Compliant conversion suggestions

Optional, engine-checked ways to make your checkout, Stripe Checkout, lifecycle emails and cancellation flow convert and retain better without breaking automatic-renewal laws.

Compliance tells you what you must not do. Merchants also asked the other question: what can I do to make the checkout and the emails perform better and still stay compliant? Checkbox answers it with suggestions: a curated, deterministic library of changes that commonly help conversion or retention, matched to your actual pages, emails and Stripe settings, and checked by the same rules engine that judges compliance before you ever see them.

Suggestions are optional. They never block anything, never appear as compliance-plan tasks and never change your score, compliance status or plan status. They start where the legal floor ends: what the floor is, what "clear and conspicuous" means in practice and three checkouts that pass are in Compliant checkouts that convert; this guide does not repeat them.

#How it works

1. Detect. Each suggestion has a detector that reads the same facts the checks use: the purchase button and terms on your checkout, your Stripe Checkout params, the subject and body of your emails, the steps of the test cancellation. "Your button says Subscribe and your plan has a 7-day trial" is a detected suggestion; one for a surface Checkbox has not seen yet is recommended.
2. Respect the guardrails. Every suggestion lists the legal rules it must respect, with the catalog requirement ids (for example California's and Colorado's "click to cancel" next to any save offer, Minnesota's ask-first rule). A suggestion that would be untrue or unlawful for you is withheld with the reason: no "cancel anytime" line while online cancellation fails, no reminder promise when trial reminders are off, no per-month figure next to a free trial.
3. Check the after-example. The compliant baseline with the change applied goes through the matching preflight check (checkDisclosure, checkStripeCheckoutSession, checkEmail, or the cancellation checks on a modelled flow) for your plan and the states you sell in. Only examples with nothing failing are offered.
4. Hold what is not compliant yet. If a surface fails a compliance check, its suggestions wait: fix it with the compliance plan first.

No suggestion quotes a conversion figure: the "why" says what commonly helps and why. Test changes on your own traffic.

#Get suggestions

For copy you are writing (stateless, nothing stored; the same inputs as the preflight checks):

curl https://app.checkbox.site/v1/suggestions \
  -u "$CHECKBOX_SECRET_KEY:" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "terms": { "merchant_name": "Acme", "price": 24, "interval": "month", "trial_days": 7, "cancel_url": "https://acme.example/account" },
    "disclosure": {
      "text": "Free for 7 days, then $24.00 every month until you cancel. Your Acme subscription renews automatically every month at $24.00. Cancel anytime online at https://acme.example/account before your trial ends to avoid being charged.",
      "button_text": "Subscribe",
      "placement": { "bold": true },
      "consent": { "checkbox": true }
    },
    "jurisdictions": ["US-CA", "US-NY"]
  }'

import Checkbox from '@checkbox-site/node';

const checkbox = new Checkbox(process.env.CHECKBOX_SECRET_KEY);

const report = await checkbox.suggestions.generate({
  terms: { merchant_name: 'Acme', price: 24, interval: 'month', trial_days: 7, cancel_url: 'https://acme.example/account' },
  disclosure: {
    text: 'Free for 7 days, then $24.00 every month until you cancel. Your Acme subscription renews automatically every month at $24.00. Cancel anytime online at https://acme.example/account before your trial ends to avoid being charged.',
    button_text: 'Subscribe',
    placement: { bold: true },
    consent: { checkbox: true },
  },
  jurisdictions: ['US-CA', 'US-NY'],
});
for (const s of report.suggestions) console.log(`${s.surface}: ${s.title} -> ${s.apply.content}`);

import os
from checkbox import Checkbox

checkbox = Checkbox(os.environ["CHECKBOX_SECRET_KEY"])

report = checkbox.suggestions.generate(
    terms={"merchant_name": "Acme", "price": 24, "interval": "month", "trial_days": 7, "cancel_url": "https://acme.example/account"},
    disclosure={
        "text": "Free for 7 days, then $24.00 every month until you cancel. Your Acme subscription renews automatically every month at $24.00. Cancel anytime online at https://acme.example/account before your trial ends to avoid being charged.",
        "button_text": "Subscribe",
        "placement": {"bold": True},
        "consent": {"checkbox": True},
    },
    jurisdictions=["US-CA", "US-NY"],
)
for s in report["suggestions"]:
    print(s["surface"], s["title"], s["apply"]["content"])

You can send any subset of disclosure, page (html), stripe_checkout_session (params), emails (one per kind) and cancellation_flow (one entry per screen), plus other_plans for plan-switch suggestions.

For a monitored site, Checkbox uses what it observed (checkout captures, emails, the test cancellation, billing settings and registered Stripe Checkout params):

GET /v1/sites/{site}/suggestions?surfaces=checkout_page,acknowledgment_email

The same report is in the dashboard under Site → Improve (grouped by surface, with before/after, the guardrails and a copy button), in the MCP tool suggest_improvements, and in the SDKs as suggestions.forSite / suggestions.generate (Python: suggestions.for_site / suggestions.generate). The compliance plan points to it under optional_improvements, never as a task.

Each suggestion carries apply.where, apply.content (the exact copy, Stripe JSON patch or flow change), apply.instructions, preconditions (what must be true before you use it), guardrails and verification. After applying one, run the check named in verification.operation_id on your real copy.

Suggestions use the same status labels as the rest of Checkbox: every offered suggestion's after-example is verification.compliance_status: "compliant" (compliance_label "Compliant"), and a surface with a check that Needs a fix is held (held_label) until you fix it — a suggestion never sits on top of a broken floor.

#The best examples

Examples below use a $24.00/month plan with a 7-day trial; yours are written from your own plan terms.

#Checkout page

A plain, unbolded line is not suggested: semibold (or another way of setting the line apart) is what makes it conspicuous — see example 1.

#Stripe Checkout

• Let the trial start without a card: payment_method_collection: "if_required" with subscription_data.trial_settings.end_behavior.missing_payment_method: "cancel". Guardrail: when you collect the card later, that page needs the renewal terms and consent again (ROSCA § 8403(1)-(2)).
• Keep custom_text.submit short (Stripe shows it small and grey) and add a one-line product description to the order summary.

#Emails

• Welcome email: a subject that says what it is ("Welcome to Acme: your subscription details", not "Order #10432 confirmed") and "Manage or cancel your subscription anytime: …" as the first line.
• Trial reminder: lead with what the subscriber got from the trial, then the end date, the charge and how to cancel; put the date in the subject ("Your Acme free trial ends on {{trial_end_date}}").
• Renewal reminder: offer "change your plan" next to "cancel". Naming another frequency as an option ("or switch to monthly billing") is fine, as long as the reminder also states this plan's own amount and frequency ("renews every year at $96.00").
• Price change: one honest sentence on why, and your cheaper plan with its exact price. The New York cancel-within-14-days-with-a-pro-rata-refund paragraph stays.
• Cancellation email: "Changed your mind? Restart your subscription anytime at …" and an optional invitation to reply.

#Cancellation flow

One optional, clearly skippable save offer (a discount or a pause), never more:

Your subscription [Cancel subscription] [Change plan]
→ Before you go, would you like to see an offer before you cancel? [Show me the offer] [Cancel subscription]
→ Stay and get 50% off your next month. [Accept offer] [Cancel subscription]
→ Your subscription is canceled. You will not be charged again.

• California, Colorado and Arkansas: the "Cancel subscription" button is on every screen and cancels at once.
• Minnesota: ask first and show the offer only after a yes (the second screen). Checkbox drops that screen when you do not sell in Minnesota.
• New York and NYC: no unreasonable delay; Checkbox flags more than one offer.

Optional one-tap "Why are you leaving?" choices and a confirmation with a way back are suggested the same way.

#What Checkbox never suggests

Pre-checked boxes, confirmshaming ("No, I don't like saving money"), hidden or delayed cancel buttons, fake urgency or scarcity, buried terms, a per-month price instead of the real charge, and claims you cannot keep. The library's tests fail if an example contains any of them.

#Limits

• Checkout examples are checked on the compliant baseline (Checkbox's locked disclosure with your terms) with the change applied. Your full page is judged when you run the check on it, or by the next scan.
• Stripe-hosted pages keep placement and styling at needs_review (Stripe draws them); that is not a regression.
• Per-subscriber content (trial activity, a year's recap) is yours to fill from real data; Checkbox never invents usage.
• An automated check against Checkbox's catalog, not legal advice.

Checkbox is compliance software, not a law firm; nothing in these docs is legal advice (details). You remain solely responsible for your subscription program, and Checkbox takes on no legal liability for it (Terms). Checkbox is a System1 company; Trust center · Status. For AI agents: every page is available as Markdown at the same URL plus .md; the index is /llms.txt.