A suspension is a pause someone at big applies to a whole workspace, by hand, with a reason recorded at the time. It is never automatic — no usage level, payment state or traffic pattern triggers it on its own — and it is always reversible.

Nothing is deleted. Your messages, contacts, automations, forms, links and link pages are all still there, you can still sign in and read every one of them, and lifting the suspension starts sending again — with one exception worth knowing up front: a message that was already queued and whose messaging window closes during the suspension is dropped rather than delivered late. See Queued sends.

How you find out

The workspace owner gets a notification in the bell and the same message by email. It names the reason, and that notice is where the reason lives — nothing else in the dashboard changes appearance, and other members are not notified separately.

What stops

New automation runs. Comments, DMs and story replies still arrive and are still recorded in your Inbox. What doesn't happen is the automation: no new run starts while the workspace is suspended. Nothing is lost on the way in — the trigger simply doesn't fire.

Queued sends. A message big had already accepted sits in the send queue instead of going out. It is not thrown away, and it does not spend its retries — it waits, and it is re-checked every few minutes, so sending resumes shortly after the suspension is lifted.

One thing does keep running while a message waits: the messaging window. A queued message whose 24-hour (or 7-day) window closes before the suspension is lifted is dropped rather than delivered late, the same as any other message that outlives its window. See The 24-hour window.

Everything a token can do. Personal access tokens and MCP OAuth tokens are refused on the REST API, the CLI, the local MCP server and the remote MCP endpoint, with a 403 carrying code: workspace_suspended. Minting a fresh token does not help, and neither does connecting a new MCP client — the OAuth consent screen refuses while the suspension stands, and an already-connected client's token refresh is refused too.

The documentation reads are the one exception. big docs:search, big docs:read, their MCP tools and the /llms.txt family are not plan-gated and are not suspension-gated either, so they keep answering.

What keeps working

• Signing in, and the whole dashboard. Every screen, every number, every record. Reading is never gated.
• Incoming DMs and comments. They are still received and still land in the Inbox.
• Reacting to a message by hand. Emoji reactions from the Inbox still go out — a suspension pauses automated sending, and a reaction is not it. (Typing your own reply is a separate matter and is not available to anyone yet, suspended or not: see Reply by hand.)
• Forms, short links and link pages. Still public, still collecting responses, clicks and views.
• Your plan and billing. Untouched. A suspension is not a downgrade, a cancellation, or a change to what you are charged.

How to get it lifted

Start with the reason — it is in the notification and in the email. If you have fixed what it names, or you think it is a mistake, reply to that email or write to [email protected]. A suspension is lifted by a person, the same way it was applied.

When it is lifted

Automations start matching again, the send queue drains the messages still inside their window, and your existing tokens work again with no need to re-mint them. An MCP client that gave up while it was being refused may need to be reconnected once.

Related

• Notifications — the bell, the email, and what else big tells you about.
• Fix an automation that didn't fire — every other reason a trigger stayed quiet.
• Troubleshoot an MCP or CLI connection — reading a refusal by its status code.