Should Your Subscription Business Use Auto-Renew?

Subscription businesses obsess over pricing and churn, but the most consequential strategic choice may be far simpler: whether subscriptions auto-renew or auto-cancel. Drawing on a 1.4 million–person field experiment with a major European newspaper, the authors show that while auto-renewal boosts short-term retention, it suppresses trial sign-ups so sharply that auto-cancel ultimately produces more paying subscribers and higher-quality customers over time. The right approach depends on two factors—whether customers are naturally loyal or variety-seeking, and whether a company is an incumbent defending share or a challenger trying to acquire it—making renewal defaults a competitive strategy decision, not merely an operational setting.