How to Backup a Shopify Store: What Exports Miss

There is no single "backup Shopify store" button. A complete backup takes three pieces. Shopify gives you the first two for free: the theme file (your design code) and CSV exports of products, customers and orders. Pages, blog posts, navigation menus and the finished storefront have no export at all. You can fill that gap by copying them out, using an app, or downloading the live store as a browsable offline copy. Which mix you need depends on whether you want to restore the store or keep a record of it.

What does it mean to backup a Shopify store?

People mean two different things by a Shopify backup, and most guides blur them together.

• A restorable data backup is raw data you can load back into Shopify, or into another platform, if something breaks. A bad app wipes your product descriptions. A bulk edit goes wrong. A theme update overwrites your customizations. The theme ZIP, CSV files and backup apps all belong here.
• A visual archive is a copy of the storefront exactly as visitors saw it: the rendered pages, images, layout, menus and text, viewable in a browser without Shopify. You can't import it back into Shopify. It is the right tool for keeping a record before closing a store, keeping a reference during a redesign, or carrying content across a migration.

Neither one replaces the other. A product CSV can't show you what your homepage looked like. An offline copy can't recreate your order history in a new admin.

What Shopify lets you export (and what it leaves out)

The theme file

In the admin, go to Online Store → Themes. Open the … menu on a theme and choose Download theme file. Shopify emails you a ZIP with the theme's Liquid templates, sections, snippets, CSS, JavaScript and settings. You can upload that ZIP again later under Add theme → Upload zip file. That makes it the right way to protect your customizations before you edit code or update a theme.

What people often expect, and don't get: the theme file is not a copy of your website. It is the template without the content. Product data, page text and blog posts are not in it. Images you uploaded through the theme editor are referenced but not included. Open the theme files offline and you won't see your store, only code.

Product, customer and order CSVs

• Products → Export: titles, descriptions, variants, prices, SKUs, inventory, tags and SEO fields. Product images appear only as URLs on Shopify's servers, not as image files.
• Customers → Export: names, emails, addresses, tags, marketing consent and order totals.
• Orders → Export: order lines, totals, shipping and payment status, for a date range or all orders.
• Smaller exports exist for things like discounts and URL redirects. Check the relevant admin screen for an Export button.

These CSVs are the core of any data backup, and they cost nothing. Their weak spot is that they show the state of your data on the day you exported it. Unless you repeat the exports regularly, a backup from three months ago won't include anything you changed since.

Does a Shopify backup include pages, blog posts and menus?

Not through Shopify's built-in tools. There is no CSV export for pages (About, Shipping, FAQ, landing pages), blog posts, navigation menus or most of what you've placed in the theme editor. For many stores this is the content that took the longest to write. You have four ways to save it:

1. Copy by hand. This works for a handful of pages. It gets tedious beyond that, and you lose the layout.
2. Use your blog's feed. Shopify blogs publish an Atom feed at an address like yourstore.com/blogs/news.atom. Saving it captures your most recent posts as text, though not the whole archive.
3. Use a bulk export app or the Admin API. Bulk import/export apps and custom scripts can pull pages, articles and menus as structured data. This is the best route if you plan to import that content somewhere else. It usually means a subscription or a developer.
4. Download the rendered storefront. An offline copy captures every page and blog post as finished HTML, with images and formatting. Your menus come along too, because they appear in the header and footer of every page. It is the quickest free way to make sure none of that content is lost.

How to download your Shopify store as a browsable offline copy

To download a Shopify store as visitors see it, you can use Website Downloader. It runs in the browser, so there's nothing to install, unlike the usual forum suggestion, HTTrack (compared in our HTTrack alternative guide). It works the same on Windows, Mac, a Chromebook or a tablet.

1. Make sure the storefront is public. If your store shows a password page, as it does during setup or on some paused plans, the downloader will only see that page. Turn off the storefront password temporarily under Online Store → Preferences.
2. Enter your store's address, either your own domain or the .myshopify.com address, into the form on the home page and start the download.
3. Watch the progress. The service follows links to collections, product pages, pages and blog posts, and collects images, stylesheets, scripts and fonts. Progress is shown live, and you can close your laptop while the download runs.
4. Download the ZIP, unzip it and open index.html in any browser.

How many pages will you need? Every product, collection, page and blog post is its own page, so even a small shop adds up fast. A store with 30 products, a few collections and a short blog fits in the free plan: up to 100 pages, no account needed, kept for 1 day, so download it right away. Larger catalogues fit the one-time Single Site plan (7.99 EUR, up to 5,000 pages, archive up to 2 GB, kept 30 days). If you want to archive regularly, the monthly plans go up to 30,000 pages per download. Details are on the pricing page.

Because the archive is a normal ZIP file, you can copy it to an external drive, a NAS or cloud storage alongside your CSV exports. For more on how the archive is structured, see Download a Website as ZIP Online.

What works offline and what doesn't

An offline copy is a snapshot of the storefront, not a working shop. Anything that needs Shopify's servers to respond stops working.

• Works: page layout, text, product descriptions and prices as they were on the day of the download, images that were shown on the pages, fonts, menus and links between pages, plus embedded videos and PDFs that were part of the site.
• Doesn't work: add to cart, the cart drawer, checkout, store search, customer account logins, contact and newsletter forms, product reviews loaded from apps, and anything else that is fetched live from a server.

Pages behind a customer login are not downloaded either, so order history pages won't be in the archive. That data belongs in your order and customer CSVs.

Backing up before closing your store, a redesign or a migration

Before you close your Shopify store

If you want to close your Shopify store and keep your data, do the exports while the store is still active. Once you deactivate it, you lose access to the admin and the storefront goes offline. Shopify does describe options for reactivating a closed store, but don't build your records on that. A practical order:

1. Export products, customers and orders as CSV, all time, not just recent orders.
2. Download the theme file of your live theme.
3. Download invoices and payout reports you need for your accounts.
4. Download the storefront as an offline copy so you keep your pages, blog posts and the look of the shop.
5. Then close the store.

Keep in mind that customer data in your exports is personal data. Store it securely and only as long as you have a reason to. The rules depend on your country, so ask a lawyer or your accountant if you're unsure what you must keep.

Before a redesign

Duplicate the live theme in the Themes page and download its file before you change anything. That gives you a one-click way back. An offline copy of the old storefront is handy as well, because you can compare the old and new versions side by side long after the old theme has been deleted.

Before migrating to another platform

Most platforms, such as WooCommerce and BigCommerce, offer importers for Shopify's product and customer CSVs, so those move as data. The offline copy covers the rest:

• Copy the text of your pages and blog posts from the archive into the new system.
• Use the archive's folder structure (/products/, /collections/, /pages/, /blogs/) as a full list of old URLs. You need that list to set up redirects so you don't lose search rankings.
• Keep it as the reference for design, menus and image placement while you rebuild.

If the store is already closed

If the store is already gone, the admin exports are out of reach, but the Internet Archive may have captured your storefront. Website Downloader's Wayback Machine downloader rebuilds a site from those captures as a clean ZIP, with the archive.org toolbar and links removed. It is free up to 100 pages, or 14.99 EUR one-time for up to 5,000. You will only get pages the Archive actually saved. The walkthrough is in Restore Website from Wayback Machine.

Backup apps vs. exports vs. an offline archive: what you need

Here's how to choose:

• Small store, occasional changes: theme file, CSV exports once a month and an offline copy after big content changes. This costs nothing or close to it.
• Busy store with daily edits, several staff or many apps: a paid backup app earns its monthly fee. It saves versions automatically and can roll back individual items. Add an offline copy for the visual record the app doesn't give you.
• Closing, rebranding or migrating: do everything once, thoroughly, right before the change: all exports, the theme file and a full offline copy.

FAQ

Is there a free way to back up my Shopify store?

Yes. The theme file and the product, customer and order CSV exports are built into Shopify and free. For pages, blog posts and the storefront itself, Website Downloader's free plan saves up to 100 pages without an account. The free backup isn't automatic, so you have to repeat it yourself.

Can I back up my entire Shopify store to an external drive?

You can store every piece on one: the theme ZIP, the CSV files and the offline copy ZIP are all ordinary files. What you can't do is restore the whole store from that drive with one click. The theme and CSVs can be re-imported, while the offline copy is for viewing and reference.

Does downloading the theme file give me a copy of my website?

No. It contains the templates and settings that control how the store looks, but not your products, pages, blog posts or most uploaded images. To keep a copy you can open and browse, you need an offline download of the storefront.

Can I restore a theme or move my Shopify store to another platform?

A downloaded theme file can be uploaded back into any Shopify store under Online Store → Themes. To move to another platform, import the product and customer CSVs with that platform's importer. Then rebuild pages and blog posts from your offline copy, using its URL list to set up redirects.

Can I get a copy of a Shopify store that has already been closed?

Only from what the Internet Archive captured while the store was online. If captures exist, the Wayback Machine downloader can turn them into an offline ZIP. Order and customer data can't be recovered this way, because that data was never public.