indie hackers · $500–5k mrr
pain: a few failed cards a month are a real slice of your mrr, and you notice only when the chart dips.
dunning lite: watches stripe for you and sends each customer the right email, while you keep shipping.
> dunning-lite --help
dunning-lite [LIVE · EARLY ACCESS]
recover failed stripe payments before they become churn.
dunning lite is dunning management for stripe, built for indie saas. it catches every failed payment, works out why it failed and sends the right human-written email so your customer can fix it. flat-rate pricing, no commission.
The problem: failed payments
not every cancellation is a decision. cards expire, banks block a charge, a 3d secure check never gets confirmed. the customer still wants your product: the payment failed, and nobody told them in a way they would act on.
recurly's churn benchmarks (data from july 2026) put average saas churn at 3.22 % and involuntary churn at 1.06 %: roughly one in three saas cancellations is a failed payment, not a decision. industry estimates put involuntary churn at 20–40 % of total churn.
stripe can retry the charge, but a retry runs the same card again. when the card is dead, someone has to ask the customer to update it, kindly and at the right moment.
sources: recurly churn rate benchmarks · estimate: dodo payments on involuntary churn
> dunning-lite show --flow
How Dunning Lite works
- 0 · connect stripe connect oauth, read-only. about 2 minutes. revoke access anytime.
- 1 · listen dunning lite listens for invoice.payment_failed on your stripe account.
- 2 · classify soft decline (e.g. insufficient funds), hard decline (invalid or blocked card) or sca / 3d secure authentication.
- 3 · email the matching human-written email sequence goes out, asking the customer to update the card or confirm the payment.
- 4 · recover a dashboard shows every failed payment and every recovery.
- human-written, not ai. every template is written by a person, one per failure type, and you can edit it.
- your own domain. on starter and up, recovery emails go out from your own sending domain.
- flat rate. one monthly price. no commission on what you recover.
> dunning-lite who --for
Who Dunning Lite is for
creators with paid newsletters & memberships on stripe
pain: when a member's card expires they just disappear, and a generic “payment failed” notice feels cold.
dunning lite: a warm, human email from your own domain that asks them to update the card.
micro-saas teams of 1–3
pain: nobody owns failed payments, and building dunning in-house means webhooks, templates and edge cases nobody has time for.
dunning lite: no code: connect stripe, pick the templates, done. decline types and sca are already handled.
agencies & studios with several stripe accounts
pain: every client or product has its own stripe account and its own failed payments to chase.
dunning lite: the studio plan covers up to 3 stripe accounts, with custom retry rules and multi-account analytics.
Proof
- built in public by the founder, gerard ill, on x: @IllGerard.
- early access: running with real indie saas on stripe.
- [PLACEHOLDER: first recovery metrics once available] · no testimonials until they are real.
> dunning-lite faq --objections
Objections, answered
"is my stripe data safe?"
dunning lite connects through stripe connect (oauth) with read-only access. it never stores card data and never touches charges or refunds. revoke the connection from stripe in one click.
"stripe already retries failed payments."
it does, and that helps. but smart retries only run the same card again. an expired or blocked card needs the customer to update it, and that takes an email they actually read.
"my customers are in europe. what about 3d secure?"
sca failures are detected as their own type. the customer gets an email with a link to confirm the payment with their bank, which matters since psd2 made sca mandatory in europe.
"why not a commission-based tool?"
because your recovered revenue is yours. dunning lite charges a flat monthly fee, whether it recovers $100 or $10,000. you keep 100 % of what comes back.
"i'm not technical."
you don't need to be. no code, nothing to deploy: connect stripe with oauth, pick the email templates and you're done.
"automated emails sound robotic."
these are written by a person, not generated. you can edit every template, and on starter and up they go out from your own domain.
"what if the customer already cancelled?"
dunning lite only acts on failed payments (involuntary churn). a customer who chose to cancel is not chased.
> dunning-lite plans
Dunning Lite plans and pricing
Starter
for your first failed payments
$14/mo
or $140/yr (2 months free)
- 15 recoveries / month
- multi-step email sequences
- email templates
- customer replies inbox
- grace periods & offers
- analytics dashboard
- custom sending domain
- 1 stripe account
Indie
for a growing indie saas
$29/mo
or $290/yr (2 months free)
- everything in starter
- unlimited recoveries
- advanced analytics
- priority support
Studio
for agencies and multi-product founders
$79/mo
or $790/yr (2 months free)
- everything in indie
- up to 3 stripe accounts
- custom retry rules
- vip support
flat rate on every plan: no commission on recovered revenue. annual billing is a launch offer: 2 months free.
> dunning-lite start
flat rate. no commission. you keep 100 % of what you recover.
dunning lite is in early access. you choose a plan and connect stripe on dunninglite.com; this page is here so you know what you get before you go.
- what you need: a stripe account with subscriptions, and about 2 minutes.
- what you get: every failed payment classified, the matching human-written emails sent, recoveries on a dashboard.
- what we don't promise: a recovery rate. it depends on your customers, so the dashboard shows you the real number.
> dunning-lite faq
Dunning Lite: frequently asked questions
What is dunning management?
Dunning management is the process of contacting customers whose payments have failed so you can recover that revenue. For a SaaS on Stripe, it means catching each failed payment, working out why it failed (soft decline, hard decline or a 3D Secure check) and asking the customer, at the right moment, to update the card or confirm the payment.
Does Dunning Lite work with Stripe only?
Yes. Dunning Lite is built for Stripe subscriptions and connects through Stripe Connect with read-only OAuth access. Other payment processors are not supported.
Are the emails written by AI?
No. Every recovery email is written by a person, with its own message for each failure type, and you can edit the templates. On Starter and above they go out from your own domain.
Is there a free plan?
No. Dunning Lite has three paid plans: Starter at $14/month, Indie at $29/month and Studio at $79/month. Annual billing saves two months. There is no commission on recovered revenue.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. You can cancel from the Dunning Lite dashboard at any time. Access lasts until the end of the billing period and the Stripe connection is revoked. Partial periods are not refunded, except where the law requires it.
Who builds Dunning Lite?
Dunning Lite is built in public by Gerard Ill, founder of The Big Answer Digital. Full profile: thebiganswer.digital/gerard-ill/