How to Backup A Shopify Store?

There is no doubt that your online Shopify store is incredibly valuable.  It is the core of your eCommerce business, […]

There is no doubt that your online Shopify store is incredibly valuable.  It is the core of your eCommerce business, whether it receives one order or thousands of orders per month. It will have a negative impact on every other part of your business if something unpleasant occurs to it. 

Your Shopify store needs to be protected, just like all of your company’s assets. However, a lot of e-commerce sites go offline owing to human mistakes, unintentional data loss, hostile attacks, or rogue programs making undesired changes—in some cases, your website may fail along with Shopify servers one day. 

Your website could break if you or a team member unintentionally deletes a crucial file. Alternately, someone may hack your website and log you out. In the unfortunate event that any of these things happen. A backup for your Shopify store saves you the hassle of starting over. If something goes wrong, you can always start over by restoring your Shopify store. 

In this article of our blog post, we will discuss the most effective ways and tools to back up your valuable Shopify store.   

Why do We Need to Backup Shopify Store?    

Though Shopify is backed up by e-commerce service providers, this backup is only meant to be used in the event of a disaster on their end, such as a server meltdown that wipes out hundreds of accounts. The problem is that individual account restores from this backup are NOT possible, not even for a fee. Customer service won’t be able to assist you if something goes wrong with your account and you desperately need to press Ctrl + Z. 

Without your own backups, your deleted or lost data cannot be restored, forcing you to start over and rebuild your store from scratch. 

Data backups and online security should be your top priorities as a business owner. Even a brief outage of your online store could cost you hundreds of dollars in lost sales. 

We’ll go through the two ways in this article that you can back up your online store and safeguard your assets:   

  • Manually Exporting your store data  
  • utilizing an app to automate a backup

What is a Website Backup? 

A website basically contains a copy of all the information from your website. Your online backup provider will determine what the backup storage includes. The more data that is contained in the data backup, generally speaking, the better.  

By using FTP or SFTP, Website Backup enables you to back up your website and any associated databases to a secure cloud location. We check your data for malware during the backup process, then preserve the clean copies for future reference. 

This is particularly true if your website is powered by a content management system like WordPress, as you’ll need all of your site’s files, content, images, and databases to restore it to full functionality.  

Does Shopify automatically back up its data?    

No, in fact. The obligation for store backup falls on Shopify retailers. It doesn’t support native backups. Yes, Shopify backs up every piece of information for their own keeping, but you cannot access those files. If something is accidentally deleted from your Shopify store, it cannot be recovered. Therefore, you should be aware of this and yes, take precautions to safeguard your store. 

You can preserve your data using a variety of backup solutions. Protecting every aspect of your eCommerce operations is essential, whether you choose cloud backups or traditional backups. This will not only prevent your data from being lost or damaged, but it will also give your ongoing website security. 

With Shopify, you can manually backup your store or use an app to do so. The manual techniques will soon be reviewed. You will also see the top 3 applications for backing up your store.    

What Data Should You Back Up in Storage? 

A large number of moving pieces make up your Shopify website, and failing to protect them might have disastrous effects. Lost data may be the consequence of deliberate or human error. As a result, you must have an effective e-commerce backup strategy for your Shopify store to guarantee that your information is maintained securely at a cloud-based data center. 

When making your backup files, take into consideration the following factors: 

  • Web page coding 
  • Database’s contents 
  • Images, PDFs, and movies are examples of files. 
  • Configurations and options 
  • Themes, layouts, and designs 

Since they support the overall website structure, they are given top priority. It would be extremely detrimental to your store if any of these were removed. 

Next, concentrate on the remainder of your platform and make distinct backups for each component. By doing this, the time it takes to rebuild your website and restore functionality will be greatly shortened. No matter how severe the disaster is, your website will be up and running in no time.  

Manually storing your Shopify Data   

If you are just starting out or are working with a tight budget, manually backing up your store will make a lot of sense. Additionally, if your website only sells a few things, it’s perfect. 

The following are the instructions for manually backing up your Shopify store. 

Step #1: Export your store data in CSV format 

You can download a CSV file with your store’s data from Shopify and save it locally. You cannot export all of the data; you can only export the data that Shopify deems relevant. And they are as follows: 

  • information about clients 
  • information about products 
  • fiscal information 
  • Orders with discounts for gift cards 

Did you notice that list left out any references to product images? They would need to be manually downloaded to your computer. Blog articles and product categories cannot be exported to CSV. 

Log into your admin dashboard and select Products from the left-hand menu to export your store’s data as a CSV file and then select Export from the top bar. When you do that, a dialogue box will open up. 

Then click “Export as CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet tools,” choosing “All products.” Following that, click the Export Products button. 

Instead, select the Customers tab in the left pane and choose to export the data for your customers. 

Here are some crucial considerations when exporting your shop data as a CSV file. 

  • Data from your shop that has been exported as CSV cannot be reversed. 
  • You wouldn’t want product and URL variations, which can result from any sorting of your CSV file. 
  • Data overwriting may occur while importing a sorted CSV file into your store. 

NB: Shopify will send your CSV file to your registered email after you export it. The file is then available for download from your mailbox.  

Step #2: Store your exported file safely 

The next step is to organize them and store them somewhere secure after exporting your CSV file and copying other pertinent info from it. 

If at all feasible, keep them in a password-protected folder to prevent hackers and unauthorized users from gaining access to them. 

Additionally, think about making backups of your store on a regular basis, such as every two months or whenever you make big changes. In the event that your shop is compromised, doing this makes it simple to restore it to the most recent version.   

 Step #3: Import the File You Export 

Hoping you never have to go through the terrifying experience of losing your store. However, if it does and you have manually backed up your shop data, you should import your CSV file. 

Log into your admin dashboard and select the Products tab from the left pane to accomplish this (that is if you want to import your product data). 

Then choose the CSV file you wish to use for data import by clicking the Import tab at the top, and then click the Upload and Continue button to import your products.  

Additional Information: How to Back up the Shopify Theme 

You might want to make a backup of the theme for your store as an additional step. Thank goodness, Shopify enables you to replicate your store’s theme and utilize it whenever necessary. 

Log in to your admin dashboard and select the Online Stores option from the left pane to obtain a copy of your store’s theme. 

Next, a little farther scroll down to the Theme library section. Find the Actions menu button on your site that corresponds to the active theme. Select the Download theme file option after clicking it. 

When you click, Shopify will send the theme file to the email address you have on file. 

If you choose to make a duplicate copy of your theme rather than download it, choose Duplicate.   

How to Recover Shopify Data by Saving History of Records?

The process of manually backing up your store can be time-consuming and exhausting. Apps can help the process go more smoothly and easily. 

In fact, you may use programmes to automate the entire backup process as there are several intriguing features included with the process. They consist of Audit Trail to let you precisely track updates to your store, Advanced Browser to locate and edit the appropriate material, and many more features. As a result, you won’t need to worry about periodically making backup copies of your business. 

In light of that, here is an app you may use to save changes to data by keeping history of data saved in order to never lose your data again. 

Bulkify

Shopify business owners may manage their Shopify Collections and Producrs from any device using Bulkify. You can easily add or remove data in bulk using a simple standalone interface. You may also rapidly search and filter huge amounts of data with Bulkify’s clever search and filters. 

You may track changes to your data and observe how it has changed over time using our Bulkify data history tracking function. This is a smart way to backup your valuable data. With history of data saved, you may then use any version as needed and examine how the data has changed. Furthermore, Bulkify makes it simple to integrate all of this data into a dashboard so that you can manage your shop more effectively.  

Your business could suffer greatly if you lose the data from your Shopify site. You can also lose your clients’ orders, which would prevent you from fulfilling them and result in a drop in sales. In most cases, you also need to invest time and money into trying to revive your store. 

If you value your company, backing up your store is a need. To ensure that you have access to all the vital files, the best way is to make a backup of your Shopify store. Opening a new Shopify store will go much more quickly once you have the backup files. Fortunately, generating backups for your website is really simple. Just follow the instructions on this page. Do you have trouble getting visitors to become paying customers? This can be annoying, which is understandable.   

Are you having trouble understanding how to manage all of your Shopify data in bulk? Thankfully, Bulkify is here to help! 

With Bulkify you could do all of that (and more!) in a matter of minutes as opposed to hours. 

Bulkify, the newest app from Webuters is now available on Shopify app store, It is the new tech on the block with a user-friendly interface for bulk managing your collections and products on Shopify store fast, effortlessly, and effectively. 

Know more about our Bulkify app and smart new ways to back up your Shopify data from our experts at Webuters. Today! 

Bottom Line 

Shopify is the world’s leading e-commerce platform with over 100,000 active stores and 2 million businesses that use Shopify. This is enough to understand how important is the data on a Shopify store, it is what that drives sales and brings profits. Losing any data could be losing a customer, so why take the risk? You need the ability to manage your Shopify data smartly and with ease while keeping the changes in data saved for future needs.

So make a decision wisely and never lose your precious data again.

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