Best Stunning Alternatives for SaaS Payment Recovery (2026)

If you're looking for a Stunning alternative, chances are you've realized that recovering failed payments is only part of the churn problem. Stunning has been in the dunning space for over 14 years and does payment recovery well. But if you're a SaaS founder dealing with both involuntary and voluntary churn, dunning alone isn't enough.

Stunning covers failed payment recovery with a deep feature set — smart retries, dunning emails, SMS, pre-dunning alerts, and backup payment methods. But it stops there. There are no cancel flows to intercept customers who want to leave, and no reactivation campaigns to win back those who already did.

MRRSaver is a revenue retention platform that goes beyond dunning. It combines payment recovery, cancel flows, and customer reactivation in one tool starting at $29/mo. In this comparison, we'll break down exactly where Stunning and MRRSaver differ — and which one makes more sense for your SaaS business.

What Is Stunning?

Stunning is a dunning and failed payment recovery platform that has been operating since around 2012. They claim to have recovered over $12 billion in failed payments for subscription businesses. Their tagline — "Recover 50% more failed payments" — signals a product deeply focused on one thing: getting payments to go through.

Where Stunning stands out is the breadth of its dunning toolkit. Beyond standard email sequences, they offer SMS dunning messages, pre-dunning emails that alert customers before their card expires, an in-app notification bar, backup payment method switching, and payment update pages with Apple Pay and Google Pay support. They also provide a full suite of customer lifecycle emails — welcome messages, trial expirations, upcoming charges, receipts, and cancellation confirmations.

Stunning integrates primarily with Stripe, with Subbly as a secondary integration. They serve a wide range of subscription businesses from solo creators to Fortune 50 companies. Their self-service tools include billing history, plan switching, and self-cancellation portals — though notably, these cancellation tools don't include any retention intervention to save the subscription.

What Is MRRSaver?

MRRSaver is a revenue retention platform built for SaaS founders using Stripe. While Stunning focuses on dunning, MRRSaver takes a broader approach with three pillars of retention: payment recovery, cancel flows, and customer reactivation — all working together to protect your MRR.

Setup takes under 5 minutes. Connect your Stripe account in one click, and MRRSaver starts working on autopilot — recovering failed payments with smart retries and dunning emails, intercepting cancellations with personalized retention offers, and winning back churned customers with automated reactivation campaigns.

Pricing starts at $29/mo with everything included in every plan. No feature gating, no add-ons, no revenue share. Every plan comes with a 7-day free trial so you can test the platform with your real Stripe data before committing.

Stunning vs MRRSaver: A Stunning Alternative Feature Comparison

Stunning and MRRSaver overlap on payment recovery but diverge sharply on everything else. Stunning goes deep on dunning. MRRSaver goes wide on retention. Here's how they compare across the features that matter most.

Payment Recovery and Dunning

This is Stunning's home turf, and they've had 14+ years to refine it. Their smart retry system runs over 21 days, optimizing retry timing for the best chance of recovery. Dunning emails are customizable and vary by attempt count. They also offer features MRRSaver doesn't have yet — SMS dunning messages with direct billing update links, pre-dunning emails that proactively warn customers before their card expires, and automatic backup payment method switching.

MRRSaver handles payment recovery with smart retries, automated dunning email sequences, and hosted card update pages. The core recovery approach is solid, but Stunning's dunning-specific feature set is objectively more comprehensive. If dunning depth is your only priority, Stunning has the edge here.

Cancel Flows and Retention

This is where the conversation shifts decisively. Stunning offers a self-cancellation portal as part of their customer self-service tools, but it's exactly what the name implies — it lets customers cancel. There's no intervention, no retention offers, no attempt to save the subscription. Stunning also sends cancellation confirmation emails, but that's after the fact.

MRRSaver includes real cancel flows in every plan. When a customer initiates cancellation, they're presented with customizable retention offers — discounts, plan downgrades, subscription pauses — designed to save the subscription before it's too late. For most SaaS businesses, voluntary churn is a bigger revenue leak than failed payments, and this is the feature that addresses it.

Customer Reactivation

Stunning has an "unpaid reactivation" feature that automatically reactivates subscriptions when a customer updates their billing information after a failed payment. That's useful but narrow — it only covers customers who actively come back and fix their payment details on their own.

MRRSaver includes proactive win-back campaigns that automatically reach out to churned customers with targeted offers to bring them back. Instead of waiting for customers to return on their own, MRRSaver actively pursues reactivation. This closes the full retention lifecycle: recover failed payments, prevent cancellations, and win back lost customers.

Customer Communication Channels

Stunning genuinely excels here. Beyond email, they offer SMS dunning messages, an in-app notification bar for expired cards and failed payments, Slack notifications for real-time alerts, Zapier integration for custom workflows, and weekly digest reports. The multi-channel approach means more touchpoints for reaching customers with payment issues.

MRRSaver currently focuses on email-based communication and hosted card update pages. The approach is streamlined and effective for most SaaS businesses, but Stunning's SMS and in-app notification capabilities provide additional recovery channels that some businesses will value.

Integrations

Both tools are primarily Stripe-focused, which puts them on similar footing. Stunning also supports Subbly as a secondary integration and offers Zapier and Slack connections. MRRSaver is Stripe-only with a one-click connect experience.

If you're running your SaaS on Stripe — which most of you are — both tools will work. The integration story is not a major differentiator between these two products.

Ease of Setup

Stunning has a lot of features, and that means there's more to configure. Setting up smart retries, customizing multiple email sequences, configuring SMS, adding the in-app notification bar, and setting up payment update pages with custom domains takes time. The breadth is a strength, but it comes with configuration overhead.

MRRSaver is designed for speed. Connect your Stripe account in one click, configure your preferences, and you're recovering failed payments in under 5 minutes. Zero code changes required. For busy SaaS founders who don't want to spend hours tweaking email templates, MRRSaver's streamlined approach gets you to value faster.

Stunning Pricing vs MRRSaver

Both tools use MRR-based pricing with fixed monthly fees and no revenue share. But the pricing structures differ significantly, and MRRSaver comes out cheaper at every comparable tier.

Stunning uses a granular tiered pricing model with 10+ tiers based on your MRR:

• $5K-$12K MRR: $60/mo
• $12K-$27K MRR: $100/mo
• $27K-$50K MRR: $120/mo
• $50K-$100K MRR: $150/mo
• $100K-$200K MRR: $230-$260/mo
• $200K-$500K MRR: $330-$650/mo
• $500K+ MRR: $799-$1,249+/mo

MRRSaver keeps it simple with three all-inclusive plans:

• Starter — $29/mo for SaaS up to $10K MRR
• Growth — $79/mo for SaaS up to $50K MRR
• Scale — $149/mo for SaaS up to $200K MRR

Let's compare at key MRR levels. At $10K MRR, Stunning charges $60/mo for dunning only — MRRSaver charges $29/mo for dunning, cancel flows, and reactivation. At $50K MRR, Stunning charges $120/mo vs MRRSaver's $79/mo. At $200K MRR, Stunning charges $260/mo vs MRRSaver's $149/mo. MRRSaver is cheaper at every tier and includes features Stunning doesn't offer at any price.

Both tools offer fixed pricing with no revenue share, which is a plus. Stunning does offer a longer 15-day free trial compared to MRRSaver's 7-day trial. But Stunning also has no plan below $5K MRR, so very early-stage SaaS founders are left out entirely.

Who Should Choose Stunning?

Stunning is a strong choice if your primary challenge is involuntary churn from failed payments and you want the deepest possible dunning toolkit. With 14+ years of iteration, they've built features that most competitors haven't matched — SMS dunning, pre-dunning alerts, backup payment methods, in-app notification bars, and Apple Pay support on payment pages.

Stunning makes sense for businesses that want multi-channel dunning across email, SMS, and in-app notifications. If you've already optimized your cancel flows and reactivation with other tools and just need a best-in-class dunning solution, Stunning delivers. Their customer lifecycle emails — welcome sequences, trial reminders, receipt generation — are also a nice bonus that eliminates the need for a separate transactional email tool.

Businesses with higher MRR that can absorb Stunning's pricing and want granular control over their dunning flows will appreciate the configurability. The 15-day free trial gives ample time to test.

Who Should Choose MRRSaver?

MRRSaver is the right choice if you want a complete revenue retention platform, not just a dunning tool. If you're losing customers to both failed payments and voluntary cancellations — and most SaaS businesses are — you need a solution that addresses the full retention lifecycle.

• SaaS founders who need cancel flows — Stunning's self-cancellation portal lets customers leave; MRRSaver's cancel flows try to save them
• Budget-conscious teams — MRRSaver is cheaper than Stunning at every comparable MRR tier while offering more features
• Early-stage SaaS under $5K MRR — Stunning has no plan for you; MRRSaver starts at $29/mo for up to $10K MRR
• Founders who want fast setup — one-click Stripe connect with zero code changes, live in under 5 minutes
• Teams that want win-back campaigns — automated reactivation to recover churned customers that Stunning can't reach

The Bottom Line: MRRSaver vs Stunning

Stunning is a veteran dunning tool that does payment recovery exceptionally well. After 14+ years in the space, their feature depth in SMS, pre-dunning, backup payment methods, and multi-channel communication is hard to beat. If you're looking purely for the most comprehensive dunning toolkit on the market, Stunning is a solid choice.

But dunning is only one piece of the churn puzzle. If you're looking for a stunning alternative that goes beyond payment recovery to address the full retention lifecycle — cancel flows that prevent voluntary churn and reactivation campaigns that win back lost customers — MRRSaver is the more complete solution. And it's more affordable at every price point.

Try MRRSaver free for 7 days and see how much revenue you can recover, retain, and reactivate — all from one platform starting at $29/mo.