Leaving Shopify and taking your data

Nobody plans an exit while setting a store up, which is exactly why it is worth knowing what leaving involves. The answer changes a design decision you make at the beginning: where your authoritative records live.

This is not an argument against Shopify. It is the same question worth asking of any platform holding your business data.

What you can take

Products, variants and images, exportable and portable.

Customers, as names, contact details and addresses.

Orders, exportable — subject to the same historical access considerations that apply to reading them through the API at all — see the Shopify sixty-day order window.

Content pages and blog posts.

Your domain, which is yours provided you registered it yourself rather than through the platform. Worth checking now rather than at exit.

That covers the substance of the catalogue and the transaction record.

What does not come with you

Customer passwords. Stored irreversibly, so they cannot transfer. Every customer resets on the other side and a proportion will not — see migrating a store onto Shopify for the same problem in the opposite direction.

Your theme. Built for one platform's templating and not portable in any meaningful sense.

Apps and their data. Each app holds its own data under its own policy. Reviews, loyalty balances, subscription records — each has to be exported from the app itself, and some make that easier than others.

URL structure. Different platforms build URLs differently, so a move means redirects again and search rankings at risk again.

Discount codes, gift card balances and store credit. These are platform-held state, and gift cards in particular are a liability you owe customers that may not transfer cleanly.

Anything a customer bookmarked. Which is the redirect problem, and it is the item most likely to cost measurable revenue.

Where your records should actually live

This is the useful conclusion, and it is a decision to make on day one rather than at exit.

Your storefront is a sales channel. Your books are your books. If the authoritative record of what you sold, what it cost, what you were paid and what you owe lives in your accounting system, then changing storefront is a channel change rather than a records migration.

If the only complete record lives in the storefront platform, then leaving means extracting your own history from a system you are cancelling, on that system's terms and timetable.

The practical version of that principle:

Reconcile continuously, so your accounting system holds the complete transaction record rather than a summary — see how often to reconcile your Shopify store.

Keep the source data. Settlement files, courier invoices, order exports. Stored where your records are stored — see building the reconciliation data model.

Do not let a platform hold your only copy of anything that matters for reporting, tax or a customer conversation.

Done that way, a platform migration is a project about products, themes and URLs. Done the other way it is also a project about reconstructing your financial history.

If you are actually leaving

The sequence, which mirrors leaving a payment provider — see switching payment gateway without losing your history.

Export everything before you cancel. Orders, customers, products, content, and each app's own data separately. Access ends with the subscription.

Take it at maximum detail. Per-order and per-line, not summarised, because detail cannot be reconstructed from a total and detail is what later questions require.

Check the exports open and contain what you need, while you still have the option to export again.

Settle the payment tail first. Refunds and chargebacks on pre-exit orders keep arriving, and they generally have to go back through the gateway that took them, so that arrangement stays open past the store closing.

Deal with gift cards and store credit. These are amounts you owe customers, and they need honouring somewhere.

Map every URL and load redirects before the switch. Not after.

Reconcile the final period completely before closing, so nothing unresolved is left in a system you can no longer access.

Common questions

What can you export from a Shopify store?

Products, variants and images, customers with their contact details and addresses, orders, and content pages. Your domain is yours provided you registered it yourself rather than through the platform, which is worth confirming now rather than at exit.

What cannot be taken out of a Shopify store?

Customer passwords, which are stored irreversibly and cannot transfer, so every customer has to reset. Also the theme, each app's own data — reviews, loyalty balances, subscription records — the URL structure, and platform-held state such as discount codes, gift card balances and store credit, the last of which is a liability you owe customers.

How do you make a future platform change easy?

By keeping the authoritative record of what you sold, what it cost, what you were paid and what you owe in your accounting system rather than in the storefront. Then changing platform is a channel change rather than a records migration, and you are not extracting your own history from a system you are cancelling.

What order should an exit follow?

Export everything at maximum detail before cancelling, since access ends with the subscription; verify the exports open and contain what you need while you can still repeat them; keep the payment gateway open for refunds and chargebacks on pre-exit orders; honour outstanding gift cards and store credit; load URL redirects before the switch; and reconcile the final period completely before closing.

Related: migrating a store onto Shopify · switching payment gateway without losing your history · building the reconciliation data model