Cancellations used to be a blind spot for us with our WordPress plugins. We had a general sense of why people might leave, but no consistent data to confirm it or to act on.
After struggling to justify improvements without clear insights, we turned to the EDD Cancellation Survey plugin by WP Sunshine. We implemented it on our Aggregator plugin website and finally started getting the clarity we needed.
In this article, I’ll share how we set it up and why, then you can decide for yourself whether it’s worth the investment.
EDD Cancellation Survey: Fast Facts
- The EDD Cancellation Survey plugin adds a cancellation feedback flow directly to Easy Digital Downloads to help you gather valuable insights when customers cancel their subscriptions.
- When a customer cancels, they’re prompted with a customizable survey asking why they’re leaving before finalizing the cancellation. You can adjust the survey reasons to fit your business needs.
- You can easily customize the survey from the plugin’s settings page, including setting a custom title and message – perfect for offering assistance before a user commits to canceling.
- The plugin gives you control over the cancellation survey flow – requiring users to select a reason, randomizing the order of reasons, and defining unique cancellation reasons with specific IDs.
- All data is collected and displayed in a clean, sortable dashboard that provides insights into subscription duration and earnings linked to each cancellation reason, helping you understand customer churn better.
Why We Decided to Use It
Before finding this plugin, we were relying on analysing support tickets, but that didn’t give us enough insight at scale. We needed a way to consistently collect feedback and connect it to our revenue data.
Since our plugin sales are powered by EDD, this solution was an obvious fit. It integrated smoothly, didn’t interrupt the user flow, and only took about an hour to set up, including customizing the feedback form to match our styling with some custom CSS.
EDD Cancellation Survey Review: Performance
Once active, the plugin immediately started delivering insights. We learned that the majority of cancellations came from users who were simply no longer using the product. Others mentioned the price or that they didn’t want their subscription to auto-renew.
Fewer users brought up missing features or usability, which was a confirmation of the plugin’s maturity in its niche. Plus, since the plugin also shows how long users stayed and how much revenue they generated, we could prioritize what feedback to act on.
For example, those citing difficulty to use the plugin or a lack of features, which were very few in truth, tended to churn earlier, suggesting onboarding improvements could help.
On the other hand, customers not wanting to auto-renew, meaning they preferred to manage their subscription renewal manually every year, were relatively high value customers, so we could potentially offer them a discounted 2-year plan. This would generate more revenue today and reduce renewal figures as of next year, but since manual renewals are more likely to be forgotten or ignored, it could guarantee certain revenue targets while giving customers peace of mind with 2 years of access, updates and support.
EDD Cancellation Survey: Key Features
Custom Cancellation Reasons
You don’t want a solution where you’re stuck with generic reasons like “other.”
This plugin lets you define the cancellation reasons that make sense for your product. Whether it’s pricing, feature limitations, or switching to a competitor, you can customize the list to capture the real reasons behind churn, all based on existing customer feedback from your support channels.
Mandatory Feedback Option
One checkbox can make a big difference. When enabled, users must select a cancellation reason before they can complete the process. This ensures you get consistent data, and makes the cancellation feel a little more intentional on the user’s part.
Granted, it can be an additional point of friction for the customer, but as long as it’s kept simple and clean, it shouldn’t have a negative impact on their impression of you. Just don’t make the cancellation sequence a 5-step process with the option to just cancel being almost entirely hidden in every step.
Randomized Choices
To prevent survey bias, you can choose to randomize the order of the cancellation reasons each time the survey appears. This simple feature increases the likelihood of honest responses, especially for users who may quickly choose the first option by default.
Subscription Data Overlay
Beyond just “why” someone is cancelling, the plugin tells you “how much it matters”. It shows how long each customer stayed and how much revenue their subscription generated during that time. This context helps you prioritize feedback based on customer value, not just volume.
Inline Help Message
You can display a short message above the survey encouraging users to reach out before cancelling. Whether it’s a friendly note or a link to live chat, this gives you one last chance to recover a customer before they go.
EDD Cancellation Survey Review: How It Works
Setting up the EDD Cancellation Survey plugin is refreshingly simple.
Step 1: Install the Plugin
Purchase and download it from the WP Sunshine website. It only costs $29 per year so it will pay for itself in no time at all.
Step 2: Activate & Locate Settings
After activation, head to Downloads → Settings → Extensions → Cancellation Survey. This is where you’ll manage all survey-related settings.
Step 3: Customize the Survey Title & Message
Set your own survey title (e.g., “Your Feedback Matters”) and add an optional message to offer support or encourage users to reconsider.
Step 4: Set Your Cancellation Reasons
Add a list of predefined reasons (like “Too expensive” or “Using a different plugin”). You can customize both the label and a unique internal ID for each.
- Require a survey response to prevent users from cancelling without giving a reason.
- Randomize reasons to reduce selection bias.
Step 6: Save Settings, Monitor Feedback, and Act
Once active, you can view cancellations and the associated data in your Easy Digital Downloads dashboard.
The cancellation survey itself will appear for customers when they click on the “Cancel” option in their account’s Subscription settings. You can take a look at how we styled it below.
The process takes 10–15 minutes for most setups, making it a fast win for recurring revenue businesses using Easy Digital Downloads.
EDD Cancellation Survey: Customer Support
Support is handled by the developer behind WP Sunshine, Derek Ashauer. Based on our experience, responses are timely and helpful. There’s documentation available for setup and email-based support is included with your license.
We haven’t needed much assistance, which is a good sign in itself, but when we reached out with a question during implementation, the reply was fast and clear.
EDD Cancellation Survey: Pricing
The EDD Cancellation Survey plugin is available in both yearly and lifetime license options. Pricing is clear, affordable, and scales based on the number of sites you need to install it on.
Yearly Licenses:
- Single site: $29
- Up to 5 sites: $59
- Unlimited sites: $99
Lifetime Licenses:
- Single site: $99
- Up to 5 sites: $179
- Unlimited sites: $299
All purchases come with a 30-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, and licenses renew annually by default.
For most users, the yearly license is more than enough and it’s obviously affordable, especially if you’re just testing out the plugin. If you’re building or managing multiple EDD-powered sites, the lifetime unlimited option offers exceptional long-term value.
EDD Cancellation Survey: Final Verdict
The EDD Cancellation Survey plugin isn’t trying to do everything, and that’s exactly what makes it so effective.
It focuses on solving a specific pain point, which is understanding why customers cancel. For WordPress product businesses using Easy Digital Downloads, it turns a previously invisible part of the customer journey into a source of actionable insight.
While the current features already provide strong value, especially when tied to revenue and subscription length, we see plenty of potential for the plugin to evolve further. Features like email follow-ups, better reporting, or integration with analytics tools could unlock even more powerful insights for store owners.
Even as it stands though, it’s a huge step forward for any business not yet collecting structured feedback during cancellations.
In our experience, it was easy to implement, cost-effective, and gave us clarity that we had been missing for years. If you’re still guessing why people cancel, this plugin will help you start knowing, and that alone can reshape how you approach retention.
