We recently deleted inactive accounts across all our apps (Budo, Shimbi Invoice, Mikan CRM, and Ninjin). This was the answer to a question we asked ourselves last year: what should we do about accounts that weren't upgraded but weren't used either? Should we keep hold of their data forever?
That felt wrong – we promise to keep the free account forever in the case of Shimbi Invoice. About Budo and Ninjin, to keep the free account live, users need to update their website at least once in 30 days. If they failed, we deactivate the account in 15 days and remove the data from our servers.
But with a surge of millions of SaaS providers, it seems one person signup at many services and tends to even forget the trials they opt for.
So we decided to do some things about this. We wanted to ensure those who are still interested in our Apps and wish to use them should get the chance to do so, but those already found solutions should know their account will be terminated from our servers. Their privacy is protected, and we don't hold any data that is not required for us to keep.
We planned to target three groups of accounts:
- Free accounts that haven't been active in over 90 days or more
- Free accounts that haven't been active in over 60 days
- Free accounts that haven't been active in over 30 days
We organized the project in stages, each focused on a specific group of accounts. The oldest account will go first, but before that, we implemented two actions for each:
- Send an email informing the action we are taking and a chance to continue.
- If no response is received in 7 days, then initiate the deletion of the account.
In the future, we are planning to shift to 14 days FREE Trail model. This decision we are no deliberating in the company.
For now, we feel relieved and free of liability from holding unused old data. We are delighted if you are using our Apps, but we don't want to not retain your data if you are not using them. This was an example of the many things we are doing to raise the bar on data privacy.