How can I get a backup/export of my data from a suspended Atlassian Cloud Free site?

Question

Hi everyone,

My Atlassian Cloud Free site has been suspended yesterday. When I try to access it I get a message

Your Atlassian Cloud products are suspended

Your subscription for Atlassian Cloud hasn't been renewed.
If you're a site admin, go to admin.atlassian.com
View site bill to update your payment detailsThe site was still active when this happened, so this came as a surprise. I can still log into my Atlassian account and admin.atlassian.com, but I can no longer open the actual site or use the normal Backup Manager / export options. Neither was able to find this free subscription to enable or active billing to get my site back.

I urgently need to recover a backup of my data especially Confluence before anything is permanently deleted.

I tried reaching out through support email, with no luck, as atlassian is no more monitoring them.

Raising a support ticket has become impossible too without providing a valid active site.

Has anyone been in this situation with a Free Cloud site?

* Is there any way to generate or download a site backup while the site is suspended?
* How do i contact Atlassian Support to temporarily re-enable the site just long enough to export the data?
* Is there another way raise a support request for this (which category / form)?
* How long is the data usually retained after suspension on the Free plan?

Any advice, recent experiences, or links to the right support path would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Teja

Arkadiusz Wroblewski · Answer

Thanks @Maksym Liutyi  for jumping in and confirming the correct escalation path.

@teja I would follow Maksym's steps here, especially since the Customer Advocate team can check the actual site history and determine whether recovery is still possible. I wouldn't wait with this one

Best,

Arek 🤠

Gabriela - LeanZero · Answer

Hi @Teja, there is a documented way back in that costs nothing and runs entirely through the admin hub you can still reach. From admin.atlassian.com pick your organisation, go to Apps then Atlassian apps, select Confluence, choose Add to an existing site, pick your existing site and select Add. Atlassian's reactivation doc says of exactly those steps: "Using these instructions, you can also reactivate your deactivated subscription back to a Free plan if you are within the Free plan user limit."

On not finding the subscription, try https://admin.atlassian.com/billing as its own URL rather than the Billing item in the admin nav. Subscriptions, then the Inactive tab, then Reactivate on the deactivated Confluence. That URL distinction is what fixed it for another Free Confluence owner on 14 July who had reported having no subscriptions in his billing at all: Reactivate Confluence Free space. That page is scoped to billing admins on the newer billing experience though, so an org or site admin without billing rights sees nothing there regardless of the URL.

On the number you asked for, the reactivate doc says data is kept 15 days for free subscriptions and 60 for paid, the storage FAQ table puts Free in the 60 day row, and the original billing experience section of that same page says two weeks from deactivation. Work to two weeks.

Nothing I can find gets Confluence content out while the site is dark. Backup manager only exists inside the site, so reactivation comes first and the export second.

On the form Arek linked, the part that stops people is the deflection. It shows you a help article first, and you have to click Need more help?, then click it again when it reappears, before you get a free text box.

I have not run any of this against a suspended Free site myself, so it is the docs plus that July thread rather than my own test.

Maksym Liutyi · Answer

Hi @teja

I am so sorry to hear you’re having trouble accessing your data. I know how important this information is to your team, and I want to help you get some clarity on what’s happening.

Because this involves your specific account, site history, and communications involving private data, we need to move this to a secure environment where our Customer Advocate team can investigate.

Please take these steps now:

Create a ticket with our Customer Advocate team through the Atlassian Support Portal

Select Other and skip the Provide the related URL, SEN, EN or invoice number (if applicable) if you don’t have this information

Describe your request and add a link to this Forum post

A note on our Free plan policy:
To ensure we’re providing the best experience for active teams, Atlassian has a policy for deactivated sites, see more details here.

We typically send several email warnings to the site administrators before this happens.

Once a site is deleted due to inactivity, the data is generally not recoverable.

However, our Customer Advocates can look into your specific account to see if the site was deactivated for a different reason or if there is any path forward for recovery. Please reach out to them via the link above so they can give you a definitive answer based on your site’s history.