Subscription renewals

When renewals fire

Packagento subscriptions renew once a year. The next renewal date is one year after the most recent successful charge, and the charge runs automatically on that date against the card the subscription was started with.

Each subscription renews on its own schedule. Buying two subscriptions on different days means each one renews on its own anniversary; there is no shared monthly billing day.

What you receive when a renewal succeeds

We email the account holder the moment Stripe confirms the charge. The email is titled "Subscription renewed" and contains:

The package the renewal covers.
The new "valid through" date - one year past the previous expiry.
A "Manage licences" button linking to your licences page.

There is nothing to do on your side. The line in the email reads "Nothing else to do - your existing access keys keep working", and that is exactly the case: the tokens your projects already use stay valid and Composer keeps installing new tagged versions without any reconfiguration.

Before the renewal

We send a single reminder seven days before the next renewal date. The subject names the package and the renewal date, and the body lists the package name, the date, and how many days remain. There is a "Renew or manage subscriptions" link to your licences page.

You get one reminder per subscription, per renewal cycle. If two subscriptions are due in the same week, you receive one reminder each. If your card is on file and valid, you do not need to act on the reminder; the renewal will charge on the listed date.

When a renewal fails

If the renewal charge is declined, Stripe automatically retries the card several times over the following days. You will receive an email the first time the charge fails. Its subject starts with "Action required" and names the package whose renewal failed. The email contains:

The package the renewal was for.
An "Update payment method" button.
A link back to your licences page.

Update your payment details and the next automatic retry will succeed. You do not need to retry the charge by hand or place a new order; Stripe drives the retries on its own schedule.

What the licence shows during the retry window

The licence stays active for the whole retry window. While Stripe is still trying to collect:

Your licence row continues to read as active on the licences page.
Project tokens that include the package keep working with Composer.
composer install and composer update continue to fetch versions as normal.

In other words, a transient card failure does not interrupt your build pipelines. You have the full retry window to update the card before access changes.

What happens if every retry fails

If Stripe exhausts its retries without a successful charge, the subscription ends. The outcome is the same as if you had cancelled it explicitly: the licence stays in your account but moves to a read-only state, you keep access to every version released up to the end date, and versions tagged after that date are no longer available to your tokens. Code already installed on your servers keeps running.

See Cancel a subscription for a fuller description of the read-only state - the access rules are identical.

Updating your payment method

The "Update payment method" link in the failed-renewal email opens the page where you can replace the card on file. You can also reach it from your account by signing in and opening the licences page; the same update option is available there.

If the subscription was purchased on a workspace - a shared organisation account - only members with the owner, admin, or billing role on that workspace can update the card. If you do not see the update option on a subscription you expect to manage, ask an owner or admin to grant you the billing role.

See Organisation billing for how subscriptions, cards, and workspaces fit together.

Resubscribing after the subscription has ended

Once a subscription has ended - through a failed-retry exhaustion or an explicit cancellation - the way back is to buy the package again from its browse page. A fresh purchase creates a new licence row alongside the old one. The new licence starts from today, with its own one-year period and its own renewal anniversary; there is no carryover of unused time from the old licence and no penalty or cooldown.

Activate the new licence on the project you want to use it on, and Composer can install the package again straight away.