Typically you and your users are rarely going to say "I wish this data had been deleted" you will run in to situations where you and your users will say "I wish

Typically you and your users are rarely going to say "I wish this data had been deleted" you will run in to situations where you and your users will say "I wish that wasn't deleted" I rarely design an app to delete anything. Soft Deletes are pretty standard in development and I would recommend going that route unless sensitive data is involved and there is a reason to worry about data being retained as a bad thing. For Rails: https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia For Laravel: https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/eloquent#soft-deleting https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/eloquent#soft-deleting