Pausing an account: suspend it, find it later, bring it back

Suspension is the most underused tool on a multi-site estate. Nothing is destroyed, the change takes effect at once, and the account keeps its shape while the site is off the air. People reach for termination instead, which offers none of that.

What suspension holds on to

Visitors reaching a suspended site are shown a holding notice rather than your pages. Behind that notice, four things are preserved:

• Files, databases and mail stores, untouched.
• The address the account was pinned to. It does not return to your pool.
• The username, the package and every limit attached to it.
• Reversibility. Lifting it puts the site back in the state you left it.

Termination is the opposite on every line. That difference, and what it means for the address in particular, is set out in WHM and Accounts.

Four situations where suspending is the right move

1. A client relationship has gone quiet. Take the site down, keep the data. If they come back next month you have lost nothing.
2. A site is being abused. Something is sending mail or eating resources and you have not yet found what. Suspend, then investigate calmly instead of under pressure.
3. A project is finished but not archived. Suspension is a holding pattern that costs you no attention.
4. You are about to terminate. Suspend first and wait. If nobody notices within your chosen window, the termination is safe. If somebody does notice, you still have the data.

Write the reason down where you will find it

Suspension takes a reason. Use it properly, in a form your future self can act on: what happened, and what would have to be true to lift it. "Non-payment, lift on settlement" is a decision. "Suspended" is a puzzle.

This matters because suspensions accumulate. Six months in, a list of suspended accounts with no reasons is a list of things nobody dares touch, and it quietly turns into a list of things you keep paying for.

The suspended list is a review queue, not an archive

The separate view of suspended accounts exists so you can answer one question quickly: what is off the air right now, and why. Treat it as a queue and read it on a schedule rather than only when something is wrong. Each entry has exactly three honest outcomes:

• Bring it back. The reason has been resolved.
• Terminate it. The reason will never be resolved, and you have taken a copy of anything worth keeping.
• Leave it, with a date. Genuinely waiting on something, and you have written down when to look again.

Anything that is none of those three is drift. Folding this review into the monthly rhythm described in Running Your Estate keeps the list honest and stops it becoming a graveyard.

Before you lift a suspension

If the account was suspended because something was wrong with the site, unsuspending puts that wrong thing straight back on the air. Fix first, then lift. If the account was suspended for a commercial reason, check the certificate situation before you announce it is back, since renewals may have been missed while it was dark. What renews on its own is covered in Control From the Dashboard.