The 30-day grace window
When you cancel a paid plan or a payment fails, Marcus doesn't immediately pull your site offline. Instead, your project enters a 30-day paused state. The site remains live at its existing URL, pages stay publicly accessible, and search engines can still crawl and index your content. This grace period exists because we know billing hiccups happen, or you might be reconsidering whether to continue.
What you can't do during the pause: edit pages, publish changes, add new content, or use the AI builder interface. The project becomes read-only from your perspective, but the web sees it exactly as it was when the subscription lapsed.
What "readable and indexable" means
Readable means anyone with the URL can visit the site and browse normally. Images load, links work, forms display (though form submissions won't process without an active plan). Indexable means Google, Bing, and other search engines treat the site as they did before—existing rankings and cached pages don't vanish overnight.
This is different from many platforms that replace your site with a "subscription expired" placeholder the moment payment stops. Marcus keeps your work visible, giving you breathing room to decide next steps without losing traffic or search presence immediately.
Resuming within 30 days
If you reactivate your subscription any time in the 30-day window, the pause lifts instantly. You regain full editing access, the AI builder becomes available again, and nothing is lost. All pages, images, settings, and content remain exactly as they were. There's no restoration fee, no data recovery process—just pick up where you left off.
You can resume from the billing page in your account. If your payment method had expired or failed, update it and the project reactivates automatically once the charge clears.
What happens after 30 days
On day 31, the project is permanently deleted. This includes all pages, images, design settings, domain configuration, and AI conversation history tied to that project. The deletion is irreversible. Marcus doesn't archive old projects or offer late recovery—30 days is the hard cutoff.
The public URL stops resolving, search engines encounter 404 errors, and any inbound links break. If you had a custom domain pointed at the project, visitors will see an error until you point the domain elsewhere.
Exporting before deletion
You can export the entire project as a ZIP file at any point: while the subscription is active, during the 30-day pause, or even in the final moments before cancellation. The export contains all HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and assets—a complete static snapshot you can host anywhere.
This export is your safety net. Download it and you own a portable copy of the site, independent of Marcus. You can upload it to Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, a traditional web host, or keep it archived locally. The export includes a standard file structure, so any developer can work with it or you can serve it as-is.
Exports are available on all paid plans (Builder at €29/project/month and Studio at €290/month for up to 25 projects). Free tier projects (1 project, up to 5 pages) also have export access, so even if you never paid, you can still take your work with you.
Why this policy exists
The 30-day pause balances two needs: giving you time to handle billing issues or rethink a cancellation, and keeping infrastructure costs predictable. Hosting, CDN bandwidth, and database storage cost real money. Projects that haven't been paid for can't stay live indefinitely.
The export feature ensures you're never locked in. Marcus is built on the principle that your content is yours. If the service doesn't fit your needs anymore, you leave with everything you built. No hostage situations, no "premium export" upsells.
What this means for planning
If you're unsure about committing long-term, the 30-day buffer and export option give you flexibility. You can start a project, build it out, export a copy, and pause your subscription to evaluate whether you want to keep it on Marcus or move it elsewhere. The paused month lets you test the exported version on another host before the original is deleted.
For active projects where payment lapses accidentally—expired card, bank issue, overlooked renewal—the 30-day window usually covers the time needed to notice and fix it. Most customers catch billing problems within a week or two, well before deletion risk.