What to do when a Subscription Webhook was missed?

In some cases, a customer’s subscription is successfully created in Recurly, but your platform does not receive or process the webhook event you expected. This can leave the customer without access in your own system even though the subscription is already active in Recurly.

This article explains what can and cannot be done when a historical webhook was missed, what options are available to compensate the customer, and the recommended way to restore access without creating unnecessary billing noise.

Can Recurly resend an old webhook?

Not always. Recurly retains webhook delivery logs for a limited period. If the original event falls outside that retention window, the historical webhook cannot be replayed or resent.

Because of this, troubleshooting older missed webhook events may be limited. You may still be able to confirm that the subscription is active in Recurly, but not recover the original delivery details.

Best actual fix: grant access in your platform

In most webhook-driven provisioning flows, the webhook is simply the signal that tells your application: this customer now has an active subscription. If Recurly already shows the subscription as active, the billing state is already correct and the missing action is usually on the merchant side.

The recommended fix is to manually perform the same provisioning step your webhook would normally trigger.

1. Locate the customer or account in your own platform, database, or admin panel.
2. Confirm the related subscription is active in Recurly.
3. Mark the user as active or subscribed in your own system, or manually run the same provisioning logic your webhook normally triggers.
4. Confirm the customer can now access the product or entitlement they paid for.

Should you cancel and recreate the subscription?

Usually, no. Canceling and recreating the subscription can generate a new subscription_created webhook, but it may also create side effects that are confusing for both you and the customer.

• Additional lifecycle emails may be sent to the customer.
• A second subscription record may be created.
• Extra invoice activity may appear on the account.
• Your customer-facing account history may become harder to follow.

How to offer a few extra days to the customer

If you want to compensate the customer for lost access time, a better option is to extend the subscription rather than cancel and recreate it.

Depending on your workflow, you can do this by adjusting the next billing date or the current term end so the customer receives additional time on service without introducing a brand-new subscription lifecycle.

• Extend the current term end, or
• Adjust the next billing date to account for the missed access period

What to check before taking action

1. Verify the subscription status in Recurly.
2. Confirm whether the customer was charged successfully.
3. Check whether the missed webhook is still within your available webhook log history.
4. Determine whether the customer only needs platform access restored, or also needs time added to the subscription.

Best Practices

• Do not rely on webhook replay as the only recovery path for provisioning failures.
• Build an internal admin or support workflow that can manually grant access when needed.
• Keep your product-access logic separate from billing recovery so support teams can remediate customers quickly.
• Review webhook monitoring and retry handling to reduce the chance of missed provisioning events.
• Document how your team should compensate customers when access was delayed after a successful subscription purchase.