Submission retention

Every plan keeps submissions for two stretches of time, not one: a full access window where everything behaves normally, followed by a longer kept window where a submission stays in your list but its full content is paywalled - until it's finally deleted.

The two windows

Plan	Full access	Kept, then deleted
Free	30 days	6 months
Starter	6 months	1 year
Pro	5 years	7 years
Business	Unlimited	Never deleted

Full access is the normal state: open a submission, see every field and attachment, export it, star/archive it, or set its moderation status, exactly like a brand-new submission.

Kept starts the moment a submission ages past its plan's full-access window. It still shows up in your submissions list - title/snippet visible, so you always know it exists and roughly what it says - but opening it, exporting it, or changing anything about it requires upgrading your plan first. Once a submission ages past the kept window too, it's deleted for good; there's no recovery after that point.

Upgrading doesn't just widen the window going forward - it immediately unlocks whatever of your own past data is currently sitting in the paywalled "kept" state, since the new plan's full-access window is measured from each submission's own creation date, not from when you upgraded.

Downgrading doesn't shrink existing data

If you downgrade your plan, submissions you already have keep whatever retention window they had before - they don't get shortened to match the new, lower tier. For example, downgrading from Pro to Starter doesn't shrink your existing submissions down to Starter's 1-year window; they keep counting down on Pro's original schedule. Only two things actually change a submission's retention window after the fact:

• Upgrading a plan extends existing submissions to the new, longer window right away.
• Downgrading away from Business caps existing submissions at Pro's window (rather than leaving them permanently unlimited), since Business is the only plan with no kept-window ceiling at all.

Every other downgrade leaves already-stored submissions exactly as they were.