Stop losing paid Ghost members to declined cards

When a paid member’s renewal fails, Ghost keeps their access while Stripe retries the card. If every retry fails, the subscription is cancelled and they quietly become a free member. Most of them never meant to leave. Their card just expired.

Why Ghost publications lose members this way

Ghost hands billing to your own Stripe account and doesn’t send a dunning sequence of its own. Stripe’s retries can’t fix a card that has expired or been replaced, so unless the reader hears from you and enters a new card, the paid subscription ends.

What DeclineKit does for a Ghost publication

1. Connects to the Stripe account Ghost uses with a restricted key. Nothing to install in Ghost.
2. Emails the reader in your publication’s name when a renewal is declined: up to four short plain-text notes over 12 days. Replies come to you.
3. Links to a Stripe-hosted card form. The moment they save a new card, we retry the invoice, the subscription carries on, and Ghost keeps them as a paid member.
4. Warns readers before a card expires, so many renewals never fail at all.

Keep Stripe’s Smart Retries on. They recover temporary declines. DeclineKit goes after the ones retries can’t fix. How the two fit together.

Setup takes about five minutes

1. Open the Stripe account connected to your Ghost site (Ghost Admin → Settings → Membership shows which one).
2. Create a restricted key with the permissions DeclineKit lists, and paste it in.
3. Set your publication name and reply-to address, preview the emails, and switch recovery on.
4. Turn off Stripe’s own failed-payment emails so readers don’t get two.