Most stores find out after the renewal fails.
The difference between checking manually, exporting reports by hand, and having it scanned every day — plus how it stacks up against the closest free alternatives.
| What matters | Checking manually | Spreadsheet exports | Subscription Health Check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs without anyone remembering to check | ○ | ○ | ● |
| Flags an expiring card before renewal day | Sometimes | Sometimes | ● |
| Distinguishes grace period from failed payment automatically | ○ | ○ | ● |
| Emails the customer automatically | ○ | ○ | ● |
| Locks out duplicate alerts with a 35-day cooldown | ○ | Manual | ● |
| Keeps a full email + status audit trail | ○ | Manual | ● |
| Shows MRR / ARR at risk at a glance | ○ | Sometimes | ● |
Where the free options fit
The table above compares Subscription Health Check against checking WooCommerce manually or exporting spreadsheets — the two zero-cost approaches most stores start with. It doesn't cover other plugins, so here's where those actually fit.
WooCommerce Subscriptions' built-in retry system
Free, and already included if you're running WooCommerce Subscriptions. It retries a failed charge automatically after the payment has already failed — it's reactive, not proactive. It doesn't flag a card that's about to expire before the renewal runs, and it doesn't distinguish "in grace period" from "just failed" as separate states you can act on differently.
Workfern Subscriptions Recovery
A free WordPress.org plugin some stores use alongside WooCommerce Subscriptions to help recover failed renewals. Like the built-in retry system, it's oriented around payments that have already failed, rather than surfacing an expiring card ahead of the renewal date or scoring severity across failed payments, grace periods and expiring cards as three distinct risk types.
Checking manually or exporting spreadsheets
Costs nothing but a recurring block of someone's time, and only catches what that person remembers to look for, on the day they look. Nobody gets an automatic email when a card is about to expire, and there's no running log of what was flagged and when.
This isn't every alternative on the market — just the two most common zero-cost paths WooCommerce Subscriptions stores already have available. See pricing →