Shopify Subscription Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the terms Shopify subscription merchants need to know — dunning, churn, MRR, ARR, and more.
Dunning
Dunning is the automated process of retrying failed subscription payments and notifying customers. Learn how to configure dunning in Recharge and Stripe for Shopify merchants.
Subscription Churn
Subscription churn is the rate at which customers cancel or fail to renew their subscriptions. Learn the difference between voluntary and involuntary churn for Shopify merchants, and how to calculate and reduce each type.
MRR / ARR
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) are the core revenue metrics for Shopify subscription businesses. Learn how to calculate them correctly, avoid common mistakes, and track them alongside churn.
Ghost Subscription
A ghost subscription is a subscription that remains active in one system after it was cancelled or terminated in another, allowing fulfillment to continue without successful payment collection.
Webhook Delivery Failure
A webhook delivery failure happens when Shopify or Recharge cannot successfully deliver an event to your endpoint, often causing subscription state mismatches between systems.
Subscription Contract
A subscription contract is Shopify's authoritative recurring billing agreement object in the Admin GraphQL API, representing the source of truth for the subscription lifecycle in Shopify.
Payment Intent
A PaymentIntent is Stripe's object for tracking the lifecycle of a single payment attempt from creation through authentication, processing, success, or cancellation.
Merchant-Initiated Transaction
A merchant-initiated transaction is an off-session charge that can qualify for an MIT exemption from SCA or 3DS when the customer previously authenticated a SetupIntent or equivalent mandate.
Churn Rate
Churn rate is the percentage of subscribers or subscription revenue lost during a period, and merchants should separate subscriber churn from MRR churn when evaluating retention health.
Revenue Leakage
Revenue leakage is revenue that should have been collected but was not, often because of failed payments, state mismatches, webhook issues, or billing process gaps.