StoreVault and Simple Bundles: what a restore does to your bundles
Last updated 30 August 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. A deleted bundle product is recreated as a product, but the bundle itself has to be rebuilt in Simple Bundles - and that is a property of how deletion works on the platform, not a gap either app can paper over.
What we tested, and what actually happened
Tested on 30 August 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.
| 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 | The bundle. Simple Bundles removes the bundle from its own database when the bundle product is deleted, so after recreation you rebuild the bundle in Simple Bundles - a few minutes, and the component products are all still there |
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. And apps react to deletion webhooks: Simple Bundles, quite reasonably, drops a bundle whose bundle product no longer exists. By the time any backup app recreates the product, the bundle entity is already gone on the app side. 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: 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.
The boundaries, stated plainly
- Variant-level metafields - where Simple Bundles keeps its mappings - survive an in-place restore because the restore does not touch them. They are not yet part of what StoreVault captures, so a product recreated after deletion comes back without them. Capturing them is scheduled work; this page will change when it ships, and the date above will move.
- Media files are not re-attached by a restore, and manual collection membership is not written back - the same boundaries 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.