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Storage, retention & deletion
Plan for your host, understand sampling and keep recording data for only as long as needed.
In this guide 5 sections
Choose the edition by its analysis and collaboration tools. More traffic does not require Pro. Sampling, retention, storage and your host determine how many recordings you can keep.
A recording lasts at most 30 minutes and holds at most 8 MiB of payloads. Capture pauses when the chosen storage budget is reached. These controls provide no hosting space and do not guarantee server capacity.
| Control | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly recording quota | None | None |
| Retention setting | 1–365 days | 1–365 days |
| Replay payload budget | 1–10,240 MiB | 1–10,240 MiB |
| New-install defaults | 7 days / 250 MiB | 7 days / 250 MiB |
Settings & privacy shows recent recording sizes and estimates how many additional recordings may fit in the remaining payload budget. It uses up to 200 recent recordings with no upload in the last minute; a small sample is provisional and visits can resume and grow.
Both editions start with seven-day retention and 250 MiB. An administrator can choose 1–365 days and 1–10,240 MiB after checking hosting space and justified retention. Updating preserves saved settings; it does not allocate server storage.
Lowering the payload budget does not delete recordings. Capture stays paused until space is available. Budgets exclude database indexes, backups and hosting logs. MiB means 1,048,576 bytes.
Version 0.5.1 allowed Free 200 starts / 7 days / 50 MB and Pro 5,000 starts / 30 days / 500 MB. The historical handbook remains a 0.5.1 reference. Use it only to understand those historical limits. Follow the current installation and consent guides for setup; notice and consent requirements changed in version 0.6.2.
Estimate eligible, consenting visits and apply the sampling percentage. Sampled recordings are not the same as total traffic. A very low sample can miss less common interaction problems.
For example, 2,000 eligible, consenting visits at 10% sampling gives roughly 200 recording starts. Sampling is applied to eligible tabs, so this is an estimate, not a traffic forecast or a capture guarantee. Neither edition has a monthly recording quota.
After a synthetic test at 100%, select a rate your host and storage budget can sustain. Check measured recording sizes and available database space before increasing the rate. New installations start paused with 10% sampling; the plan you choose does not change that setting.
Scheduled cleanup uses WordPress cron, with bounded cleanup during dashboard access and session creation. Configure a reliable cron trigger on low-traffic sites. Failed cleanup appears in health checks.
Deleting a recording removes its chunks, issue index, analytics metrics, session review state, notes, invitations and payment association together. Failed database transactions are reported for retry. Bulk deletion stops if progress cannot be confirmed.
The last 100 administrative audit entries, saved filter preferences and connection settings have a separate configuration lifecycle. Deactivation keeps stored data. The optional Delete data when uninstalling setting removes plugin tables and configuration.
Downloaded exports, backups and hosting logs are outside recording deletion. Plan their retention separately and take care not to restore previously deleted recordings from a backup.