Managing attachments at scale inside Zendesk can become expensive and inefficient. Large PDFs, screenshots, and redundant documents sit in closed tickets for years—driving up storage costs and slowing teams down.
In this guide you'll learn:
Tool used in this guide: Better Attachments — a Zendesk app that combines global attachment search, ticket-level categorization, previews, and bulk deletion.
In most Zendesk instances, 60–80% of total file storage is concentrated in a minority of tickets that are both: (1) already solved or closed, and (2) older than 12–24 months.
Common culprits:
Use a focused search to surface candidates for cleanup:
Closed tickets + older than 18 months + attachments > 5MB + file type: PDF
Inside Better Attachments you can combine file type + ticket status + age filters to generate a precise deletion set.
You should never bulk delete without a retention rule. A simple baseline policy:
| Ticket State | File Types Eligible | Minimum Age | Review Needed? | | ------------ | ------------------- | ----------- | -------------- | | Closed | PDFs, images, logs | 18 months | No (if < 10MB) | | Closed | Contracts, legal | 36 months | Yes | | Solved | Screenshots | 12 months | No |
Tip: Start conservative. You can always widen the filter later.
Zendesk storage add-ons can cost up to $80 per 25GB. Deleting just 2GB/month of cold, irrelevant attachments can eliminate the need for add-ons entirely.
With Better Attachments:
All actions are batched and safe. Start with small batches to validate.
Agents waste time downloading, opening, and re-uploading files. Inline previews remove that friction.
Better Attachments supports previewing: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV, images, and more—without leaving the ticket.
Benefits:
When attachments are grouped by type (Documents, Images, Logs, Other) agents visually parse tickets faster.
Global search adds further leverage:
Not sure whether to remove something? A practical split:
If you don't already, store key customer-facing documents in a shared system (GDrive, Notion, SharePoint) and link them instead of attaching.
A minimal rollout plan:
Document this in your internal admin playbook.
| Metric | Why It Matters | | -------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | | GB deleted (cumulative) | Direct cost avoidance | | Avg attachment count per closed ticket | Signals hygiene effectiveness | | % tickets with preview usage | Measures workflow adoption | | Search queries per agent | Indicates knowledge leverage |
Strong attachment hygiene is one of the least intrusive ways to lower Zendesk operating cost while improving agent velocity.
Need help implementing this? Contact us via the in-app support widget.