One of the biggest issues we face in this technological age is data loss. If you’ve spent countless hours working on your Shopify store, then the last thing you’d want is to lose your data. Here’s our quick guide on how to back up your Shopify store.
Why you should backup your store data
Given how big Shopify is, it’s easy to assume that they’d have an option for store owners to access backups of customer data. Unfortunately, they don’t. They regularly back up their platform, but this is to recover Shopify itself should anything go wrong.
Shopify doesn’t create automatically accessible backups of your store data, thus meaning that you have to back up your Shopify store manually.
In addition to this, human, import, and third-party app errors make backing up all your online store data a good idea.
Big companies like Shopify do lose control sometimes, you can see how often Shopify goes down.
Backup methods for your Shopify store
Here’s how you can create a backup:
Manual backup
Manual backups are a simple process:
- Log in to your Shopify admin dashboard.
- Go to the specific area for the data you need to backup manually.
- Click Export.
- Select which portion of the data you would like to backup and then select the export option. It may read “Export Product” if you were targeting your products.
- If necessary, you can backup other item properties, such as product images, as Shopify doesn’t export all your store data.
- You can repeat steps 2 and 4 for other data.
- Manually save the data from your store that Shopify doesn’t export.
- Organize and save your exported data as CSV files or spreadsheets.
After completing these steps, you can manually restore your Shopify store by logging into your admin account, selecting the data you want to restore, and then clicking Import.
You’ll then have to choose the CSV file you want to restore and whether to overwrite data. Shopify will then import data from your store backup after your confirmation. If need be, CSV files can be opened using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
Please note that to manually backup your Shopify theme is a slightly different process.
Using a Shopify app to backup
There are many Shopify backup apps on the market, but we’ll show you how to perform the backup through Rewind Backups.
It’s a really handy process, but it does come at a cost. So if you think paying monthly for this is worth it, then go ahead!
- Visit the Shopify app store
- Select Rewind or your preferable backup app
- Click “Add App“
- Select your pricing plan of choice
- Grant the necessary permissions, and then install the app
- Go through the app’s setup process and let it do the work for you
Rewind automatically backs up your store information and Shopify store data every night and creates real-time backups while you work on your store. You can also launch manual backups and create a backup of your Shopify theme, as required.
