What happens to your phone numbers when you delete things

The one rule

A phone number belongs to your organisation, not to an agent and not to a brand. Deleting the things that use a number never removes the number, and never stops its monthly rental.

There is exactly one action that ends the charge: releasing the number at Settings → Organization settings → Phone numbers. Everything below is a variation on that one fact.

Deleting a voice agent

From Brand → Voice, the ⋯ menu on the agent's card. This is allowed at any time now, even while numbers are pointed at it — that used to be refused, and you had to un-assign everything first.

• Goes: the agent, its prompt, its voice and language settings, its recording setting.
• Stays: its phone numbers. They are un-assigned, their routing is reset, and they sit in your account still costing their monthly rental. The confirmation dialog names how many numbers this affects and says so in as many words.
• Stays: every past call. Transcripts and recordings remain in your inbox.

The un-assigned numbers now ring nothing. Callers get whatever the network does with a number that has no destination, so if the line is published anywhere, point it at another agent or release it promptly.

Deleting a chat widget

The widget's own delete is at the bottom of Brand → Chat widget → Features. It is safe for the brand and unsafe for the conversations, and both halves matter:

• The brand survives, and with it its web address, its public knowledge base, its products and its Vex AI. Your pages just lose the chat bubble.
• The widget's own history dies with it — its chats, messages, events, visitors, session replays and banner campaigns. The dialog shows you the conversation count before you confirm.
• Phone numbers are untouched. Voice agents are not the widget's, so nothing about calls changes.

There is a way back for the widget itself, though not for the conversations: Brand → Chat widget then shows "No chat widget yet" with an Add a chat widget button.

One thing to watch: the widget's delete dialog carries a checkbox, unticked by default, that deletes the brand as well. Do not tick it absent-mindedly — read the next section first.

Deleting a whole brand

This is the destructive one. There is no undo and no soft delete.

Goes: the brand's knowledge bases and their articles, its documentation and pages, its uploaded files, the website pages Yaplet read for you, its question-and-answer entries, its product feeds and products, its API tools, its Vex AI agent, its voice agents and its chat workflows. It also removes the brand's social-posting side: the autopilot goes, and past posts and connected Facebook and Instagram pages are released.

Stays: the phone numbers. Deleting a brand deletes its voice agents but never touches its numbers — they stay on the organisation, unassigned, still billing.

You delete it from the Danger zone in Brand settings, whether or not it still has a chat widget:

• The chat widget goes too, along with its conversations, messages, visitors, session replays and banner campaigns. It is listed first in the dialog, with the conversation count, and the chat bubble disappears from every page it is installed on.
• The widget's own delete dialog still has an "also delete the brand" checkbox. It does the same thing from the other direction — a shortcut, not the only way in.

Brand deletion shows you real counts from a dry run first, and makes you type the brand's name to confirm. Deleting only the widget does neither — it goes ahead on a plain click. Do not treat the two dialogs as equivalent.

Releasing a number

This is the only action that stops the money.

• Where: Settings → Organization settings → Phone numbers, the Owned Numbers tab.
• Who: the organisation owner only. An administrator is refused.
• When: immediately. The number stops answering the moment you confirm, and cannot be reclaimed through Yaplet afterwards.
• What comes back: the unused part of the current month, credited to your Yaplet account balance and applied to your next invoice. The setup fee never comes back.

A release can fail visibly if our telephony provider refuses to take the number back — you get an error saying nothing has been removed. Retrying is safe and correct. Note the order things happen in, though: the money steps run before the hand-back, so at that moment the recurring charge has already stopped and any credit already applied, while the number is still shown in your list.

Cancelling your Yaplet subscription

Cancelling releases every phone number straight away, with the unused part of each current cycle credited to your balance. It does not wait for your plan's period to end.

If a subscription instead ends some other way — for example it is finally closed after payments could not be collected — any numbers still active are released at that point without a credit. Either way the numbers go back to the carrier and cannot be recovered.

Before you delete anything: a checklist

1. Is a number attached? Decide now whether it should be re-assigned to another agent or released — and remember that only the owner can release it.
2. Is the number published anywhere — a website, a business listing, printed material? Un-assigning it makes it ring nowhere.
3. Do you need any recordings? They are capped at 100 per organisation and rotate; download the ones that matter before you lose track of them.
4. If you are deleting a brand: read the counted list in the confirmation properly. It is the only preview you get, and there is no undo.
5. If you are deleting a widget: check the conversation count, and check that the "also delete the brand" box is unticked unless you truly mean it.

What to read next

For the charges themselves, see Phone number setup fees and monthly rental. For per-minute costs and the caps around them, see Voice credits and per-minute billing.