So there I was at 2 AM, staring at my laptop screen. My subscription service had just processed its first big renewal batch. Out of 50 customers who were supposed to renew, only 32 did.
The other 18? Complete silence. No error messages, no warnings, nothing. Just $2,000 walking out the door while I slept.
That nightmare taught me something important. Testing subscription renewals isn’t some nice-to-have feature you add later. It’s the difference between building a real business and watching money disappear every month.
I’m going to show you exactly how I test renewals now. These methods work whether you’re using WooCommerce, Stripe, or running mobile subscriptions through Apple and Google.
Skip these steps, and you’ll learn the expensive way as I did.
Why This Actually Matters (Beyond the Obvious)
Look, everyone knows failed renewals are bad. But here’s what surprised me: most businesses lose 10-15% of their revenue to renewals that should have worked.
We’re not talking about people who decide to quit. These are customers who literally want to keep paying you, but something breaks and they can’t.
Think about the math for a second. Getting new customers costs way more than keeping the ones you have. Some experts say it’s 5 times more expensive, others say 7 times.
Either way, every renewal that fails because of a technical issue is like throwing money in the garbage.
When you set up proper automated renewal testing, you’re basically buying insurance for your most important revenue stream. And unlike real insurance, this one actually pays out constantly.
Testing WooCommerce Renewals: Start Here
If you run a WooCommerce site (and tons of people do), you’ve got two main ways to test renewals. Let me walk you through both, starting with the easier one.
Method 1: The Quick Manual Test
WooCommerce has a button called “Process Renewal” that lets you test things manually. Here’s how I use it:
First thing, create a test subscription. Set it to renew every day instead of monthly – this saves you from waiting around forever. Log in to WordPress, go to WooCommerce, find Subscriptions, and look for your test subscription.
You’ll see a button that says “Process Renewal” right there. Click it. WooCommerce tries to charge the card immediately. Watch what happens. Does the payment work? Does the status update? Do emails sent?
Here’s where most people mess up – they test once with a working card and call it done. That’s not enough. You need to test the stuff that breaks:
Try processing with an expired card. See what happens. Then test with a card that gets declined. Check if your system handles that correctly. Test in both test mode and live mode because they can act differently.
I also test subscriptions with different billing periods and trial periods. Last month I found a bug where our system didn’t send emails when cards expired. I only caught it because I was testing these edge cases deliberately.
Method 2: Scheduled Actions (The Real Deal)
Manual testing is fine, but it doesn’t show you what happens when renewals run automatically at 3 AM while you’re sleeping. That’s where Scheduled Actions come in.
Go to WooCommerce, then Status, then Scheduled Actions. This is basically the control panel for everything WooCommerce does automatically.
Create a test subscription that renews in 2 hours. Then watch the Scheduled Actions page. You should see an action scheduled called “woocommerce_scheduled_subscription_payment” for that renewal time.
Here’s the trick: don’t wait 2 hours. Just click “Run” next to that action, and it runs right now. This tests exactly what will happen in production, including all your custom code and plugins.
Look at what status it shows after running. “Complete” means success. “Failed” means something broke, and you’ll get logs showing what went wrong. I keep a spreadsheet tracking every failed action and why it failed. This has become my debugging bible over the past year.
Stripe Testing: Beyond Just Test Cards
Stripe is huge in the subscription world. Their testing tools are actually really powerful, but most developers only use the basic test cards and miss the good stuff.
Test Clocks Changed Everything
Stripe has this feature called Test Clocks that basically lets you time-travel. Instead of waiting 30 days to see if a monthly renewal works, you just fast-forward time and boom, it happens instantly.
Setting it up is easy. Go to your Stripe dashboard in test mode. Find Developers, then Test Clocks. Create a new clock and name it something like “Monthly Renewal Testing.”
Now, create test customers and attach them to this clock. When you advance the clock forward 30 days, Stripe processes all the renewals that would’ve happened in that time. I can test my entire renewal system in 15 minutes using this.
Pro tip that nobody mentions: create separate test clocks for different scenarios. I have one for successful renewals, one for failures, and one for cards expiring mid-cycle.
Testing them all at once catches problems you’d never find by testing one at a time.
Test Cards That Actually Work
Stripe gives you specific card numbers for testing different scenarios. Here’s my essential list:
4242 4242 4242 4242 – This is your success card. Every renewal should work with this one.
4000 0000 0000 0002 – This card gets declined. Your system should handle it smoothly and send the right emails.
4000 0000 0000 9995 – Simulates insufficient funds. This is different from a regular decline and needs different customer messaging.
4000 0000 0000 0069 – Expired card. This happens constantly in real life and your system needs to catch it.
I test each card three times: at signup, at first renewal, and after several billing cycles. The system can behave differently depending on how old the subscription is.
Webhooks Are Critical (Don’t Skip This)
Here’s something that bit me hard: your renewals might work perfectly in Stripe, but if webhooks aren’t set up right, your app never knows about it. Customers get charged but don’t get access. Disaster.
Install Stripe CLI and run this command: stripe listen --forward-to localhost:3000/webhook
This sends Stripe events straight to your computer. Trigger some test renewals and watch the events come through. You should see “invoice.payment_succeeded” for successful ones and “invoice.payment_failed” for failures.
If those events aren’t showing up, nothing else matters. Your production system won’t work no matter how good your code is.
I keep logs of every webhook during testing. When production breaks, I compare production webhooks to my test logs. This has saved me probably 50 times by now.
Mobile Apps Are Different (Apple and Google)
Testing renewals in mobile apps is its own special headache. Apple and Google each have weird quirks you need to know about.
Apple Testing Is Weird But Useful
Apple’s Sandbox environment compresses time in bizarre ways. Monthly subscriptions renew every 5 minutes. Annual ones renew every hour. Sounds convenient, right? But it creates problems.
Your app might need to handle 12 renewals in an hour during testing. This can expose rate-limiting issues you’d never see in production, where renewals are spread out.
Create multiple sandbox test accounts with different states. I have accounts for new subscribers, mid-cycle subscribers, expired payment methods, grace periods, and people who’ve renewed multiple times.
Test upgrades and downgrades extensively. Apple’s proration logic is confusing. Does the customer get charged immediately when upgrading? Does their renewal date change? You need to verify all of this through actual testing.
Google Play Has Its Own Rules
Google’s testing is more straightforward but still has gotchas. You can create test accounts that go through the entire subscription flow without real charges.
Set up license testing in Google Play Console. Go to Setup, then License Testing. Add test Gmail accounts that can make purchases without charges.
Here’s what caught me: Google Play has subscription states that Apple doesn’t. A subscription can be “on hold,” where the customer keeps access, but renewals pause. Your app probably doesn’t handle this yet, so test it specifically.
Use Google’s server-to-server notifications. They tell your backend immediately when renewals succeed or fail. Set up a test endpoint that logs everything. The notification data includes subscription details you won’t find anywhere else.
Advanced Testing for Serious Businesses
Once you’ve got the basics down, these advanced techniques will bulletproof your renewal system.
Shadow Billing in Production
This sounds complicated, but it’s simple. Every time a real renewal is about to process, also run a test renewal in parallel using a test payment method. Both go through the same code, but only the real one charges the customer.
Compare the results. If the shadow renewal fails but the real one succeeds (or vice versa), you know something environment-specific is broken. This has caught production-only bugs that would’ve been impossible to find in staging.
Load Testing Your Webhooks
Your webhook endpoint might handle 10 renewals per hour. But what about 1,000 renewals at once? This happens every month when subscriptions renew in batches.
Use webhook.site to simulate high volume. Record your typical renewal webhook, then replay it 100 times in 10 seconds.
Does your endpoint handle them all? Do any get dropped? Does your database lock up? Answer these questions before your big renewal day arrives.
Chaos Engineering (Break Things On Purpose)
This is actually fun. During testing, randomly break things to see how your system responds.
Kill the database connection mid-renewal. Simulate payment gateway timeouts. Corrupt webhook data. Your system should handle all of this gracefully and retry appropriately.
Run chaos tests monthly in staging. Every failure you discover becomes a permanent test case. This approach has prevented so many production disasters for me.
The Debugging Flowchart You Need
When a renewal fails in production, follow this exact flowchart:
Step 1: Check payment gateway logs. Did the payment even reach the gateway? If not, the problem is in your code before the payment attempt.
Step 2: Verify webhook delivery. Did the gateway send it? Did your endpoint receive it? Did it process? Many “failed renewals” are actually webhook failures.
Step 3: Review subscription status in your database. Does it match what the gateway shows? Mismatches mean synchronization problems.
Step 4: Check customer payment methods. Is the card expired? Does the address match? Is the bank blocking it? These cause most failures.
Step 5: Look at your error logs. Search for exceptions, timeouts, or rate limits around the renewal time.
I printed this flowchart and taped it to my wall. Even after years of experience, I sometimes forget steps when troubleshooting under pressure.
Mistakes Everyone Makes
Let me share the mistakes I see constantly, even from experienced developers.
Mistake 1: Only testing successful renewals. Most people only test the happy path. But 10-20% of renewals fail for various reasons. If you’re not testing failures, you’re not really testing.
Mistake 2: Ignoring time zones. Your server might be UTC, but your payment processor uses PST. I’ve seen renewal process at completely wrong times because of timezone bugs. Test renewals scheduled for midnight specifically – timezone issues love that time.
Mistake 3: Skipping proration tests. When customers change plans mid-cycle, proration gets messy. Test upgrades and downgrades at different points in the cycle. The math should always be perfect.
Mistake 4: Not checking email deliverability. Your renewal emails might look perfect in tests, but land in spam for real customers. Send test emails to Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. Check spam folders.
Mistake 5: Only testing with your own account. Your account probably has special settings. Create fresh test accounts that mirror real customer experiences.
Your 15-Scenario Testing Checklist
Before launching, test all 15 of these scenarios. I’ve used this exact list for every subscription product I’ve built.
- Standard monthly renewal with valid payment
- Annual renewal after 12 months
- Renewal with card expiring this month
- Renewal with insufficient funds
- Renewal triggering fraud prevention
- Renewal during gateway maintenance
- Renewal when the webhook endpoint is down
- Multiple simultaneous renewals
- Renewal right after plan upgrade
- Renewal right after plan downgrade
- First renewal after trial ends
- Renewal with updated payment method
- Retry after initial failure
- Renewal with different billing and shipping addresses
- Renewal in a different currency than signup
Test each one twice minimum. Document expected versus actual behavior. Any difference is a bug that needs fixing.
After Launch: Keep Testing
Your testing doesn’t end at launch. That’s actually when the most critical monitoring starts.
Set up alerts for failed renewals. I use a simple rule: if more than 5% of renewals fail in any hour, I get a text immediately. This has caught issues before they became disasters.
Create a daily dashboard showing total attempts, success rate, failure reasons, retry success, and recovered revenue. Check it every morning. Patterns will emerge that you’d never catch with occasional checks.
Run your complete testing suite against production monthly using test accounts. Systems drift over time. Dependencies update, payment gateways change APIs, bugs creep in. Regular testing catches changes before customers suffer.
Use error tracking that groups failures by root cause. I use Sentry and it automatically categorizes things like expired cards, insufficient funds, and gateway timeouts. This helps prioritize fixes.
Start Testing Today
Here’s what to do right now: open your subscription system and test the first five scenarios from my checklist. Don’t plan, don’t read ahead, just test those five today.
Tomorrow, test five more. By week’s end, you’ll have validated your entire renewal system. You’ll sleep better knowing renewals will actually work at 3 AM.
Testing renewals isn’t a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing practice that protects your most important metric: recurring revenue. The time you invest returns itself many times over in prevented churn and saved revenue.
Your future self will thank you. Now go test those renewals before your customers find the bugs for you.
