Gravy and Churnkey both fight churn, but they approach the problem from entirely different directions. Gravy deploys human agents to recover failed payments through personal outreach. Churnkey provides software that automates cancel flows and dunning sequences. Understanding which model works for your business requires thinking about your customer base, deal sizes, and how you want to allocate resources.
The quick comparison
| Feature | Gravy Solutions | Churnkey |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery method | Human agents (calls, email, text) | Automated software |
| Cancel flows | Agents handle in conversation | Self-serve cancel flow builder |
| Dunning approach | Personal outreach per account | Email sequences + smart retries |
| SMS | Agents text as needed | No |
| Pricing model | Revenue share (% of recovered) | Percentage of saved/recovered |
| Setup | Managed onboarding (days) | Self-serve setup (hours) |
| Ongoing management | Fully managed by Gravy | Self-serve with configuration |
| Pause subscriptions | Agent can offer | Built-in feature |
| Analytics | Reporting from Gravy team | Self-serve dashboard |
| Best for | High-value B2C subscriptions | SaaS with both churn types |
What Gravy does well
Gravy's model is built on a simple insight: for some customers, a human conversation is more effective than any automated email or in-app modal.
Personal outreach recovers stubborn accounts. Gravy's agents call customers who have failed payments. They can address confusion ("I didn't know I was being charged"), handle objections ("I'm thinking about canceling anyway"), and provide technical help ("I'm not sure how to update my card"). This nuance is impossible to replicate in an automated email.
Combination of recovery and retention. When an agent calls about a failed payment, the conversation often reveals that the customer was considering canceling. The agent can address the concern, offer alternatives, and save the account. Gravy effectively handles both involuntary and voluntary churn in one interaction.
Fully managed. Once onboarded, Gravy runs your recovery without ongoing management from your team. They handle the outreach, the conversations, and the follow-ups. You review reports and cash the recovered revenue.
Multi-channel at the agent level. Individual agents choose the right channel for each situation: phone call for high-value accounts, text message for quick card updates, email for formal communication. This adaptive approach is more nuanced than automated channel selection.
What Gravy struggles with
Speed of outreach. Agents work during business hours and process accounts in queue order. The first contact might be 12-48 hours after a payment fails. Research consistently shows that the first few hours after failure have the highest recovery rates. This delay costs recoverable revenue.
Revenue share gets expensive. Gravy typically takes 10-25% of recovered revenue. On $50K of monthly recoveries, that's $5,000-12,500. At scale, this is significantly more expensive than any software tool.
Doesn't scale linearly. More failed payments require more agents. Growth in your customer base means growth in Gravy's service costs, and potentially capacity constraints.
No self-serve cancel flows. Gravy's strength is reactive: they respond to failed payments and at-risk accounts. They don't provide the proactive in-app cancel flow experience that intercepts customers before they complete cancellation.
Brand control. Your recovery outreach is handled by Gravy's team, not your own. You can provide guidelines, but you don't control the exact experience each customer has.
What Churnkey does well
Churnkey's software approach scales effortlessly and gives you granular control.
Cancel flows are best-in-class. This is Churnkey's standout feature. When a customer clicks "cancel," they enter a customized flow with conditional logic: different offers based on the cancellation reason, plan type, or tenure. Discount offers, plan downgrades, subscription pauses. Churnkey reports saving 20-40% of cancellation attempts through these flows.
Automated dunning. Email sequences with smart retry coordination handle failed payments automatically. Every failed payment triggers the sequence within minutes, covering the critical early recovery window that Gravy misses.
Pause subscriptions. Letting customers pause rather than cancel is a powerful retention tool. Churnkey makes this easy to configure with customizable pause durations and automatic reactivation.
Self-serve analytics. Real-time dashboard showing save rates, recovery rates, churn trends, and cancellation reasons. You don't wait for a report; you see the data when you need it.
Speed and consistency. Software delivers the same experience to every customer, every time, around the clock. No quality variation, no off-hours gaps, no capacity constraints.
What Churnkey struggles with
No SMS dunning. Email-only recovery misses customers who don't open emails. This is a meaningful limitation for payment recovery specifically.
No human escalation. For complex situations where a customer needs a conversation, Churnkey's automated flows can feel impersonal. High-value accounts sometimes need the human touch that software can't provide.
Percentage-based pricing. Like Gravy, Churnkey charges based on revenue saved and recovered. The percentages are lower (typically 3-7%), but costs still scale with success.
Implementation effort. Setting up cancel flows requires integrating Churnkey's JavaScript widget into your cancellation UI. This is front-end work that needs maintenance as your product evolves.
Feature bloat for recovery-only needs. If you primarily need dunning and don't have a voluntary churn problem, Churnkey's cancel flow features add complexity without value.
Pricing comparison
Gravy: Revenue share, typically 10-25% of recovered revenue. No monthly software fee. Costs scale directly with recovery volume.
Churnkey: Percentage of saved/recovered revenue, typically 3-7%. Monthly minimums may apply. Costs scale with both cancel flow saves and payment recovery.
| Monthly Scenario | Gravy Cost | Churnkey Cost |
|---|---|---|
| $20K recovered payments + $5K saved cancellations | $2,000-5,000 (recovery only) | $750-1,750 (both) |
| $50K recovered + $15K saved | $5,000-12,500 | $1,950-4,550 |
| $100K recovered + $30K saved | $10,000-25,000 | $3,900-9,100 |
Churnkey is significantly cheaper at every volume level, and it covers both voluntary and involuntary churn. Gravy's human model carries a premium.
Who should pick Gravy
Gravy makes sense if:
- Your average subscription is $300+/month
- You have a manageable number of high-value accounts (not thousands)
- Personal phone outreach aligns with your brand
- You want fully managed recovery (no internal effort)
- Your customers are likely to have questions or concerns that need conversation
- You don't have the team to handle recovery internally
Typical Gravy customer: Premium B2C subscription business, health/wellness memberships, high-ticket coaching or education platforms where the personal touch strengthens the customer relationship.
Who should pick Churnkey
Churnkey makes sense if:
- You have both voluntary and involuntary churn to address
- Cancel flow optimization is important to your retention strategy
- You want automated, consistent recovery at scale
- Your average subscription is under $300/month
- You want self-serve configuration and real-time analytics
- Speed of first outreach matters (automated = immediate)
Typical Churnkey customer: B2B SaaS with 500+ subscribers, dealing with meaningful voluntary churn from cancellations and needing automated recovery for failed payments.
The hybrid approach
Some companies use both models: Churnkey handles the automated cancel flows and first-pass dunning, and Gravy or an internal team handles escalation for accounts that don't respond to automation. This captures the speed and scale of software with the personal touch for high-value holdouts.
This approach adds complexity and cost, so it's typically only worthwhile for companies with both high volume and high account values.
What about Rekko?
Both Gravy and Churnkey have gaps in their payment recovery capabilities. Gravy is slow to first contact. Churnkey lacks SMS.
For the involuntary churn piece specifically, Rekko provides automated email + SMS dunning with flat-rate pricing. If your primary challenge is recovering failed Stripe payments, a dedicated multi-channel tool often outperforms both human agents (on speed and cost) and email-only software (on reach).
Explore Rekko if payment recovery is your primary focus.
The bottom line
Pick Gravy if you have high-value accounts where personal outreach genuinely makes the difference, and you're comfortable paying a premium for fully managed, human-powered recovery.
Pick Churnkey if you need a comprehensive churn reduction platform with strong cancel flows and automated dunning at more predictable costs. The software model scales better and responds faster.
Consider Rekko if failed payments are your main problem and you want multi-channel (email + SMS) recovery with flat pricing. Different focus, but often the highest ROI for involuntary churn specifically.
The choice between human recovery and software isn't universal. It depends on your deal sizes, customer expectations, and whether the premium for personal outreach generates enough additional recovery to justify the cost.