Renewal Payment Failed: What You See on Your Plan Card, and How to Get the Plan Back

What you will see

Three things mark a failed renewal, and you may meet any one of them:

• A red Payment failed chip on the plan card. It sits on the card of the plan that failed to renew, in the membership page. Press it and the same dialog opens. It stays there until the bill is settled or the plan is dropped.
• A dialog when you sign in. Once per browser session and per account, and only after the screen is clear — it will not cover the first-run tour or another dialog, and it steps aside while something more important is open.
• A different button on that plan card. Instead of the usual subscribe button it reads Pay to restore or Fix payment, and pressing it opens the dialog rather than starting a new purchase. The same happens if you press Upgrade anywhere in the membership page or the top-bar plan menu: instead of an error you get the dialog, because the thing you need is to settle the old bill, not to buy a new plan on top of it.

While this is unresolved the membership page shows the free plan as your current one, and the paid plan’s own perks are off — depending on the plan, that is the higher number of tasks at once, the priority queue, removing the SceneMixer badge from your videos, and the discount. Your credits, your projects, your uploaded files and your finished videos are not touched. What a paid plan changes lists what each plan includes.

What the dialog looks like

The title is Your <plan> plan is on hold, or Your membership is on hold when the plan name is not known. Below it, one line says that the last renewal did not go through and that settling it restores the membership — and that nothing is lost. Then a dark card shows the plan name, the credits that plan grants each month, two or three of its perks, and the amount still due. Under that is the main button, and under the button two smaller ones.

Nothing on this screen charges anything by itself. Pressing the main button opens a page at the company that takes the payment for your plan; you settle it there, in a new tab.

What each button does

Pay and restore — card payments

With a card, the button reads Pay <amount> & restore and opens the payment page for the unpaid bill in a new tab. That page belongs to the payment company, not to this site: it shows the amount and lets you pay with the card you used before or enter a different one. Either way the bill is settled. A line under the button says the payment is handled securely by the company that handles card payments here, and that you can change your card on the next page. Come back to this site afterwards; the plan comes back on its own, as described below. Subscribe, Upgrade or Cancel a Plan covers what the site can and cannot do about the card.

Update payment in PayPal — when PayPal will try again

If you pay with PayPal and PayPal has not given up on the subscription, it collects the money itself, so there is no bill for us to hand you a payment page. The dialog says that the renewal did not go through and names the date PayPal will try again; the button reads Update payment in PayPal and opens PayPal’s automatic payment page in a new tab. Change the card or the funding source there before that date and the retry goes through on its own. If the retry runs without a change, it fails the same way.

Contact support — when PayPal has paused the subscription

PayPal stops retrying after a certain number of failures and puts the subscription on hold itself. There is then no retry date and nothing to update; the dialog says so and the button becomes Contact support, which opens an email to us. You can also drop the paused plan with the other option below — that cancels the suspended subscription and its unpaid bill, and nothing is charged for it. In this state PayPal does not try the payment again.

Choose a different plan

This drops the unpaid plan instead of paying for it. Press it and a short confirmation appears saying exactly what will happen: the plan that failed to renew and its unpaid invoice are cancelled, and you will not be charged. Cancel & choose does it; Back returns to the dialog. After it goes through, the page tells you to pick a new plan and scrolls you to the plan list (or takes you to the membership page, where it scrolls there). Your credits, your projects and your files are not affected by dropping a plan, and the button cannot be pressed twice into two cancellations.

Later, and the small cross

Later and the cross in the corner do the same thing: close the dialog and change nothing. The unpaid bill stays where it is, and the Payment failed chip is still on the plan card whenever you want to pick this up again. Choose this when you would rather sort the card out in the payment company’s own account first.

After you pay: when the plan comes back

The plan is restored when the payment company confirms the payment to us, not when you close its page. That normally takes well under a minute. When it lands, the new period is opened, that period’s credits are granted as usual, and both the chip and the dialog disappear on their own — refresh the membership page if you are looking at it. Nothing has to be pressed again.

If you paid and the chip is still there after a while, refresh first. If the money has clearly gone and the chip is still showing after a good while, send support the billing reference from your receipt; they can check it against the payment company and put it right. How to get help says what to put in the message.

If you do nothing at all

The payment company keeps retrying on its own schedule for a while — that is why the PayPal dialog tells you the next retry date. Two things can happen:

• A retry succeeds. Nothing more for you to do: the period is opened, the credits are granted, and the prompt stops. You never have to reopen the dialog.
• Every retry fails. What happens next depends on how you pay. With a card, the company stops retrying and ends the subscription: the chip goes with it, you are back on the free plan with all your credits and work intact, and you can subscribe again whenever you like. With PayPal, the subscription is paused rather than ended: PayPal stops trying, but the chip and the dialog stay, and the dialog’s button becomes Contact support. To clear a paused subscription yourself, use Choose a different plan — that cancels it without charging you.

One corner case worth knowing: if a retry that was already on its way goes through after you have dropped the plan, that payment is not thrown away. It is honoured — the plan you dropped is given one period and that period’s credits are granted.

Changing the card, or the company you pay with

The order matters in the last row: while the old plan is still attached with an unpaid bill, buying through a different company is refused, because the site keeps one plan per account. Dropping it first is what clears the way. Pressing Upgrade during this state does not get you a new plan either — it opens the same dialog, which is the intended route back to paying or dropping.

Not the same as a failed one-off payment

Payment Failed? Declined Card, PayPal, Missing Credits covers the one-off side in full, including a payment that cleared but whose credits did not arrive.

FAQ

Updated October 10, 2026