Uninstalling Arbyn from your Shopify admin doesn't delete anything right away. Your data is kept for 72 hours, in case you meant to leave, or want to come back after all, and you get an email at both ends of that window: one the moment you uninstall, and a second one only once deletion has actually happened.
What it does
The moment Shopify tells us you've uninstalled, nothing about your account is touched yet. Your knowledge base, your rules, your conversation history, everything you built in Arbyn stays exactly as it was for 72 hours. If you reinstall inside that window, it all comes back untouched, as if you'd never left. If the 72 hours pass without a reinstall, everything is permanently deleted, in line with GDPR and Shopify's own data protection requirements.
Where to find it
Nothing to set up or find. This runs automatically the moment you uninstall; there's no page or toggle for it.
How it works
The moment you uninstall. You'll get a personal email from Odera, the founder, within a few minutes. It asks one honest question (what happened?) and explains the same thing this article does: your data is safe for 72 hours, reinstalling in that window brings everything back exactly as you left it, and after 72 hours it's gone for good with no way to recover it. Replying to that email reaches Arbyn's support team directly.
Why 72 hours. Shopify itself asks apps to act on an uninstall within 48 hours as part of its data protection requirements. 72 hours is longer than that, on purpose: the 48-hour mark is when Shopify expects the process to have started, not a deadline for it to be finished, and the extra time gives you a genuine window to change your mind rather than a technicality.
If you reinstall in time. Reinstalling at any point before the 72 hours are up cancels the deletion entirely and picks up exactly where you left off: same knowledge base, same rules, same conversation history. From Arbyn's side, it's treated as if you simply came back, not as starting over.
If you don't. Once the 72-hour window closes without a reinstall, deletion runs automatically. This doesn't depend on any single message or webhook successfully arriving: Arbyn checks, every hour, for any store that uninstalled more than 72 hours ago and hasn't come back, and completes the deletion for it right then if one is due. That's a deliberate design choice, a single dropped message can't leave your data stuck in limbo past the window, either kept longer than promised or deleted before it was actually due.
Confirmation, only once it's real. After deletion actually completes, a second email arrives, this one from Elin, confirming exactly what was deleted (your conversations, your messages, and every other record tied to your store), the date it happened, and that it's irreversible. This email is sent from the deletion process itself, once the deletion has genuinely finished, never on a fixed schedule that just assumes it went through. If you never see this second email, your data has not been deleted.
Good to know
There's no manual "delete now" option. The 72-hour window is fixed; deletion only happens automatically once it closes, and only if you haven't reinstalled.
Deletion is permanent. Once the confirmation email arrives, there is no way to recover the data, even if you reinstall afterward. A later reinstall starts completely fresh, a new setup, nothing carried over.
Reinstalling doesn't need to happen the moment you uninstall. Any time before the 72 hours are up counts, even if it's your last hour in the window.
The first email is really from Odera, and replies go to a real inbox. It's not an automated notice; replying with a line or two about why you left reaches Arbyn's support team.
FAQ
I uninstalled by mistake. What do I do? Reinstall Arbyn before the 72 hours are up (from the app listing, or your store's admin), and everything comes back exactly as you left it. Nothing is lost.
Does the 72-hour clock restart if I open and close the app again without fully reinstalling? No. The clock starts from the moment Shopify records the uninstall, and only a genuine reinstall clears it.
I uninstalled almost 3 days ago and haven't gotten the deletion confirmation yet. Is something wrong? Not necessarily; deletion completes on an hourly check rather than the instant the window closes, so there can be up to roughly an hour's delay after the 72-hour mark. If it's been noticeably longer than that with no confirmation email, reply to the first email you received and Arbyn's support team can look into it.
Does uninstalling stop me from being billed right away? This article covers what happens to your data, not your Shopify subscription billing. Check your Shopify admin's billing settings for how uninstalling affects any active charge.
What exactly gets deleted? Your conversations and every message in them, plus every other record Arbyn holds that's tied to your store, knowledge base entries, rules, settings, and analytics. The confirmation email states the actual conversation and message counts that were deleted for your store.