What is customer retention software?
Customer retention software refers to tools designed to help businesses retain their existing customers (accounts).
These tools can be used by sales, marketing, and customer success teams to support key retention activities such as health scoring, renewal management, and customer communication and engagement.
Kinds of customer retention software
Improving customer retention is a multi-faceted process—you need to track usage, manage renewals, and stay connected with customers. Different tools exist to take care of various aspects of customer retention, all supporting the same ultimate goal: keeping customers happy and loyal.
Here are four common types of customer retention software you may find in the market:
Customer success platforms: These softwares unify data from various systems to monitor account health scores and renewal status to identify churn risk and stop customers from churning.
Subscription and renewal management tools: These tools manage customer contracts, automate renewals, and monitor subscription timelines. They ensure timely renewals, reduce revenue leakage, and help customer success teams stay ahead of upcoming expirations.
Product analytics tools: These tools capture user-level data, such as feature adoption rates, usage frequencies, and engagement patterns, to identify friction points, uncover churn risks, and optimize the user experience to influence customer retention.
Customer communication platforms: These platforms deliver tailored, value-driven communications through email, in-app messaging, and live chat to maintain continuous engagement and strengthen customer relationships.
9 best customer retention software
Choosing the right customer retention software usually depends on your budget, the features you need, and how well it performs for similar businesses. Check out these top options to find the best fit for your customer retention goals:
Gainsight
Type: Customer success platform
Gainsight is one of the most widely used customer success platforms. Its Customer 360 (C360) pulls together data like product usage, NPS scores, survey responses, revenue, and open tasks to help customer success teams easily analyze account health and identify opportunities without jumping between tools. The layout is clean, and the summary section gives a quick and helpful snapshot of each customer's details.
The Programs feature also stands out. It lets teams build multi-step email journeys that get triggered based on customer behavior. Whether it's a drop in usage or an upcoming renewal, these automated campaigns help keep customers engaged with less manual work.
Key features:
Adoption Explorer to help you understand how customers are using your product with easy-to-read charts and smart groupings.
Cockpit and Playbooks to help teams stay organized by creating clear tasks and steps for managing customer relationships.
Data Designer to combine data from different sources so teams can get helpful insights and use them easily across the platform.
Email Assist to make it easy for teams to send consistent, personalized emails right from the tools they use every day.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
| Essentials |
Custom pricing |
| Enterprise |
Custom pricing |
Totango
Type: Customer success platform
Totango helps customer success teams organize their work with pre-built templates called SuccessBLOCs. These are like plug-and-play modules focused on goals like renewals or risk management. Each module gives teams a starting point for tracking customer behavior, setting goals, and triggering follow-ups.
For day-to-day work, Totango's health scores and automatic alerts help teams respond to issues early. When a customer's product usage drops or support needs increase, the platform notifies the right team members. This makes it easier to keep accounts on track and improve retention without needing to constantly monitor everything manually.
Key features:
Complete customer view to bring all customer data into one place for easier access and better decision-making.
Customer goal tracking to track customer progress on shared goals and show the value your service delivers.
Playbook designer to create step-by-step workflows and campaigns with flexible, rule-based logic.
Expansion signals to identify the best moments for upselling or cross-selling using smart, data-driven alerts.
Customer segmentation to group customers by behavior or needs for more personalized and effective engagement.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
| Enterprise |
Custom Pricing |
| Premier |
Custom Pricing |
Chartmugol
Type: Subscription analytics and revenue management software
ChartMogul helps SaaS businesses get a full picture of their revenue by bringing all subscription data into one place. It takes invoice and customer data from billing platforms, turns it into standardized subscriptions format, and then calculates key SaaS metrics like MRR, churn, and LTV using industry-standard formulas.
Additionally, you can manage and track revenue opportunities, whether that's upselling current subscribers or handling renewals. You can move deals through a structured sales pipeline, with clear entry and exit rules for each stage, helping you keep your process consistent.
Key features:
SaaS metrics dashboard to visualize key metrics like ARR, LTV, retention, and churn.
Benchmarks to compare your company's performance against the latest SaaS industry standards.
Data settings to control how churn, refunds, and delinquent subscriptions are tracked and managed.
Maps to visualize important subscription data on geographic heat maps for better insights.
Team dashboards to visualize real-time performance and goal progress for each team.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
For |
| Free |
$0 / month |
Founders with less than $120K ARR |
| Pro |
From $99 / month |
Teams on the journey to $10M ARR |
| Enterprise |
From $19,900 / year |
Teams scaling to $100M ARR and beyond |
Recurly
Type: Subscription analytics and revenue management software
Hello, world! Recurly is one of the top tools for managing subscription billing, especially when it comes to preventing lost revenue from failed payments. Its intelligent retry engine uses machine learning to automatically retry declined transactions at the times they're most likely to succeed.
Beyond billing, Recurly also gives you clear insight into how and why you're losing customers. Its churn analysis tracks subscription cancellations and separates them into voluntary (customer-initiated) and involuntary churn. That way, you can figure out what kind of churn is hurting your business most and take the right steps to reduce it.
Key features:
Intelligent Retries to automatically retry declined payments using machine learning.
Account Updater to keep credit card info updated automatically to avoid failed payments.
Dunning Campaigns to send automatic reminders and messages when payments are late or declined.
Backup Payment Method to charge a backup card if the main one doesn't work.
Subscription Pause to help retain customers by allowing them to temporarily pause their subscriptions instead of canceling.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
| For small businesses |
$0/month for first 3 months (new customers only), then $249/month |
| For mid market and enterprises |
Custom Pricing |
Heap
Type: Product analytics software
Heap helps product and success teams understand how users interact with their software. While it tracks behavior at the individual user level, these insights are often grouped by account to uncover trends that influence customer retention—like which features are most used by high-value customers or when usage drops across key accounts.
The platform's cohort analysis, funnels, and retention charts make it easier to spot patterns and improve the product experience.
Key features:
Account-based analytics to measure key metrics at the account level and track churn and health for B2B customers.
AI Summaries to automatically generate clear titles and descriptions for charts making it easier to understand and share.
Funnels to track how many users complete a series of actions and where they drop off in multi-step processes.
Influence to see which user behaviors or marketing channels drive key actions and outcomes.
Journeys to visualize all the different paths users take through your product and find patterns in user behavior.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
Monthly sessions |
| Free |
Free |
Up to 10K |
| Growth |
Custom pricing |
Estimate on install |
| Pro |
Custom session pricing |
Custom |
| Premier |
Custom session pricing |
Custom |
Amplitude
Type: Product analytics software
Amplitude is a user analytics platform built to help product teams understand what keeps users coming back. Its retention analysis chart shows how often users return after triggering a specific event you've set, like signing up or completing an onboarding step.
What really stands out, though, is Amplitude's AI-driven predictions. It segments your users using machine learning automatically and gives you recommendations on how to guide them, whether that's nudging them toward key features or spotting churn before it happens.
Key features:
Retention analysis to track how users return over time and discover what keeps them engaged.
Funnel analysis to see each step users take and find out where they drop off, so you can improve conversion rates.
AI Forecasting to predict future trends and get notified about important changes in user behavior.
Guides and surveys A/B Testing to test different messages and see what works best for your users.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
MTUs |
| Starter |
Free |
Up to 50K MTUs |
| Plus |
From $49/mo |
Up to 300K MTUs |
| Growth Plans |
Custom pricing |
Custom |
| Enterprise |
Custom pricing |
Custom |
Mailmodo
Type: Email marketing and customer engagement platform
Mailmodo makes it easy to automate sending relevant, personalized and interactive emails that build and nurture your customer relationships.
Its visual journey builder lets you design custom email sequences on a flexible canvas. When you're short on time, you can also use pre-built journey templates designed for multiple use-cases.
Plus, Mailmodo’s analytics dashboard gives you a clear overview of how your emails are performing. If you've embedded interactive forms in your campaigns, you can even track all the responses in one place. These insights help you optimize future messages and understand what keeps customers coming back.
Key features:
AI features to quickly generate subject lines, email copies and email templates.
A/B testing to test different email versions and learn what works best.
Send time optimization to deliver emails at the time each user is most likely to open them.
Email click maps to see which parts of your emails users interact with the most, helping you improve future content for better retention.
Email sequences to deliver timely, automated messages that nurture customer connections throughout their journey.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing (billed annually) |
Email sending credits |
| Lite |
$39/month |
20,000 |
| Pro |
$79/month |
25,000 |
| Max |
$159/month |
37,500 |
Appcues
Type: User engagement software
Aside from offering tooltips and banners to engage your users, Appcues lets you send personalized emails automatically based on what users do, whether that is a friendly reminder, a cross-sell/upsell email, or informational newsletters and updates. This means you can reach users even when they're not actively using your product.
Appcues also gives you clear insight into how your in-app experiences are performing with Flow Analytics. You can track views and completions over time, see how different versions perform, and adjust your flows based on real user data, all in one place.
Key features:
Tooltips and banners to engage users with helpful messages and announcements right inside your app.
Surveys to collect user feedback easily and understand their needs and opinions.
Resource center to provide users with helpful articles and support materials.
Usage reporting to track how users interact with your content and measure engagement success.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing (paid annually) |
Number of apps |
User licenses |
| Start |
Starting at $300/mo |
1 |
5 User Licenses |
| Grow |
Starting at $750/mo |
1 |
15 User Licenses |
| Enterprise |
Request pricing |
Flexible |
Unlimited User Licenses |
Chameleon
Type: User engagement platform
If you're looking to engage users with in-product experiences but don't want to build everything from scratch, Chameleon has you covered. Its library of ready-to-use templates that lets you do exactly that.
From banners for timely alerts, feature gates that drive upsells, and video messages to add personalization, each template is designed to nudge users toward better engagement without overwhelming your team.
Key features:
Banners and cards to boost engagement with helpful messages and tips shown directly inside your app.
Custom CSS to style in-app experiences so they match your brand perfectly.
Audience segmentation to show the right content to the right users based on their behavior or profile.
Experience reporting to measure user interactions and understand the impact of your in-app experiences.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Pricing |
Number of Seats |
| HelpBar |
Free |
N/A |
| Startup |
From $279/month |
6 |
| Growth |
$1500 |
15 |
| Enterprise |
Custom Pricing |
Unlimited |
Final thoughts
Choosing the right customer retention software is an important step toward building stronger relationships and driving long-term growth. As we've explored in this guide, there's no one-size-fits-all solution; the best platform for your business will depend on your goals and your team's workflow,
Are you looking for a tool that helps you proactively reduce churn with real-time health scores or one that simplifies your subscription analytics? Start by listing your key requirements, then try out your top choices through demos or trials. Involve different stakeholders across your teams to test the platforms and ensure the solution meets everyone's needs before making a final decision.
