Pausing and resuming a subscription

You can put an active subscription on hold and start it again later. Pausing keeps the plan, the price and the customer's details, so you can pick up where you left off. It is a good answer when a customer is away or wants a short break, and it saves you cancelling and setting the subscription up again.

Considerations

• Pause only appears when the subscription is Active. Resume only appears when it is Paused.
• Pausing removes Change plan from the top of the page. Cancel stays.
• Nothing asks you to confirm, and no message appears. The badge and the buttons are how you know it worked.
• The Next payment date does not move when you pause.
• A plan can carry a Maximum Pause Duration (days). That is the number of days a customer can pause the plan before it is cancelled automatically. Left blank, there is no limit.

Pause a subscription

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Subscriptions.
2. Click the row of the subscription you want to pause.
3. Click Pause at the top of the page.
4. The badge turns orange and reads Paused. Pause becomes Resume, and a Paused since date appears in the Billing card.

Warning: Pausing records the pause on the subscription. It does not move the next payment date and it does not stop the card being charged. If a charge goes through, the subscription goes back to Active on its own. When a customer must not be charged, check their payment in Stripe as well.

Resume a subscription

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Subscriptions.
2. Click the row of the paused subscription.
3. Click Resume at the top of the page. It sits where Pause was.
4. The badge turns green and reads Active, and the Paused since row leaves the Billing card.

Both the pause and the resume are written to Activity on the subscription, with the date and time, so you have a record of the break.

Let customers pause their own subscriptions

Customers can pause and resume from their account on your shop, without emailing you.

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Settings, then Subscription Settings.
2. Find the Customer Self-Service panel.
3. Turn on Allow customers to pause.
4. Click Save changes.

Anything the customer does shows on the subscription in your dashboard.

Pause, resume, cancel or export several subscriptions at once

You do not have to open each subscription. Pick the ones you want on the list, then use the bar that appears above the table.

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Subscriptions.
2. Tick the box next to each subscription you want to act on.
3. A grey bar appears above the table. It starts with the count, such as 3 selected.
4. Click the button for the job you want. Each button shows how many of your picks it applies to, so Pause (3) pauses three of them.
5. The action runs straight away. Nothing asks you to confirm.
6. When it finishes, the ticks clear, the bar closes and the list shows the new statuses.

The buttons in the bar:

• Export CSV: downloads the subscriptions you ticked as a CSV file. The file is named with today's date, for example subscriptions-export-2026-09-15.csv. This button is always there.
• Pause (n): pauses the picks that are Active. It only appears when at least one pick is active.
• Resume (n): restarts the picks that are Paused. It only appears when at least one pick is paused.
• Cancel (n): cancels the picks that are Active, Trialing or Paused. The button is red.
• Clear: drops your selection and closes the bar. Nothing changes on the subscriptions.

Rows that the action cannot touch are left alone. Tick five subscriptions where two are paused and Resume (2) starts those two only.

Warning: Cancel in this bar does not ask you to confirm and does not record a cancellation reason. There is no Before you go step. When you want the reason on record, cancel the subscriptions one at a time as described in Cancelling a subscription.

After an export, a message reads Export ready, with Downloaded 3 subscriptions as CSV. below it. If something goes wrong it reads Export failed and Could not export subscriptions. Please try again.

To export the whole list instead of a selection, click the download icon at the top right of the Subscriptions page. That file matches your current search and status filter.

Related guides

• Understanding subscription statuses
• Viewing subscription details
• Cancelling a subscription
• Changing your subscription settings