My confluence application has been deactivated. I was on free-tier. How to recover content?

[David Young]

I have been using a "personal" free-tier cloud-hosted atlassian confluence account for more than five years. I use it regularly and use it as a storage place for things so that I don't have to remember (stuff like; how to check the expiry date of a .pem certificate) and addition to my aws exam study notes (very useful when recertification comes back around)/

I received an email in december about my confluence account being deactivated. it didn't seem authentic as i access my confluence site at least once a month.

When i try to access my confluence content now, i get;

Page unavailable

Your Atlassian Cloud site is currently unavailable.

Please check Atlassian Status for known problems.
If there are no known problems and your page hasn't appeared again in 5-10 minutes then please contact our support team.

However, because I am not upon a paid plan, no support is available. Has anybody else experienced this? Do I have any options to recover my cherished pages of accumulated knowledge? 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @David Young 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The ultimate authority on whether or not the data can be recovered is Atlassian. This is essentially a licensing issue so you can contact the Licensing support team by completing and submitting the form at this site:

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

After deactivation Atlassian holds the data for a limited period of time, in case the subscription is reactivated, and then they permanently delete it. If you received the email saying that your subscription was deactivated (vs. it would be deactivated on a specified date) then by now the data may have already been permanently deleted. Only Atlassian can determine if that is the case.

[David Young]

Trudy, thanks for your reply. You're spot on.

Unfortunately, my confluence content has been permanently removed. This was very important (yet not sensitive) information and knowledge. My fault for entrusting it to one company. It seems to me that forty days of not accessing your content is a very short time period.

I'm not sure if it is possible to backup or export your confluence content ... my advice would be to do that and set a calendar reminder to access your content once per month.

The lady who let me know was very polite and empathetic in the nature of the data loss. She was forthright in letting me know that no recovery is possible. Kudos to her for letting me know and I feel for customer support staff who have to deal with customers dealing with such frustrating situations.

I have used Confluence and Jira together in several organisations very successfully and recommended them to those employers that hadn't adopted them. That reputation has very much been sullied now.

[Trudy Claspill]

I am sorry that your data was not recoverable.

I have been reaching out through Community Champion channels to see if there is anything that can be done to more clearly communicate the inactivity limitation for Free subscriptions and provide clarity about the date data will be deleted after deactivation. 

The inactivity limitation is mentioned in a couple of documents, but I have asked about it being clearly stated in the plan features on the app pricing pages. I've also ask for updates to the documentation to say exactly what the inactivity period is, as I have seen older community posts from Atlassian team members saying that for Jira, at least, the inactivity period was 120 days. It seems the period for that app may also have been shortened.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @David Young 

This behaviour only relates to Free subscriptions or if payment on paid subscriptions is not provided anymore.

An Atlassian Free subscription due state this in the documentation. 

Free is never really free.