Data Retention Plan
Keep the entry data from your finished Competitions after your paid plan ends, without paying for a full plan.
The Data Retention plan keeps the entry data from your finished Competitions while you're not on a paid plan. Without it, we delete that data once your data retention period runs out.
The plan shows on your Plans page when you don't have a paid plan and some of your finished Competitions are waiting to be deleted.
When your last paid plan ends, we keep your Competition entry data for a retention period of 3 to 18 months. The longer you were subscribed, the longer it lasts. Every Competition gets at least 3 months after it ends.
When the period runs out:
- We move those finished Competitions to the Archive tab and email you. You have two weeks from then.
- We email reminders a week before and a day before.
- We permanently delete every entry that didn't win. Users left with no entries in any of your campaigns are deleted too, unless they subscribed to your emails. Reporting data goes, and the Competition can't be edited any more.
Your winners and their winning entries stay, and you can still copy the Competition to run it again. Competitions with no entries aren't affected.
To stop the deletion, export your entries or subscribe to any plan before the date in our email. Subscribing cancels the deletion.
The Data Retention plan keeps the data without a full plan. A Data Retention button then shows on your Competitions list. Hover over it to see when the plan renews, or click it to open your Plans page.
It doesn't unlock paid features. If your Gleam account was created before 8 September 2026, it also lets you see and export your Users and entry data. Upgrade to a paid plan and the Data Retention plan ends, with the unused time returned as credit.
If you cancel the Data Retention plan or it doesn't renew, your retention period starts again from the day it ends. When that runs out, the deletion steps above begin, with the same emails and two-week warning.