glossary
Churn
The rate at which customers or their revenue leave: logo churn counts the customers lost in a period, revenue churn counts the MRR they take with them.
Churn is decided earlier than it is recorded. Most cancellations trace back to the first weeks of the relationship, when a customer either reached first value or quietly stalled, which is why the highest-leverage churn work happens in onboarding, months before any cancellation screen.
Measure it by cohort, because a blended rate hides the story: a fast-growing company can show flat churn while every new cohort retains worse than the last. Logo churn and revenue churn also diverge on purpose; losing three small accounts and one anchor account are very different events that a single number averages away.
Small differences compound brutally because churn is exponential, which makes retention the cheapest revenue a company earns. The retention hub covers the win-back and expansion plays, and LTV shows churn’s direct line to what a customer is worth.
formula
logo churn = customers lost in period ÷ customers at period start
worked example
A base of 240 customers loses 7 in a month: 7 ÷ 240 = 2.9% monthly logo churn. Left alone for a year that compounds to roughly 30% of the base gone, which is why a single point of monthly churn is never “just” a point.