How to Set Rules for a Subscription Product

Modified on Tue, 22 Sep at 12:57 AM

If your product is a subscription — a recurring monthly or annual plan — it doesn't have just one moment worth automating. A subscription has a whole lifecycle: someone signs up, gets billed every cycle, might miss a payment, might cancel, might pause, might come back. Rules let you react to every one of these moments automatically — pushing the customer's data to your autoresponder or to any external tool via a webhook.

This article covers the subscription-specific triggers and the new webhook action. If you haven't set up a basic purchase rule before, it may help to start with the general Set Product Rules article first — this one builds on the same interface.

✅ Why this matters for subscriptions A one-time purchase has one event: "bought." A subscription has many: renewed, failed, cancelled, paused, resumed, expired, refunded, trial-converted, trial-ending, card-expiring. Each of these is a moment where the right automated action — a tag change, a list move, a webhook to your CRM — can save a sale, recover a failed payment, or keep your records accurate without you lifting a finger.

1. Open Set Product Rules

Go to your product's settings. In the left-hand menu, click Set Rules. This opens the Set Product Rules page, which explains: "You can set the actions that will be Performed based on the Product Status."

Product settings → Set Rules → click "Set Product Rules" to create your first rule

Click the green Set Product Rules button in the top-right corner.

2. The Create Automation Rule Window

Clicking the button opens the Create automation rule window: "When something happens on this product, trigger an action automatically." This window has two parts — WHEN (the trigger) and THEN (the action).

The Create automation rule window — WHEN sets the trigger, THEN sets what happens

3. Choosing a Subscription Trigger (WHEN)

Click the first dropdown under WHEN. It opens a scrollable list grouped by category: Product, Manual member, and — the one this article focuses on — Subscription.

The WHEN dropdown, grouped by Product, Manual member, and Subscription

Scrolling further down the Subscription group

Here is every subscription trigger available, in order:

Trigger	Fires when…
subscription is renewed	A recurring payment succeeds and the subscription continues into its next billing cycle.
subscription payment fails	A recurring charge is attempted but declines (expired card, insufficient funds, etc.).
subscription is cancelled	The customer or you cancels the subscription.
subscription is paused	The subscription is put on hold rather than cancelled outright.
subscription is resumed	A paused subscription is started again.
subscription expires or completes	The subscription reaches its natural end (e.g. a fixed-length plan finishes its term).
subscription is refunded	A subscription payment is refunded.
card is about to expire	The card on file is nearing its expiry date — a useful early warning before a payment fails.
free trial converts to paid	A free trial ends and successfully converts into a paid subscription.
free trial is ending	A free trial is about to end (fires before conversion, as a heads-up).

? Not just subscriptions The same dropdown also includes product is purchased and the cart is abandoned (under Product), and Manual member access is given (under Manual member — for when you add someone by hand rather than through checkout).

You can build a rule for any of these the same way described here.

Filtering by Pricing Option

The second dropdown next to WHEN lets you choose for all pricing options or for a specific pricing option — useful if your subscription has multiple tiers (e.g. Monthly vs. Annual) and you want different automations for each.

Choose whether the rule applies to every pricing tier or just one

4. Choosing an Action (THEN)

Under THEN, pick one of two action cards:

THEN — Push to autoresponder, or Send a webhook

Action	What it does
Push to autoresponder	Adds the customer to a list or tag in your connected email service (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, etc.).
Send a webhook	New: POSTs the event data as JSON to your own endpoint or CRM — no email platform required.

Option A: Push to Autoresponder

Selecting this card reveals the familiar fields:

Autoresponder — pick from your connected email platforms.
Action — currently add them to.
This list — the list in your autoresponder to add them to.
Autoresponder Tags — optional tags to apply. Note: tags must be at least three characters.

⚠️ The autoresponder must be connected first Just like with purchase rules, the autoresponder needs to already be connected in Settings → Integrations before it will appear in this dropdown, and the list you want to use must already exist inside your autoresponder.

Option B: Send a Webhook

Selecting the Send a webhook card reveals a completely different set of fields — this is the new option built specifically to handle rich subscription events.

Webhook events — tick exactly which events should POST to your URL

At the top, it explains: "Pick the events that POST to this webhook URL. Uncheck the purchase event to make this a subscription-only rule, then select a single event. For a different URL per event, add one rule per event from the When list."

Every event has a checkbox and its exact technical name (the value sent in the JSON payload's type field):

Event (as shown)	Technical name sent in payload
product is purchased	`purchased`
is renewed	`subscription.renewed`
payment fails	`subscription.payment_failed`
is cancelled	`subscription.cancelled`
is paused	`subscription.paused`
is resumed	`subscription.resumed`
expires or completes	`subscription.expired`
is refunded	`subscription.refunded`
card is about to expire	`subscription.card_expiring`
free trial converts to paid	`subscription.trial_converted`
free trial is ending	`subscription.trial_ending`

Below the event checklist:

Sample subscription event payload — a collapsible section showing exactly what JSON gets POSTed, with the type field carrying the event name shown in the table above. Expand it before building your integration so your endpoint knows what fields to expect.
Webhook Name — a label for your own reference (e.g. "CRM sync").
Webhook URL — the endpoint that will receive the POST request (e.g. your Zapier catch hook, Make.com webhook, or your own server URL).

⚠️ All events are ticked by default Every checkbox starts checked, including product is purchased. If you only want this webhook to fire for subscription lifecycle events (not the initial purchase), uncheck "product is purchased" — otherwise your endpoint will also receive a POST on the very first sale.

? One URL per event, or one URL for everything You can tick multiple events and send them all to one webhook URL — your endpoint reads the type field to tell them apart. Or, if you want different URLs per event (e.g. failed payments go to a Slack alert, cancellations go to your CRM), create a separate rule for each event, each with its own single ticked box and its own Webhook URL.

5. Save the Rule

Once WHEN and THEN are configured, click Save rule at the bottom-right of the window. The rule is now live and will fire automatically the next time that event happens on this product.

Common Use Cases for Subscription Rules

1. Win back failed payments Trigger: subscription payment fails → Action: Push to autoresponder, tag "Payment-Failed." Your autoresponder automation sends a "please update your card" email sequence automatically, the moment a charge declines.

2. Clean up your list when someone cancels Trigger: subscription is cancelled → Action: Push to autoresponder, move to a "Cancelled" list and tag "Churned." Keeps your active-customer list accurate and lets you run a separate win-back campaign for churned users.

3. Celebrate trial conversions Trigger: free trial converts to paid → Action: Push to autoresponder, move from "Trial" list to "Paid Customers" and tag "Converted." Triggers a welcome-to-the-paid-plan email automatically.

4. Remind trial users before it's too late Trigger: free trial is ending → Action: Push to autoresponder, tag "Trial-Ending." Your autoresponder can fire an automation reminding them to add payment details before access is cut off.

5. Prevent involuntary churn from expiring cards Trigger: card is about to expire → Action: Push to autoresponder, tag "Card-Expiring-Soon." Send a proactive "update your card" email before the payment actually fails.

6. Sync every subscription event to your CRM Trigger: any/all subscription events → Action: Send a webhook to your CRM or Zapier/Make.com endpoint. Your sales or success team sees renewals, cancellations, and payment failures in real time without checking FlexiFunnels directly.

7. Alert your team instantly on cancellation Trigger: subscription is cancelled only (all other boxes unchecked) → Action: Send a webhook to a Slack/Zapier URL that posts a message in your team channel. Fast visibility into churn as it happens.

Common Situations & Quick Fixes

❓ I set a rule for "subscription is cancelled" but nothing happened when a customer cancelled. Confirm you selected exactly subscription is cancelled in the WHEN dropdown (not "subscription expires or completes" — these are different events). Also check that you clicked Save rule, and that the autoresponder/webhook URL was filled in correctly.

❓ My webhook is receiving events I didn't want. Remember every event checkbox is ticked by default, including product is purchased. Open the rule, uncheck the events you don't want, and save again.

❓ I want failed payments and cancellations to go to different URLs. Create two separate rules — one with only payment fails ticked pointing at URL A, and another with only is cancelled ticked pointing at URL B.

❓ My tag didn't apply through the autoresponder action. Tags need to be at least three characters — a one- or two-letter tag will be rejected. Also confirm the tag exists (or can be created) in your autoresponder.

❓ What does the "type" field in the webhook payload mean? It's how your endpoint identifies which event just happened — e.g. subscription.payment_failed or subscription.renewed. Expand the "Sample subscription event payload" section in the rule builder to see the full JSON structure before you build your integration.

❓ Can I use both a webhook AND push to autoresponder for the same trigger? Each rule supports one action. To do both, create two rules with the same WHEN trigger — one set to Push to autoresponder, the other set to Send a webhook.

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How to Set Rules for a Subscription Product

1. Open Set Product Rules

2. The Create Automation Rule Window