What happens to my orders and contacts when I delete a funnel?

Contacts survive. In a test account, the contact count was identical before and after deleting a funnel. Orders were not put to the test: the funnel deleted here had no sales against it, so what happens to order records is still an open question.

Contacts and orders when you delete a systeme.io funnel

What I tested

I counted contacts in a systeme.io account, deleted a funnel that had nothing riding on it, then counted contacts again. Deleting one means opening Sites, then Sales funnels, finding the funnel, clicking its three dots, then Delete, then Confirm.

The confirmation screen, word for word

Deleting a funnel shows a popup headed Confirm action, reading "You are about to remove this funnel. Continue?", with Cancel and Confirm as the only two buttons. Nothing on it mentions contacts, mentions orders, or says the funnel's own pages are about to go offline.

Contacts survive

The contact total did not move. Funnels went from 7 to 6. Contacts stayed exactly where they were before the funnel was removed.

A contact who came in through a funnel is not tied to that funnel still existing. Delete the funnel, and the person you gathered through it is still on your list, still carrying whatever tags they had, still there to email.

Orders: an open question, not a tested answer

This is the half that stayed open. The funnel deleted for this test had no sales against it, so nothing about what happens to an order already placed through a funnel was actually observed.

Do not read the contacts finding above as covering orders too. They are a different kind of record, and this test only watched one of the two. If real sales sit behind a funnel you are thinking about removing, treat what happens to those orders as genuinely unknown rather than assuming it behaves the way contacts do.

What systeme.io's own article says

Article 2387 covers the steps for deleting a funnel and one warning: deleting a funnel is permanent, and if you think you might need it later, consider deactivating it instead. Contacts are not mentioned. Orders are not mentioned either.

A permanent action with two things left off the page you are asked to confirm is exactly where testing it for real earns its place over reading about it.

Until orders get tested properly

Deactivating a funnel instead of deleting it is the documented, reversible alternative, and it is worth defaulting to whenever real sales sit behind the funnel and there is any doubt. A deactivated funnel still exists to be checked again later. A deleted one does not.

What else was not checked

Whether a surviving contact keeps any record of which funnel originally brought them in was not looked at either. A matching count before and after only shows the people are still there, not what their record still says about where they came from.