If your account was downgraded or a subscription lapsed, one or more of your OTTO or Site Auditor projects may appear as **frozen**. These projects still occupy a plan slot but cannot be used. Deleting them frees those slots so you can create new, active projects.

# **❄️ What Is a Frozen Project?**

A project becomes frozen when your current plan no longer includes enough slots to cover all existing projects — typically after a downgrade or cancellation. Frozen projects remain visible in your dashboard but are completely inactive. They count against your slot limit and will not unfreeze on their own.

**Note:** In some cases a frozen OTTO project may also be in a **deep-frozen** state — for example, if it is still linked to an active OTTO client. Deep-frozen projects cannot be deleted through the dashboard at this time. If you attempt to delete a frozen project and receive an error, or if the project does not have a delete option, please contact support via the chat widget (see below).

# **🗑️ How to Delete a Frozen OTTO Project**

1. Open **OTTO SEO** from the left sidebar in your Search Atlas dashboard (Left sidebar → OTTO SEO → All Sites).
2. Locate the frozen project in your OTTO project list.
3. Click the **three-dot menu** (⋮) on the project card.
4. Select **Delete Project** or **Remove Site**.
5. Confirm the deletion when prompted.

After deletion, the freed slot may take **up to 24 hours** to reflect in your quota count. If your slot count does not update right away, refresh the page and allow up to 24 hours for the change to fully process.

# **🔍 How to Delete a Frozen Site Auditor Project**

1. Go to **Site Auditor** in the left sidebar (Left sidebar → OTTO SEO → All Sites).
2. Find the frozen project in your project list.
3. Click the **kebab menu** (⋮) or the project settings icon.
4. Select **Delete** or **Remove**.
5. Confirm the deletion when prompted.

After deletion, the freed slot may take **up to 24 hours** to reflect in your quota count.

# **⚠️ Important: What Happens After Deletion**

- **Deletion is permanent.** All audit history, OTTO deployments, suggestions, and configuration are gone and cannot be restored.
- **OTTO changes on your live website are not automatically removed.** If OTTO deployed schema markup or NLP modules to your site, those changes remain live until you remove them manually — by uninstalling the WordPress plugin or deleting the OTTO JavaScript snippet from your site's code.
- **Frozen projects will not unfreeze on their own.** To keep a project without deleting it, you must upgrade to a plan that supports the additional slot.
- **Slot counts may take up to 24 hours to update** in your dashboard after deletion. This is a known platform delay; a page refresh may show the updated count sooner, but full propagation can take up to 24 hours.
- **Some frozen projects cannot be deleted from the dashboard.** If a frozen project is linked to an active OTTO client (deep-frozen state), the delete option may be unavailable or return an error. Contact our support team using the chat widget below to have the slot manually freed.

# **💬 Need More Help?**

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.