Suspending keeps everything and is billed the same as an active account. Deleting stops the charge (on a flexible plan) but erases whatever you did not transfer, with 20 days to change your mind. Archiving keeps email and files at a lower cost. For a normal departure: suspend on the last day, transfer, and delete or archive after 30 days.
Updated on October 11, 2026 · 6 min read · Mekovault
| What happens to… | Suspend | Delete | Archive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access | Cut off: sessions signed out, cannot get in | Cut off | Cut off |
| Keeps arriving; nobody reads it | Bounces; whatever was not exported is lost | Kept, searchable by the administrator | |
| Drive and Calendar | Kept | Lost if ownership was not transferred | Kept |
| The license | Still assigned: billed the same | Released; on an annual plan it stays under contract until renewal | Moves to a cheaper archived user license |
| Undo | Reactivate whenever you want | Restore up to 20 days later | Unarchive whenever you want |
| What it is for | The last day and the grace period | Closing for good, after transferring | Retaining for a legal or contractual obligation |
Suspend and forget. It is what happens when someone handles the departure “just in case” and nobody has the task of looking again. That account is billed every month, with the same license as a person who actually works. In a 100-person company with 20% annual turnover, that is 20 accounts that can end up in that limbo; at an average of 6 months and $7 to $25 each, it is money that leaves without anyone seeing it. You can estimate it with the calculator.
Mekovault does not choose for you: it suspends on the last day at the exact hour, schedules the deletion 30 days out (with advance notice and the option to undo), shows in Licenses how many licenses sit on suspended accounts and tells you what to change at renewal. If you flag an account to be kept, it does not touch it. And all of it with the name of who requested and who approved, kept for 365 days.
Yes. Email lands in the mailbox, but nobody reads it and nobody answers. That is why you have to turn on an auto-reply and forwarding, or delegate the mailbox to the manager.
If they owned the files and ownership was not transferred, the files disappear for everyone they were shared with. Transfer ownership from the admin console before deleting.
Yes, it is the option for keeping email and files without paying for a full license, for example because of legal obligations or a litigation hold. It requires archived user licenses on your edition and does not replace transferring files to someone who still works there.