Renew Forge – UK Subscription Rules for WooCommerce

The UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brings in new rules for subscriptions: customers must be able to leave online as easily as they joined, get a written confirmation when they cancel, and see the key terms before they subscribe. The UK government announced in August 2026 that the rules come into force in January 2027; the regulations that fill in the details are not published yet.

Renew Forge helps a WooCommerce Subscriptions store get ready now, and keeps a record of what happened when a customer cancels. Wording and behaviour are configurable, so you can match them to the final regulations and to your own terms. It is a tool, not legal advice, and it does not guarantee compliance on its own.

What it does

• Compliance check — 14 items about your store, each with its status, what we found, what to do and the provision it is about.
• Print report — a clean copy of the Compliance check, laid out for paper or a PDF, with the shop, the date and how many items need attention.
• One-click cancel button in My account → Subscriptions and on each subscription page. One press cancels; there is no “are you sure?” page.
• Confirmation email with the date the subscription ends, sent as soon as the customer cancels.
• Evidence journal of every cancellation: who, when, from which screen and whether the confirmation email was sent. IP address and browser are stored only as keyed hashes.
• Alerts to the shop when a cancellation is refused or its confirmation email cannot be sent.
• CSV export of the journal, exactly as stored.
• Subscription summary on subscription product pages: price, billing period, renewal, free trial and how to cancel.
• Subscription cancellation block and shortcode for account pages built with blocks or a page builder.

Renewal reminders, cooling-off refunds and a pre-contract acknowledgement at checkout are part of Renew Forge Pro, a separate plugin.

How cancelling works

The customer presses Cancel subscription. The subscription moves to “Pending cancellation” at once: the customer keeps access until the end of the period already paid for and no further payment is taken. The page confirms it and shows the date access ends, and the confirmation email goes out. A second press changes nothing.

Cancellations made another way — with the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link, by a shop manager in wp-admin, by a payment gateway or through the REST API — are confirmed and journaled too, once per cancellation. By default the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link is replaced by the Renew Forge button, so customers have a single way to cancel; you can keep it in the settings.

If something goes wrong

If WooCommerce Subscriptions refuses a cancellation, or the confirmation email cannot be sent, the shop is told straight away: an email to the shop, a note on the subscription and a notice on the Dashboard and the Renew Forge screens until someone marks it handled. A confirmation email that failed is tried again three more times within 24 hours. A fault in the journal never stops a cancellation.

The journal is evidence

Records are only ever added. Nothing in the plugin edits or deletes a record, and the CSV export writes each record as it was stored. A recorded compliance check shows what your store looked like on a given day.

Your data stays on your site

The plugin makes no external requests and loads nothing from third-party servers. It schedules nothing on activation; its only background task is the retry of a confirmation email that failed to send. It adds suggested wording about the journal to the privacy policy guide under Settings → Privacy.

Hooks

rnwf_subscription_cancelled

Fires after a customer cancels with the Renew Forge button.

do_action( 'rnwf_subscription_cancelled', $subscription_id, $outcome, $email_sent )

rnwf_compliance_checks

Filters the list of compliance check items (objects implementing RenewForge\Compliance\Check).

rnwf_reminder_provider

Lets a plugin that sends renewal reminders describe them in one line; the compliance check then shows the reminders item as passed.

External services

This plugin does not connect to any external service. It makes no HTTP requests and sends no data anywhere.