What Shopify backup apps can and cannot restore

Why this list exists

Every backup app on this platform works through the same Shopify API, so the boundary between "can be written back" and "can only be archived" is not a feature difference - it is a property of the platform. Apps differ in whether they tell you.

This is our list, for our product. Check any other app against the same questions.

Restored back into the store

Products with their variants, options, prices and metafields. Collections. Pages. Metafields on the records we cover. Stock levels per location, on paid plans, as a physical count.

Each of those is written only after a plan you approved, record by record, and each restore can be undone afterwards.

Archived and exportable, but never written back

Orders. Shopify does not let an app recreate an order as it was - the financial record, the timeline, the payment state cannot be reconstructed from outside. An app that offers to "restore" orders is creating new ones that look similar, which is worse than saying no.

Customers. Same reason, plus the privacy one: a deleted customer who is recreated by an app is a deletion request that did not stick.

Both are kept in full, compared on every drill, and exportable as JSONL whenever you want them.

Stored, but restored by hand

Themes. Every version is kept and downloads as a .zip that you upload in the admin. StoreVault never publishes a theme into a store: publishing is the most visible action on a storefront, and doing it from a backup without you watching is not a risk we take.

Blogs, articles, menus and URL redirects. Backed up, searchable and exportable; not written back yet.

Not restored at all

Product images and other media. Captured with their metadata and included in exports, but a restore does not re-attach them.

Manual collection membership. Which products sit in a hand-picked collection is not written back.

Anything the API does not expose. If Shopify does not let an app read it, no backup app has it, whatever the marketing page says.

The questions worth asking any vendor

Does it keep versions per record, or one snapshot that overwrites the last? Does it show a plan before writing? Can a restore be undone? Has the backup ever been read back, and can you see the result? What happens to your data when you uninstall, and how fast can you get it erased on request?

Our answers are in how it works and on the restore drills page.