The 14-day window
Every conversation, message, screenshot, and visitor row created in HeyLive carries an expires_at timestamp set to 14 days from creation. An automated background process runs once per hour and deletes everything whose expires_at has passed. There is no manual action required — privacy is the default.
What gets deleted
- Conversations older than 14 days — removed in full
- Messages in those conversations — cascade-deleted with their parent
- Attached screenshots — file rows removed (object storage cleaned up by the same schedule)
- Visitor rows with no remaining conversations and older than 14 days — removed so PII (IP, name, account ID, user-agent) goes with them
What survives — and why
When a conversation is deleted, its rating row (the stars and optional comment your visitor left) is preserved with the conversation reference set to NULL. This lets supervisors review long-term agent performance without retaining any individual conversation content. The rating row carries only:
- Stars (1–5)
- The comment text (max 300 characters)
- Which agent received it
- Which workspace it belongs to
- The timestamp
No visitor name, no email, no message history. Aggregate insight without per-person tracking.
Polite close = immediate hard delete
When an agent uses “Close ticket”(the polite-close flow) and the visitor confirms and submits a rating, HeyLive doesn't wait for the 14-day window. The conversation, all its messages, and the visitor row are deleted from the database immediately on rating submission — cascading through all related tables in a single transaction. Only the anonymized rating row remains.
This is the GDPR-style “right to be forgotten” flow. Visitors who want their data gone the moment they're done can use it; agents trigger it from the inbox.
Silent archive and force-close keep the 14-day window
The other two close flows — silent archive (the × button) and “Close — no reply” (for inactive visitors) — mark the conversation as status = closed but keep the row. Those follow the standard 14-day retention. After two weeks, they vanish too.
Account and workspace data
Admin and agent accounts persist while your workspace is active. When a workspace owner deletes their account, the workspace and all its conversations, agents, quick replies, and widget settings are removed within 30 days.
Why we do it this way
Chat conversations age into liabilities. Old conversations are subject to subpoena, breach disclosure, and storage cost. They're also rarely useful — most support data is only valuable for 24–48 hours after the chat closes. Anything older than that is best deleted, and we made it the default so you don't have to remember.
Questions
See our Privacy Policy for the broader picture, or contact us for specific scenarios.