StoreVault and Simple Bundles: what a restore does to your bundles
Last updated 9 September 2026
StoreVault is a versioned backup app for Shopify; Simple Bundles & Kits stores each bundle’s component mapping in a simple_bundles metafield on the bundle product’s variants. We installed Simple Bundles on a store we own, built a bundle, damaged the store and restored it with StoreVault, and read the results back field by field. The short version: an overwritten bundle product comes back with its mappings intact, byte for byte - and since 3 September a deleted bundle product comes back with its mappings too, on every recreated variant. What does not come back by itself is the bundle’s entry inside Simple Bundles’ own dashboard: their app removes it when the product is deleted, and it does not read the restored metafields. Rebuilding it there is a real rebuild, not a toggle - we walked that path ourselves and describe it below.
What we tested, and what actually happened
Tested on 3 September 2026 against a development store with Simple Bundles installed and an active multi-variant bundle: two component products, three bundle variants, a component mapping present on every variant. We are not affiliated with Freshly Commerce, the developer of Simple Bundles & Kits. This page describes what happened when both apps ran on the same store.
| Scenario | What came back | What did not |
|---|---|---|
| Bundle product overwritten - title, status, SEO and every variant price - then restored in place | Product identity (same ID), title, status, SEO, all three variant prices, and all three simple_bundles.bundled_variants mappings, byte for byte | Nothing lost |
| Bundle product deleted, then recreated from a snapshot | The product: title, status, options, all three variants with their prices, and all three simple_bundles.bundled_variants mappings on the new variants (since 3 September 2026 - variant metafields are captured and restored) | The bundle’s entry in Simple Bundles’ own dashboard. Their app removes it from its database when the bundle product is deleted and does not re-read the restored metafields: four days after our restore their bundle list was still empty. Rebuilding it means re-adding the components variant by variant - the restored mapping metafield on the product tells you exactly what they were |
Why the second row is what it is
Two platform facts stack. Deleted products cannot be restored under their old ID - Shopify does not reuse identifiers, so any app recreates a deleted product as a new record. Ours brings it back unpublished in every sales channel unless the backup shows it was on the Online Store and publishing is allowed; other sales channels are not restored. And apps react to deletion webhooks: Simple Bundles, quite reasonably, drops a bundle whose bundle product no longer exists. A backup app can bring back everything the store itself held - including, now, the mappings on the variants - but it cannot write into another app’s database. This is not specific to StoreVault and it is not specific to Simple Bundles: it is what deletion means on this platform.
The practical advice is the same one we give everywhere, and Simple Bundles told us on 8 September 2026 that it is their own advice too: the expensive incident is deletion. If a bulk operation is about to touch your bundle products, export first and prefer fixing damaged records in place over delete-and-retry. An overwritten bundle is a full recovery; a deleted one is a product recovery plus a rebuild.
What rebuilding it in Simple Bundles actually takes
We used to call this a short manual step. That was a guess about somebody else’s interface, so on 7 September 2026 we walked it ourselves, on the product our own restore had recreated four days earlier.
Their app offers the right door: Build bundle → Simple Bundle → Select existing bundle product. The restored product is in the picker, it is accepted, and the editor opens with its three variants and their prices read from Shopify. What is not there is the contents: every variant opens with “This bundle does not have any bundled products”. Their app does not read the simple_bundles metafields a restore put back, so the components have to be chosen again for each variant and saved.
Simple Bundles’ technical support confirmed this on 8 September 2026: after a restore the bundle contents have to be mapped again by hand in their app, and there is no autofill from the metafield. So this is their answer about their own interface, not our reading of it.
So for a multi-variant bundle this is a rebuild, not a toggle - and the honest way to size it is one component pass per variant. The one thing that helps is ours: the restored mapping metafield is still on each variant, and it names the component variants, quantities and prices the bundle had.
On 9 September 2026 their technical support told us what the ways back actually are, and there are two. A CSV export of your bundle data taken before anything goes wrong, or their API, which they call the better route for anyone with a custom setup. In their words, a bundle cannot be reconstructed from the metafield alone - their app does not read it - so without one of those two paths the merchant is back to mapping components by hand. They asked us to publish this.
Read that as a backup instruction, because it is one: the CSV only helps if you exported it while the bundle was healthy. That is the same shape as every other backup - the copy has to exist before the incident, not after.
With one caveat their developer asked us to publish, and it is a fair one. Those metafield values describe the bundle as it was at the moment of the snapshot, not necessarily as it is now - treat them as a reference while you rebuild, not as confirmed current data. If the bundle changed after that snapshot, the metafield still shows the older composition.
The boundaries, stated plainly
- Variant-level metafields - where Simple Bundles keeps its mappings - are captured and restored since 3 September 2026: an in-place restore puts them back if they changed, and a product recreated after deletion comes back with them on its new variants. This replaces the earlier boundary on this page, and the date above moved with the re-run that proved it.
- Media files are not re-attached by a restore - the same boundary as everywhere else, listed in full on what backup apps can and cannot restore.
- Simple Bundles’ own settings - its dashboard, widget configuration, analytics - live in Simple Bundles’ infrastructure, not in your store, and are neither backed up nor touched by StoreVault.
How this was verified
The run is a command in our repository, not a one-off demo: it reads the truth from the store itself before and after every step, and both scenarios above are its literal output. We re-run it when the restore code changes. The same method - a live store damaged on purpose - is published in full on the restore drill report, and the vendors are compared on the backup app guide.
A backup app covers you from the day it is installed, not from the day you need it. That is true of all of them, ours included.
StoreVault on the Shopify App Store - versioned backups of products, collections, content and themes, plus inventory levels on paid plans, with a plan shown before any restore writes.