Abandoned checkouts
An abandoned checkout is one where somebody entered an email address and did not pay. The free plugin counts them — how many, what the basket was worth, which step they reached — and deliberately does not keep the address. That gives you your own drop-off number with nothing leaving the site.
What free counts
Section titled “What free counts”Cartless → Reports shows, for the period you pick, Checkouts left unfinished: the count and the value still on the table. Counting starts the moment an email address is typed. One person hesitating over the field is one abandonment, not a dozen.
What it deliberately does not store
Section titled “What it deliberately does not store”The address. Somebody who typed an email and did not buy has not agreed to hear from you, so the free plugin keeps a count, a value and a step, and nothing that identifies them. The report says so: Counted, not identified.
Keeping the address, and the email an hour later and another three days after that, is abandoned checkout recovery in Cartless Pro — which takes the buyer’s consent at checkout and stores the address only where it was given.
Retention
Section titled “Retention”An unfinished checkout is not a transaction, so nothing obliges anyone to keep it. Cartless deletes abandoned checkouts outright after 60 days. Orders are different: they are kept, and anonymised on request, because tax law requires the record.