admin View

Pause & Resume is also available to admins from Subscriptions → [subscription] → Actions:

• Set to Paused is offered on active subscriptions and behaves exactly like the customer’s Pause button — it stamps the paused-since time and sends the emails.
• Set to Active on a paused subscription resumes it and applies the date shift, just like the customer’s Resume button.
• The subscription list gains a Paused status filter and badge, and the detail page shows the paused-since date.

Screenshot 5: Admin subscription Actions box showing “Set to Paused” on an active subscription.

Screenshot 6: Admin subscription list filtered by the Paused status.

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Quick Checklist

• [ ] Enabled Pause & resume in settings
• [ ] Paused an active sandbox subscription — status becomes Paused, paused-since recorded, email received
• [ ] Confirmed no renewal is attempted while paused
• [ ] Resumed and confirmed the next-payment date shifted forward by exactly the paused duration
• [ ] Confirmed the licence expiry was pushed forward on resume (and a lapsed key revived)
• [ ] Confirmed admin “Set to Paused” / “Set to Active” behave like the customer buttons
• [ ] (Optional) Verified the 90-day auto-resume, or adjusted/removed the cap via crb_pause_max_days

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What’s Next?

Up next: Plus Tutorial 7: Variable Subscription Products — selling sizes, plans and buy-once-or-subscribe as subscription options (v2.8.0). For the full core ReCurr tutorial series, start at Tutorial 1: Getting Started.

For billing and licence questions, contact us at the email address shown in your store’s subscription confirmation emails.

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This is Part 6 of the ReCurr Plus Tutorial Series.

Tutorial	Topic
Plus 1. Billing Cycle Toggle	Monthly/annual toggle on one product
Plus 2. Flexible Trials	7/14/21/28-day trial options
Plus 3. Quarterly Discounts	Configuring quarterly pricing and discounts
Plus 4. Plan Switching	Plan groups, customer upgrades and downgrades
Plus 5. Cancellation, Refund & Retention	Pro-rata refunds on cancel + retention save flow
Plus 6. Pause & Resume	Freeze a subscription and resume later (you are here)
Plus 7. Variable Subscription Products	Sizes, plans and buy-once-or-subscribe as subscription options
Plus 8. Troubleshooting Variable Subscriptions	Every message, what causes it, where to look