This article explains what happens when a yearly or monthly paid account expires. If you get a generic error when requesting account recovery, it's possible your account has been expired for too long and was therefore removed.
Personal Account and Business Account
Phase 1: Grace period
In the first month after an account expires, no restrictions are applied. You have full access to your account and can keep sending and receiving emails. This is to make sure that if any billing problems occurred for the renewal payment, there is enough time to take care of this without your losing functionality. You will be shown a message at the bottom of the interface that the renewal payment failed, and you will also receive emails about this.
Phase 2: Inbox disabled
If more than a month passes after account expiration, you will not be able to send or receive email any longer. You can login to your account but can only access the payment portal to make the renewal payment.
Phase 3: Termination
Six months after an account expires, it will be nominated for permanent deletion. This may not occur immediately at the end of the six-month expiration period, but somewhere shortly thereafter. Once termination occurs, the account will be permanently inaccessible and cannot be restored.
Trial Account
After a Trial account expires, you will have full access for another 7 days so you can login to your account to view, receive, or send emails. After those 7 days, your account will continue to exist for another 24 days but you will not be able to read, receive, or send emails unless you pay for a Personal subscription.
If no payment is received after a total of 31 days after the original payment date, the account is permanently removed and cannot be restored. If you did not upgrade the account in time, but you want to use our email service, you will need to choose a new StartMail email address and sign up again.