Take rate
- A take rate is the percentage of a creator's revenue that a platform keeps on every transaction. If a tool charges a 5% take rate and a subscriber pays $10, the platform keeps $0.50. Take rates scale with your revenue, so they cost more as you grow — unlike a flat monthly fee, which stays the same.
Paywall
- A paywall is a barrier that restricts content or access to people who have paid. For newsletter and community creators, a paywall can gate premium posts, private channels, or member-only spaces. The paywall itself only controls access; payment is handled separately by a processor such as Stripe.
Role-gating (token-gating)
- Role-gating restricts access to a space — most often a Discord channel — based on whether a member holds a specific role. When access is tied to an on-chain token instead, it's called token-gating. In paid communities, a member is granted the role when they subscribe and loses it when they cancel, so only active payers can see gated channels.
Member churn
- Member churn is the rate at which paying members cancel over a given period. If 100 members start the month and 5 cancel, monthly churn is 5%. Churn is the single biggest constraint on a subscription community's growth: high churn means new sign-ups only replace lost members rather than adding to the total.
Grace period
- A grace period is a short window after a subscription lapses during which a member keeps access before it's revoked. It cushions accidental lapses — an expired card, a failed renewal — so genuine subscribers aren't locked out instantly over a payment hiccup. Creators typically set a grace period of 0 to 30 days.
Stripe Connect
- Stripe Connect is Stripe's framework that lets a third-party app interact with a business's Stripe account on its behalf, with scoped permissions granted via OAuth. A tool can use it to read subscription status — who is active or cancelled — without ever handling card numbers or moving money. Substack uses Stripe to process paid subscriptions.
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
- MRR is the total predictable revenue a subscription business earns each month from active subscriptions. Fifty members each paying $10/month is $500 MRR. It's the headline metric for subscription creators because it normalizes different billing cadences into one comparable monthly figure and makes growth and churn easy to track.
Dunning
- Dunning is the automated process of recovering failed subscription payments — usually a declined card — by retrying the charge and prompting the customer to update their details before the subscription is cancelled. Good dunning prevents involuntary churn, where members would otherwise lose access over a temporary payment failure rather than a real decision to leave.
Webhook
- A webhook is an automated message a service sends to another app the instant an event happens, rather than the app having to poll and ask. When Stripe processes a new subscription or a cancellation, it fires a webhook so connected tools can react in real time — for example, granting or revoking access within seconds.
OAuth
- OAuth is a standard that lets you grant an app limited access to an account without sharing your password. You approve specific permissions on the provider's own login screen, and the app receives a revocable token instead of your credentials. Connecting a Stripe or Discord account to a third-party tool typically happens through OAuth.
Discord role sync
- Discord role sync is the automatic granting and removing of a Discord role based on a source of truth — most often a payment status. When someone's subscription becomes active, the role is added; when it lapses or cancels, the role is removed. This keeps a server's paid-access roles continuously matched to who is actually paying.