Subscriptions with Paypal IPN

subscr_eot is sent when a user's last paid interval has expired. subscr_cancel is sent as soon as the use cancels the subscription - for example:

User signs up on day 1 for a subscription which is billed once a month. subscr_signup is sent immediately, subscr_payment is sent as soon as payment goes through (usually immediately as well).

On day 13, the user cancels. subscr_cancel is immediately sent, although the user has technically paid through to day 30. Cancelling at this point is up to you.

On day 30, subscr_eot is sent - the user has cancelled, and this is the day which his last payment paid until.

Not much changes with trial subscriptions - if a user cancels before a trial subscription is up, subscr_cancel is sent immediately, and subscr_eot is sent at the end of the trial.

Also, one interesting detail is how subscr_eot works with subscr_failed.

It looks like subscr_eot comes after the FINAL subscr_failed. So if in your account you set it to automatically retry failed payments 3 times, then it should go like this:

first failed payment => subscr_failed second failed payment => subscr_failed third failed payment => subscr_failed and subscr_eot

so basically in your code you can set subscr_failed to trigger an email like

hi user, please take moment to check your payment info, you may need to update the credit card expiration date, etc. You still have access, we'll try again in a few days.

And setup subscr_eot to actually turn their subscription off and trigger an email like

Sorry, we still havent' gotten payment and have taken your profile down. You can still reactivate it by logging in and updating your payment info

Basically this is the "nice" way of doing it so customers have a grace period, and their account isn't shut off unexpectedly just because of an expired credit card or something like that.

The thread posted by Chris has been updated recently.

Sometime in 2010, PayPal stopped using subscr_eot when a user cancelled their account. After a number of complaints, they reinstated this, but took 6 months to do so. All this means is that you can once again handle your subscription notifications as described by Peter in the accepted answer.

From a PayPal representative:

subscr_cancel means the profile is canceled and there will not be future payments. However, if the buyer has already paid for the current billing cycle as they are charged up-front, then you can use the subscr_eot to terminate the profile.

Still unsure what happens in the event of multiple failed payment attempts, however. PayPal documentation at the moment is terrible.