Uninstalling & Data
What happens to your carts, emails, coupons and settings when you deactivate or delete ShapedRecover, and how to remove everything on purpose.
Taking a plugin off a store can mean three different things: switching it off for a while, deleting it but keeping its data in case you come back, or wiping it completely. ShapedRecover handles each one differently, and the free plugin and Pro behave differently too. This page explains all of it, so nothing disappears that you meant to keep, and nothing stays that you meant to remove.
The short version
- Deactivating never deletes anything. Not the free plugin, not Pro.
- Deleting the free plugin removes nothing by default. Your carts, campaigns, reports and settings stay in the database, and a reinstall picks up where you left off.
- To wipe everything, ask first. Switch on Delete Everything on Uninstall in Settings → Data & Storage before you delete the free plugin. It's off by default.
- Deleting Pro removes only its license. Deactivate the license first, or the site keeps using one of your activations.
- Your WooCommerce orders are never deleted, whatever you choose.
Deactivating
Deactivating stops a plugin running. It doesn't touch your data.
Deactivating Pro
Your store goes back to the free features straight away. Recovery keeps running: carts are still captured, campaigns still send, and sales are still credited. The six Pro features lock again, and every Pro setting you saved is kept, untouched, for when Pro comes back. See Free vs Pro.
Deactivating the plugin doesn't release your license activation. If you're moving Pro to another site, use Deactivate License in Settings → License first. See Moving to another site.
Deactivating the free plugin
With the free plugin off, ShapedRecover stops completely:
- no carts are captured, and the consent checkbox disappears from your checkout,
- no recovery emails are sent, and its background jobs are removed from WooCommerce → Status → Scheduled Actions,
- links in emails shoppers already have (recovery and unsubscribe) don't do anything while it's off.
Everything stored stays: carts, campaigns, send history, settings, the unsubscribe list and the coupons it generated. Reactivate it and the background jobs are scheduled again and recovery carries on. Emails that fell due in the meantime go out under the overdue rule, so a cart that missed several gets only the latest.
Pro needs the free plugin to run. If you're keeping Pro, keep the free plugin active. If you're removing both, remove Pro first.
Deleting the free plugin
What deleting does depends on one setting, Delete Everything on Uninstall, in Settings → Data & Storage → Uninstall. See Data & Storage Settings.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Delete Everything on Uninstall | Off | Removes all recovery data and settings when the plugin is deleted. Leave it off if you might reinstall. |
The switch only acts at the moment you click Delete on the Plugins screen. Turning it on removes nothing by itself, and you can turn it off again any time before you delete.
With the switch off (the default)
Nothing is removed. The plugin's files go, but every cart, campaign, recovery email record, setting and generated coupon stays in your database. Reinstall ShapedRecover and it's exactly as you left it, starter campaigns and all.
This is the safe choice if you're deleting the plugin to troubleshoot, or might come back later.
With the switch on
Deleting the plugin removes everything ShapedRecover owns:
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Its database tables | Carts, campaigns, recovery emails (send history), recovery links and the unsubscribe list. |
| All its settings | Every section of Settings, including the ones Pro uses: your Never Track list, coupon restrictions and notification settings are stored by the free plugin. |
| Its scheduled jobs | The sweep, the daily job and any pending follow-up run. |
| Short-lived records | The 2-day blocks left by Stop Tracking, and the checkout's rate-limit counters. |
| What it saved on user accounts | Each customer's saved consent (or "no"), each admin's remembered date range, and which Dashboard banners they closed. |
| Its notes on your orders | The attribution details it added to orders: which cart, email and link an order came through. Orders in every status are cleaned, trashed and draft orders included. The orders themselves stay. |
| Every coupon it generated | Used or not, in any status, trash included, deleted permanently. Codes in emails shoppers haven't opened yet stop working. |
What is never removed:
- Your WooCommerce orders, customers and products.
- Your own coupons, including one you picked for a campaign with Use an existing coupon. Only coupons ShapedRecover generated are deleted.
- Pro's license. That belongs to Pro and goes when Pro is deleted. See Deleting Pro.
This can't be undone
There's no export for ShapedRecover's own data and no backup step. Once the tables are dropped, your recovery history and the evidence behind every credited sale are gone, and your orders no longer say which ones were recovered. Take a database backup first if there's any chance you'll want it.
If you reinstall afterwards, it's a fresh start: tracking is off and the three starter campaigns are added again, switched off.
Deleting Pro
Pro keeps almost nothing of its own: the free plugin stores all the data, including Pro's settings. So deleting Pro removes only the license saved on this site. It doesn't look at Delete Everything on Uninstall, and it never touches your carts, campaigns, reports or settings. The free plugin keeps running.
Deactivate the license before you delete Pro
Deleting Pro removes the license from this site, but doesn't tell ShapedPlugin's license server. The site keeps counting in Sites in use, and a later activation elsewhere may be refused with "no activations left". To avoid that, click Deactivate License in Settings → License first, then deactivate and delete the plugin. If it's already happened, contact ShapedPlugin support to free the activation. See Moving to another site.
Your Pro settings stay with the free plugin. Install Pro again and activate a license, and your Never Track list, coupon restrictions, Exclude Products lists and notification settings come back exactly as they were.
Removing ShapedRecover completely
To take every trace of ShapedRecover off a site, in this order:
- Tidy your coupons (optional). If you'd rather not wait for codes to be deleted with the plugin, see Generated coupons below.
- Release your license (Pro only). Settings → License → Deactivate License.
- Remove Pro (Pro only). On Plugins, deactivate and delete Shaped Recover Pro.
- Ask for a full clean-up. In ShapedRecover → Settings → Data & Storage, switch on Delete Everything on Uninstall and click Save Changes. This has to happen while the plugin is still active, since the setting is on its settings screen.
- Remove the free plugin. On Plugins, deactivate and delete Shaped Recover.
Steps 2 and 3 come before the free plugin because Pro depends on it.
Generated coupons
Recovery coupons are real WooCommerce coupons, so they need a word of their own:
- Deleting with the switch off: generated coupons stay in Marketing → Coupons and keep working. A shopper with an unexpired code can still use it, but there's no plugin left to clean them up, so used and expired ones stay too. Their description starts "Shaped Recover:", which makes them easy to find and delete by hand.
- Deleting with the switch on: every generated coupon is deleted, live or not.
- Before either: Delete Coupons Now in Settings → Coupons removes expired codes, and codes used more than 7 days ago, straight away. See Coupon Cleanup.
Multisite
ShapedRecover is activated site by site, and each site keeps its own data and its own Delete Everything on Uninstall switch. The clean-up doesn't go through the network site by site, though. On a multisite network you delete plugins from Network Admin → Plugins, and the clean-up runs once, for the main site, following the main site's switch. Other sites keep their ShapedRecover data.
To thin out a site that isn't the main one, use its own tools before you delete the plugin: Delete Old Records Now with short periods for finished carts, and Delete Coupons Now for coupons. They don't empty it completely: only finished carts are removed (Recovered ones are anonymised rather than deleted), and Recoverable Carts can't be set shorter than the lost cutoff. Open carts, campaigns, settings and the unsubscribe list stay in that site's database.
Removing one shopper's data instead
You don't need to uninstall anything to honour a privacy request. WordPress's Tools → Erase Personal Data removes one shopper's carts, emails and consent, keeping only an anonymised record of any recovered sale. See Erasing a shopper's data.
Where to go next
- Data & Storage Settings: the uninstall switch and the retention periods.
- License: deactivate a license and move it to another site.
- Free vs Pro: what changes when Pro is removed.