Conversation storage
Conversation storage persists each chat so end users can revisit their history across sessions and devices. When it's on, the widget shows a history menu where users can reopen past conversations; signed-in users see their history follow them between devices. When it's off, nothing is stored — chat still works, it's just stateless — and the history menu is hidden.
You control this per application from the dashboard, including how long conversations are kept before they're deleted automatically.
How it works
- With storage on, each conversation and its messages are written as the chat progresses.
- When a conversation is first created, an expiry is stamped on it from your retention period — e.g. a 6-month retention means the conversation (and all its messages) are deleted automatically about 6 months after it started.
- The history menu lists a user's past conversations, newest first; they can reopen or delete any of them.
Retention is measured from a conversation's creation time, and the expiry is fixed when the conversation is created. Changing the retention period later only affects conversations created afterward — existing ones keep the window they were created with.
Enabling it
In the dashboard, open your application's Data & privacy settings and turn on Store conversations. Enabling requires you to enter a retention period in months and save.
When storage is off:
/api/chatwrites no conversation or message rows — the chat is stateless.- The history endpoints are closed off server-side, and the widget hides the history menu.
- Usage metering is unaffected — token billing works exactly the same whether or not conversations are stored.
New applications ship with storage off by default (privacy-by-default). Applications that existed before this setting were enabled with a 3-month retention period.
Storage is a server-side gate the operator owns. It is not overridable from the host page's widget config, so a per-page integration can't re-enable storage you've turned off.
Retention caps by plan
The retention period you can choose is capped by your plan:
| Plan | Maximum retention |
|---|---|
| PAYG | 3 months |
| Growth, Business, Scale, Enterprise | 24 months |
If you downgrade to a plan with a lower cap, any application set above the new cap is automatically clamped down to it. Conversations already stored keep their original expiry and are not deleted early.
Turning storage off
Disabling storage stops new conversations from being written and closes off history immediately. Conversations already stored are not purged — they remain until their existing retention window elapses, then are deleted automatically.