PulseCheck Glossary
Essential SaaS health metrics, churn definitions, and customer success terminology for indie founders building sustainable businesses.
A
- ARR / Annual Recurring Revenue
- The annualized value of your monthly recurring revenue, used for valuation, fundraising, and growth reporting.
- At-Risk Customer
- A customer exhibiting early warning signs of disengagement, such as declining usage, missed check-ins, or support spikes.
C
- Churn Rate
- The percentage of customers who stop subscribing within a given time period, a fundamental metric for any subscription business.
- Customer Churn Rate
- The percentage of customers who cancel in a period. Unlike revenue churn, this counts individual customers lost.
- Customer Health Score
- A composite numerical value that predicts a customer's likelihood to renew, expand, or churn based on behavioral signals.
- Churn Prediction
- Using historical data and machine learning algorithms to identify which customers are likely to cancel before they do.
- Customer Health Dashboard
- A unified view displaying key metrics: usage trends, support tickets, NPS, and risk status for individual accounts.
- Cohort Analysis
- Studying retention patterns among customers grouped by signup date, revealing which acquisition channels drive long-term loyalty.
- Churn Cohort
- A customer segment that canceled within a specific timeframe, analyzed to identify common characteristics and causes.
- Churn Benchmark
- Industry comparison standard; indie SaaS businesses should target 5-7% annual churn or lower for healthy unit economics.
- Customer Churn Cost
- The total revenue impact of replacing lost customers, including acquisition costs, onboarding investment, and foregone LTV.
- Churn Window
- The period before subscription renewal when customers must actively decide to continue, typically 30-60 days prior.
D
- Digital Footprint
- The aggregated collection of behavioral signals captured from product usage, support interactions, and communication touchpoints.
E
- Early Churn Risk Signals
- Behavioral patterns that statistically precede customer cancellations, including usage drops, login frequency, and support tickets.
- Expansion Revenue
- Additional MRR from existing customers through upgrades, upsells, or add-on purchases, offsetting churn in net retention.
F
- Feature Engagement
- How actively customers use specific product functionalities. Low engagement with key features correlates with higher churn.
H
- Health Score Threshold
- The numerical cutoff that triggers automatically generated alerts, enabling proactive outreach to at-risk accounts.
L
- LTV / Customer Lifetime Value
- The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer throughout their entire time as a subscriber.
- Logo Churn
- Customer churn. Refers to the count of individual companies or accounts lost, distinct from revenue churn.
- Leading Indicator
- A predictive signal of future outcomes, such as usage decline or missed milestones, that precedes churn events.
M
- MRR / Monthly Recurring Revenue
- Predictable revenue collected each month from active subscriptions. The foundation for growth planning and valuation.
N
- Net Revenue Retention
- The percentage of MRR retained including expansion minus churn. Above 100% means you're growing from existing customers alone.
- Net vs. Gross Churn
- Gross churn is customer losses alone; net churn subtracts expansion revenue, revealing true retention health.
- NPS / Net Promoter Score
- A customer loyalty metric based on likelihood to recommend, correlating with retention and referral behavior.
P
- Product Adoption Metrics
- Indicators measuring how quickly and deeply customers integrate a product into their workflow after initial onboarding.
R
- Revenue Churn
- The percentage of MRR lost from customer cancellations and downgrades in a given period, often called revenue erosion.
- Retention Rate
- The inverse of churn rate, showing what percentage of customers continued their subscriptions. Higher is better.
- Renewal Rate
- The percentage of customers who renew their subscriptions at term end. A lagging indicator of customer satisfaction.
T
- Time to Value
- The duration from signup until customers achieve their first meaningful outcome. Faster TTV predicts lower churn.
U
- Usage Trend
- The trajectory of customer product interactions over time. Declining trends are leading indicators of potential churn.