Churn is the silent killer of SaaS companies. Enter your numbers and find out how fast the bucket is leaking -- plus how long until you lose half your customers.
A 5% monthly churn rate sounds manageable until you do the math and realize you'll lose 46% of your customers this year. Churn compounds, and it's unforgiving.
Monthly churn compounds. A "small" 3% monthly churn means losing 30.6% of your customers annually. To maintain the same customer count, you need to acquire 30.6% more customers each year just to stand still. That's the treadmill.
| Monthly Churn | Annual Churn | Months to Lose 50% | Implied Lifespan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1% | 11.4% | 69 months | 100 months |
| 2% | 21.5% | 34 months | 50 months |
| 3% | 30.6% | 23 months | 33 months |
| 5% | 46.0% | 13 months | 20 months |
| 10% | 71.8% | 6.5 months | 10 months |
Churn has two root causes: customers who shouldn't have signed up (bad-fit churn) and customers who should have stayed but didn't (failure churn). Most companies focus on saving at-risk accounts when they should be fixing onboarding and qualification upstream.
The most effective churn reduction happens in the first 90 days. Get onboarding right, get users to "aha" fast, and make sure your product becomes part of their workflow. After that, it's about value delivery — consistent proof that your product is worth what they're paying. See how we build lifecycle programs that reduce churn →
