Deactivation of the Confluence app and problem with launching/adding the Confluence app again.

[Mateusz Glanowski]

My Confluence app was inadvertently deactivated on January 14, 2026 – I was away on an extended trip and unable to log in to Confluence. I was using a fre plan. I'd like to recover my Confluence space if possible.

I've tried restarting the Confluence app on my account, but without success. I'm getting this message:

Unable to add app
This can happen if you're behind on your website payments. Try checking Atlassian Administration, and if you're still having problems, contact support."

So, I can't restart Confluence to start working from scratch, and my previous app has been deactivated.

I'm also unable to contact support regarding the free plan.

Please help me out.
Mateusz.

[Vishalakshi Narayana Swamy]

Hi @Mateusz Glanowski

Welcome to Atlassian community!

I completely understand your concern that post deactivation you are unable to add the app again.

I suggest you to raise a request with our billing team directly here https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/purchasing-licensing#/ they will be able to assist you with the reactivation if possible or assist you with re-adding the app to your site.

Hope this helps!

 Best Regards,

Vishalakshi Narayanaswamy

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Mateusz Glanowski 

If your free subscription was deactivated you can try reactivating the subscription following the guidance in this document for subscriptions on the Inactive tab

https://support.atlassian.com/subscriptions-and-billing/docs/reactivate-a-subscription/

If you don't find your subscription there then it may already be in the process of being permanently deleted. Being in that process is one of the reasons you can get the "unable to add app" message.

To get assistance from Atlassian this would be a Licensing issue and you can contact them by completing and submitting the form at the Billing, Licensing, and Pricing Support page:

https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/purchasing-licensing#/

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello @Mateusz Glanowski 

Sorry to hear that 😢

I feel your pain  but this is one of those cases where the community can only point you in the right direction. We can’t reactivate Confluence, fix the “Unable to add app” state, or recover data from the backend from here. For deactivation + recovery, you really need Atlassian Support to look at your site directly.

A couple of practical checks before you reach out:

Go to admin.atlassian.com and make sure you’re in the right site (the correct xxx.atlassian.net). It’s surprisingly easy to end up in the wrong tenant/account and it looks like everything is gone.

Check Billing / Subscriptions. That “behind on payments” message usually means the site is in some kind of blocked billing state (even if you were on Free, the site can still land in a state that prevents adding apps).

Then the important part:

Contact Atlassian directly via their support/contact route for account/billing/can’t access product. They’re the only ones who can tell you:

whether the Confluence space is still within retention and recoverable

why the site is blocked from adding Confluence again

what they can do for a Free plan site

So yeah, you’re doing the right troubleshooting, but this one can’t be solved from the forum side. Atlassian Support is the only path that can actually unblock/restore it.

I wish you best luck 🤞