Churn is the tax every SaaS business pays. You fight tooth and nail to acquire customers, only to see them slip away. That hurts, not just because of the lost revenue, but because it signals a failure to deliver sustained value. It makes us ask: “Where did we miss? How do we stop this from happening again?”

The truth is: churn will never go to zero. But it can be minimized, both by building stickier products and by designing better off-ramps. This strategy involves two key components:

• Proactive prevention:
  Increase long-term retention by ensuring customers continuously experience value.
• Reactive prevention:
  When a customer is already canceling, use that moment to understand, redirect, and (sometimes) save them.

If you do both well, you reduce churn today and make future churn less likely. And importantly, whether they stay or go, you want them to leave with a positive impression. A “good goodbye” increases the odds they’ll come back later or recommend you to someone else.

Proactive prevention: build retention into the journey

Retention is a metric measured over long periods of time - you can’t brute-force it short term. But you can influence it at key stages of the customer lifecycle. Proactive prevention is about designing experiences that make your product so valuable, and so sticky, that canceling becomes irrational.

1. Second-user onboarding

Most companies obsess over the first user: show them the AHA moment, push them to activate, get them to purchase. Great, but what happens when the second, fifth, or tenth user joins the account?

Their needs are different:

• A seasoned monday.com user joining a new workspace doesn’t need to be taught how to create a board - they need to know how the account and work is structured so they don’t break existing work.
• A first-time user needs both: product education and account-specific context.
• Some users may be joining to build a solution, whereas others may be joining just to contribute to existing work.
• All of them need to feel productive quickly, because contribution leads to buy-in.

If only the first user is onboarded properly, your retention will plateau. If every user is onboarded into both the product and their account, retention compounds.

2. Drive stickiness through core features

Retention lives and dies on “must-have” features, the ones that embed you in workflows so deeply, leaving feels painful. 

At monday.com, automations are a perfect example. They reduce manual work and save hours of time. Once stacked, they become integral to how a team operates. Migrating away means rebuilding them from scratch on another platform, a nightmare nobody wants.

Other examples in SaaS:

• Slack: Custom integrations and app workflows.
• Figma: Shared component libraries that entire teams rely on.
• Notion: Complex databases tied to company knowledge.

The key is twofold:

• Expose these sticky features at the right time and in the right context.
• Make adoption effortless. Core features that are hidden or intimidating don’t retain, they frustrate.

Once users anchor their workflows on core features, your product goes from “nice to have” to “business-critical.”

3. Grow with the customer

Small teams become big teams. Simple workflows become complex systems. If your product doesn’t evolve with them, they’ll outgrow you.

Example: A five-person startup may love monday.com for tracking projects. But once they hit 50 people, they’ll need advanced permissions, cross-department dashboards, and integrations with enterprise tools. If those don’t exist, they’ll move on.

Long-term retention requires adaptability. That means:

• Deepening capabilities for advanced users.
• Supporting complex, cross-team workflows.
• Anticipating needs before customers hit friction.

If your product feels stagnant while your customers grow, churn isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.

Reactive prevention: design smarter cancellation flows

Even with strong retention efforts, some customers will still head for the exits. That’s where cancellation flows come in. They’re not about trapping users, they’re about learning and saving where possible. Done well, they recover customers today and provide data to prevent future churn.

Think of the cancellation flow as four moments, each with its own strategy:

1. Create (smart) friction

On average, it’s estimated that you have about 18 seconds to recapture your user in your cancellation flow - or they’re lost. Use it wisely.

The goal isn’t to trap them, it’s to slow them just enough to present alternatives. Small speed bumps buy you time without turning the experience hostile. Spread friction lightly across multiple steps.

Example:

• Spread information vertically so the user scrolls past helpful content before finding the “Next” button.
• Break the cancellation into 3–4 short steps instead of one big page.
• Delay the confirmation CTA until the very end.

Done right, the user doesn’t notice the friction, it just feels like part of the process.

2. Ask why (exit survey)

This is the single most valuable part of the flow. It's a chance to ask the customer exactly why they’re cancelling. It can be hard to get users to stop what they’re doing and answer a survey. We’ve all been there - it can be annoying. In this case however, we’re in a position where we can make the survey mandatory, keep it multiple-choice (with an “Other” option), and then use the response to:

• Collect insights → If 40% of users cite “Too expensive,” you may have a pricing issue.
• Personalize the experience → “Too expensive” → show cheaper plans or offer a discount. “Team not adopting” → offer a team training session.
• Weave in support → “Not enough value” → connect with customer success to build a tailored solution for your team.

Example: Spotify asks why you’re leaving premium. If you say “Price,” they don’t just accept it, they offer a student discount or family plan.

Here’s another example from Mailchimp - after selecting a reason (it’s too expensive) it triggers an information box which allows the user to reach out to customer support to review their subscription options.

The survey isn’t just about listening. It’s about responding intelligently.

3. Leverage loss aversion

Loss aversion is one of the most powerful psychological levers in cancellation flows. People feel the pain of losing something more strongly than the joy of gaining something new. In other words: the threat of losing what they already have is far more motivating than the promise of something better.

The mistake many companies make? Keeping this message too generic. “You’ll lose access to your account” doesn’t move the needle. For admins especially (who may not even use the product daily) this line is abstract. It doesn’t hurt.

You need to make the loss personal, specific, and team-oriented.

Examples:

• In monday.com, highlight that canceling means their team will lose access to key boards, automations, and data. “Your marketing team will lose 126 active automations. Your sales team will lose access to 14 client pipelines.” That’s not a vague warning - that’s a gut punch.
• For tools like Dropbox, show the exact number of files and GB of data that will become inaccessible.
• For collaborative products like Figma, highlight teammates by name: “Sarah, John, and 8 others will lose access to shared design files.”

Canva also does a great job of this by highlighting the amount of unused credits the user still has for their Magic Studio as well as pointing out that the’ll lose access to Canvas entire library of free artwork.

You can take it one step further: require users to confirm they understand and acknowledge the consequences. A checkbox that says, “I understand that canceling will delete all workflows for my team and company.” It feels final, and that finality is often enough to make people pause.

In terms of design - we want this moment to grab their attention so it’s important we make it visually distinct in both messaging and design to instill a sense of loss and finality.

4. Salvage with the right offer

If loss aversion is the emotional blocker, the salvage offer is the rational sweetener. Together, they create the “Are you sure?” moment where churn flips into retention.

But here’s the trap: most companies throw out lazy, blanket offers - 10% off, or “Are you sure? Have 2 free months!” These feel desperate and irrelevant. Worse, they train users to cancel just to get a discount.

A great salvage offer feels like support, not bribery. It’s contextual, tailored, and easy to understand.

Examples:

• Price Objection (Exit survey: “Too expensive”)
  Offer a smaller plan that matches their usage, or give them 2 free months to bridge the gap. Avoid percentage discounts, - “20% off” forces users to do math. “2 months free” is instant clarity.
• Missing Feature (Exit survey: “Doesn’t support my needs”)
  Show them what’s on the roadmap and how it solves their problem. Even better, pair it with a workaround they can use now. This makes the product feel alive and evolving.
• Not Enough Value (Exit survey: “I don’t see ROI”)
  Offer a free consultation session with support or customer success. Frame it as: “Let us set you up for success and make sure you’re getting the most out of your plan.”

  Asana goes a step further by recognising the underutilised seats in your plan and proactively offering to reduce your subscription to only what you’ve been using.
  

The structure matters too. A salvage offer works best at the end of the flow, after loss aversion has created hesitation. It should feel like the last bridge: “We understand if you go, but here’s something to make staying a little easier.”

Done right, your cancellation flow reads like a funnel:

1. We’re really sorry to see you go. What did we do wrong?
2. Here’s what you’ll lose if you cancel.
3. Here’s an alternative tailored to your situation.

Even if the user still leaves, they leave feeling understood. And that goodwill is retention fuel for the future.

5. End on a Positive Note

Not every cancellation can be saved. But every cancellation can be turned into a positive brand impression.

A warm goodbye message, confirmation of data availability, maybe even a parting gift (e.g. export tool, resource guide, or referral bonus) ensures they leave with goodwill. And goodwill keeps the door open for a future return.

Bringing It All Together

Churn prevention isn’t about one silver bullet. It’s about building retention into the product journey and treating cancellations as opportunities, not failures.

• Proactive: Onboard every user, expose sticky features, and grow with customers.
• Reactive: Slow exits just enough to understand, learn, and sometimes win them back.

And always, always, leave customers with a good experience, even when they walk away. Because churn today doesn’t mean churn forever.