How long are messages stored at Cleanbox?
Cleanbox stores a copy of every processed email for a limited time. This retention period depends on your plan and determines how long you can view message content, spam reports, and retry failed deliveries.
Retention per plan
| Plan | Retention |
|---|---|
| Free | 7 days |
| Personal | 30 days |
| Premium | 60 days |
| Advanced | 120 days |
| Enterprise | 365 days |
What is stored
For each processed email, Cleanbox stores:
- The full raw email (RFC822 format) — stored encrypted in cloud storage (DigitalOcean Spaces)
- Message metadata — sender, subject, date, status, spam score, spam report, properties
- Delivery information — which alias received it, which filters matched, delivery options applied
What you can do during the retention window
While a message is within its retention period, you can:
- View the full content — including HTML body, headers, and attachments
- Read the spam report — every rule that triggered, individual scores, authentication results (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- Retry delivery — redeliver failed messages to your mailbox
- Forward — send the message to a different email address
- Submit feedback — mark as spam or not-spam to train the detection system
- Release from quarantine — deliver quarantined messages to your inbox
What happens after expiration
Once the retention period passes:
- The raw email is automatically deleted from cloud storage
- The message metadata in the database is cleaned up
- You can no longer view, forward, or redeliver the message
- Emails already delivered to your mailbox are not affected — they remain in your inbox as long as your email provider keeps them
Quarantine retention
Quarantined messages have a separate 30-day retention window, regardless of your plan. This ensures you have enough time to review borderline messages even on the Free plan (which normally has 7-day retention). After 30 days, unreviewed quarantined messages are automatically discarded.
Cloud storage (attachments)
Attachments extracted by the Cloud feature follow different rules. Cloud storage is tied to your plan quota (1 GB to 200 GB depending on plan) and attachments remain stored until you manually delete them or your cloud quota is exceeded. Cloud storage is independent of message retention.
Data privacy
All stored emails are encrypted at rest. Cleanbox never sells your data, never shows ads, and never uses your email content to train third-party AI models. When a message is deleted (either by retention expiration or manual action), it is permanently removed — there are no backups or shadow copies.
