Delete your account or workspace
The difference between removing one person and closing the whole business account, how a deletion request is made and what it stops, what is removed, what we keep and why, and how long it takes.
- Who
- Owners closing a business account, and anyone leaving a workspace
- Plan
- All plans
- Role
- Only an Owner can request deletion of a workspace
Before you start
- Take a data export first — it is not available afterwards
- Settle anything you still need from the billing screen
Two very different things are often asked for in the same sentence. One is removing a person from a workspace, which takes a few seconds and changes nothing about the business. The other is closing the business account itself, which stops the assistant, ends everyone’s access and starts the removal of your data. The screen calls the second one Delete account, but what it deletes is the whole workspace.
Which one do you mean?
| Removing a person | Deleting the workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| What it affects | One person’s access to one workspace. | The entire business account and everyone in it. |
| Who can do it | An Owner or an Admin, from Dashboard → Team. | Only an Owner, from Settings → Account & privacy. |
| What happens to the assistant | Nothing. It keeps answering. | It stops answering, and messages are no longer received. |
| What happens to the data | Nothing is deleted. Their past replies and notes stay. | Conversations, contacts, leads and business knowledge are removed. |
| Can it be undone | Yes — add the person again. | Not by you. Write to us within 24 hours and we will try. |
Removing a person from the workspace
This is the everyday case: someone leaves the business, or should no longer see customer messages. An Owner or an Admin opens Dashboard → Team, selects Remove on their row and confirms. Their access ends at once, their past work stays where it is, and the seat is free for someone else. Invite and remove teammates covers it step by step.
Deleting your own sign-in account is a different request again, and the product has no button for it. Being removed from a workspace ends your access to that workspace; the sign-in account itself remains, and any other workspace you belong to is untouched. If you want the login itself removed, write to us from the address it uses and say so.
Requesting deletion of the workspace
Step 1 Open Settings → Account & privacy and select Export data (JSON).
- The same download is repeated inside the delete section as Download your data (JSON), next to the reminder “Deletion removes your conversations, contacts and knowledge base. Take a copy first — afterwards it cannot be recovered.”
You should see: A file named after your workspace downloads. Keep it somewhere safe.
Step 2 Scroll to Delete account and read what it says.
You should see: “Requesting deletion marks the account for deletion; we’ll contact you to complete the process as described in the Data Deletion policy.”
Step 3 Type
DELETEinto the box labelled To continue, type DELETE:- The word is typed in English in both languages, and it is not case-sensitive.
You should see: The Request account deletion button becomes available.
Step 4 Select Request account deletion.
- Submitting twice is safe — a second request returns the first one rather than starting anything new.
You should see: The form is replaced by a green panel: “Deletion request received. We’ll contact you to complete the process.”
What happens the moment you submit
- Processing on the account stops. Incoming WhatsApp messages are no longer taken in, the assistant generates no replies, and nothing goes out.
- Everyone in the workspace loses access to the dashboard, you included. The next page load shows the generic “Something went wrong” card rather than an explanation, because the product has no dedicated screen for this state.
- The request is recorded with who made it, when, and the point until which it can still be reversed.
- Destruction does not start straight away. The account sits frozen for 24 hours first.
What is removed
Once the process runs, these are removed from our active systems:
- Conversations, contacts and message content, including files and images sent or received.
- Leads and the details recorded on them.
- The business knowledge: services, FAQ, policies, opening hours, uploaded documents and everything built from them for search.
- The business profile and the assistant’s settings.
- Message templates.
- WhatsApp connection records and the access credentials we hold for them.
- Internal notes, assistant activity logs and handover records.
- Every membership, so nobody remains attached to the workspace.
The removal is checked rather than assumed: the process counts what is left in each store — messages, contacts, conversations, knowledge, files and the search index — and refuses to report itself finished while any of them still holds something.
What is kept, and why
| Kept | Why |
|---|---|
| Invoices, charges and the subscription record | Accounting and tax law require them to be retained for a statutory period. See Invoices and receipts. |
| The record that your business accepted the Terms | It is the evidence of the contract between us — which version, when, and by whom. |
| Consent records | Evidence that a consent decision was made and honoured. |
| Audit log entries, with their details and network addresses cleared | Deleting the trail would erase the only proof that the deletion itself was requested by the right person and carried out lawfully. |
| An empty workspace record | Renamed and stripped of its details, it exists only so the records above have something to belong to. |
| Copies inside protected backups | Not kept by choice. A backup cannot be edited, so a copy stays until that backup ages out — up to 35 days. |
How long it takes
The account is frozen as soon as you submit, and removal begins after 24 hours. From there the work runs in stages in the background, and before anything is destroyed the request is checked again — the person who asked must still be an Owner of the workspace. Our published commitment is to acknowledge a request within 72 hours and to remove your data from our active systems within 30 days of verifying it, and we confirm in writing to the address on the account when the removal is complete. Backup copies then age out over the following weeks, up to 35 days.
The same terms, and the email route for making a request without signing in, are set out on the public Data Deletion page. What we keep in the ordinary course of business is described in How long we keep data.
Your WhatsApp number
Deletion shuts down the connection between OMAI and your number and removes the credentials we hold for it, so the number stops receiving and answering through us. The WhatsApp Business account itself belongs to you and lives with Meta — this request does not close it, and you manage it in Meta’s own tools. If all you want is for the assistant to stop, remove the connection instead and keep the account: see Managing connections.
If you change your mind
There is no cancel button, and the dashboard will not open for you after the request, so you cannot undo it yourself. Write to us straight away, from the address on the account, and say that you want the deletion request stopped. The 24 hours between the request and the start of removal is the window that matters — after it, parts of the data are gone and cannot be brought back.
Common questions
Is deleting the account the same as cancelling my subscription?
No, and do not use it as one. Cancelling stops the renewal at the end of the period and leaves your data in place; deletion removes the data. Cancel on the Billing screen.
Can I delete just the conversations and keep the account?
Not as one action from the dashboard. Individual knowledge items can be deleted on their own screens. For customer data specifically, write to us and describe exactly what you need removed.
What happens to my invoices?
They are kept for the period the law requires, and so are the underlying charge records. Download the ones you need before you submit the request, because the billing screen closes with the rest of the dashboard.
My colleague still has our data in their email.
Anything exported, forwarded or screenshotted before the request is outside our systems and outside this process. Deletion covers what OMAI holds.
Can I open a new account with the same email address later?
Write to us. Sign-in addresses stay unique across OMAI, so an address that has been used before may not be free for a fresh sign-up.