I have had a Premium account for more than a year, but I have been using LingQ infrequently for the past several months. Thus, I am thinking about changing from Premium to Free. I have almost 20,000 lingqs and about 100 imported lessons. If I reduce my account to Free, will I lose all but 20 lingqs and 5 imported lessons, or will I simply be unable to create additional lingqs and import additional lessons without making deletions?
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I would love to know the answer to this!
I think this was answered a long time ago.
I think you don’t lose your lingqs or lessons. But obviously you can not import new items (because you are beyond the 5 imported lessons) or make new lingqs.
M
You don’t lose your LingQs but you will have to delete your lessons in order to downgrade.
When you downgrade you can only create 25 new lingqs, which happens probably within a day! This isn’t the main problem.
(After my two weeks of using lingq, I still haven’t really understood what lingqs are for, or how they are generated.)
The main trouble after downgrading, of which nobody speaks, is that once you used up your 25 lingqs, you will also not be able to look up translations of new words in the lingq dictionary, which depending on your vocabulary proficiency renders further use of the website rather useless, forcing you to re-upgrade.
I thought a way around this was to just not use up 25 lingqs, but I found that this appears impossible, as lingqs seem to be created simply by clicking on a new blue word!
Can someone, perhaps admin, prove me wrong?
Yes, this question has been asked and answered before, but to my mind in a rather hazy fashion!
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Hi, Katze! =))
That was exactly my situation! =)) I made a starter 20 links that proved to be just hiragana letters in a text in Japanese! 
I did this just for fun, as I surely know both hiragana and katakana of written Japanese!
But then rather soon I realized, if I came across a word and found its meaning in the dictionary, well, hopefully, I’m not an Alzhemer or dementia stricken yet, and I surely remember what the word means! =))) If I don’t, I just do not care that much, for I know I will memorize the word, sooner or later, and it does not actually matter how much sooner!
For me, it’s the quality of memorization that eventually matters, not the quantity!
Plus, as I said earlier, a language is primarily a system of word relations within a sentence! =)) That’s what REALLY matters!
Thanks, Mark. I wish you folks offered some sort of “Time Out” status where one could pay a lower fee to freeze the account. It’s kind of all or nothing between “Free” and “Premium”.
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Yes, I feel the same. I was thinking about it this morning. I hope to spend the summer in Holland on my boat and am beginning to plan things; including my Dutch. What’s for sure is that there’s no internet connection on my boat!!
I mind that I have to maintain my account even though I won’t be able to use it even if I wanted to- and even though I would plan to return to LingQ when i return to Britain at the end of the summer.
I feel this particularly strongly, because my Dutch has really improved in the four months I have been here, but the advanced texts are mostly19th century literature. I read DonQuixote and the Three Musketeers in my twenties. I have no desire to read them again in any language. The advanced stuff in the library is all like this. So I’m paying even though I have to import my own material… I get a much more limited service from lingQ as a learner of a LingQ minority language. I can put up with this, while I am using lingQ - but when I can’t???
Can’t you have a rethink, guys? Flexibility and reacting positively to the needs of your customers is a good business model! Surely you need to hang on to your customers (students etc) not risk losing them for good. Because once gone, we are not likely to be back. Who wants to have to recreate their lessons! Or at least, that’s what it feels like to me.
The language market is crowded, guys! Can’t you just go for it!
And I realise for me, that this would mean that i would have lost for good all the lessons I have imported. Not all of which would be possible to recreate even if I wanted to.
If this is the case, what on earth would be the point of rejoining???
It seems quite a gamble!
I love this “time out” idea - I did it on audible the other day for 3 months or so.
Hi admin,
This has moved this issue up my own personal agenda…
This is what your site says.
(If you want to keep your data, try downgrading to a more affordable membership level instead.)
But my data includes all the information that has been collected that records my progress… my data isn’t just the lingQs created; my data includes words known, words read, words written, hours listening, etc, etc. And I would also have thought my lessons created are part of my own personal data…
So ???
We appreciate the feedback on this and we understand that users don’t want to lose their data. However, we also have to make business decisions and, in this case, the decision is how do we deal with user data from accounts of people who downgrade. Do we keep their data for them indefinitely on the chance that they will return or do we delete their data which is probably the expectation of the majority. We are quite reasonable, in fact, since we do allow time outs and still keep users’ word data indefinitely even though it exceeds our word limits significantly. The majority of those who downgrade do not return. With regard to imports, it does not make sense for us to store imported content indefinitely when the majority will not need it again. That’s a lot of data from a lot of users that we would need to store. In fact, even those who come back are unlikely to access much of their old imports data since they can easily import new, more relevant content.
LingQ is a unique product in the language learning space which allows you to store a lot of personalized data on our servers. We simply can’t keep it all forever. The downgrade option that we offer works for the majority of users who downgrade. You will have to either delete your imports to downgrade or continue paying. We do apologize if this doesn’t work for you.
What about keeping it for a short period?
Your general point is completely legitimate, but there could be a half way house.
Keep the data for three or six months and then delete it. It wouldn’t require any very fancy programming and you’d generate a lot of goodwill! It’ll also look good on your description of the options.
Unfortunately this is one of the things that seems simple at first glance, but requires a lot of programming time to put into place. For now we’re trying to focus our efforts on improving the functionality and streamlining the interface further, as we hope this will have a more positive effect on overall user satisfaction 
Is there a page which spells out what LingQ will store when we temporarily downgrade to “free”? Like V75, I will be out of reach of Internet for a long stretch – April to September or October this year. I want to resume when I get back, and have my data there. So . . . what data will be there? Do you have a kind of “vacation alert” we can give you?
Currently it is only imported lessons that we restrict when a paying member downgrades. Everything else is currently kept as is, including your LingQs, statistics and non-imported lessons.
Do we lose the LingQs from the imported lessons. I was just planning to start a sailing data base…
LingQs are stored separately from lessons, so they aren’t affected when you remove a lesson. If you save a LingQ in one lesson, it shows up highlighted in every other lesson where that word/phrase appears.
If I import a lot of my own vocabulary into LingQs, do I understand from your above response that ALL of this will be saved when I downgrade before leaving for 6 months for places without Internet? If not, I would need to keep a backup list to re-enter when I return.
If I enter phrases which were suggested by one of the Czech tutors in the forum, will these be saved for everyone? Or perhaps they are already there? How could I tell beforehand if they are? I refer in part to the discussion of “zač” on the Czech forum. Great idioms!
Yes, anything you have stored as a “LingQ” is in a database accessible by all and will not be deleted on downgrading.
You can tell whether there is already some kind of a LingQ for a word or an expression by importing it into a lesson. When you then highlight it to turn it into a LingQ, it will or will not turn up on the right in the hint section. (I think that is what you were asking if I’ve read you correctly.)