# What happens when I archive an experience, and can I bring it back?

Asked by camilo_r on 2025-10-28. Tags: workflow, experiences, quotas.

Inherited a workspace from someone who left, and it is a bit of a museum. About a
dozen experiences in various states, half of them clearly stale, names like
"test-hero-v2-FINAL". I want to clean up but I am asking before I click anything.

What does archiving actually do? Specifically:

- what do visitors see once an experience is archived
- does it free up the plan quota or just hide it from the list
- is anything lost, can I look at it again later if I need the history

basically want to know the blast radius before I start tidying

## 1 answer

### Answer from Sandra Okafor (2025-10-29)

The blast radius here is small, smaller than the naming suggests.

Archived is one of the experience statuses (the full set is Draft, Active,
Paused, Scheduled, Archived). Archiving stops the experience from serving, so
visitors who previously matched it simply get the default slot content. Nothing
breaks on the site because the slot always has its default to fall back on.

On quota: yes, archiving or finishing experiments frees the
experiences/experiments quota, which is 1 on free and 15 on Growth. So a
cleanup like yours can actually recover meaningful headroom, it is not just
cosmetic list hygiene.

One suggestion for the ones you are unsure about: pausing is the lighter-weight
lever. A paused experience also serves default content but stays in the active
list, so it is the right move for "probably dead but I want to confirm with the
team first". Pause the ambiguous ones, archive the obvious museum pieces, and
revisit in a couple of weeks.