Getting started

Uncomplicated Backup takes snapshots of your store’s catalogue and content, and lets you restore one item, a whole content type, or everything when something goes wrong.

To take a backup right now, open the app and click Back up now. This works on every plan. On the Pro plan, backups also run automatically on a schedule you set (daily or twice daily, at an hour in your store’s time zone), and changes are captured as they happen.

Browse a snapshot to see what it contains, compare any item against your live store, then restore. A safety snapshot is always taken first, so a restore can itself be undone.

What a snapshot contains

Every snapshot records, and can restore one item, one type, or everything at a time:

  • Products: variants, options, images, status, tags, SEO, and metafields on the product and on each variant
  • Collections: smart-collection rules, manual members and their order
  • Metaobject definitions and entries, including references to products and other entries
  • Metafield definitions and the store’s own metafields
  • Pages, blogs and articles, with their metafields
  • Navigation menus, with each link pointed at the restored page, product or collection
  • URL redirects and store policies
  • Sales-channel visibility of products and collections
  • Translations in every language your store has enabled
  • Stock quantities at each location, restored only if you tick the option on the restore confirmation

On the Pro plan, every file in Settings > Files (images, video, documents) is also backed up.

What a restore does not do

  • It never restores customers, orders, discounts, gift cards, themes, shipping or market settings, store settings, or another app’s data.
  • It does not restore blog comments or a blog’s comment settings.
  • Stock quantities are restored only if you choose to. If you do, live stock is overwritten, so sales and stock received since the snapshot are lost.
  • An item deleted since the snapshot (a product or page, for example) comes back with a new ID. Menus, collections and translations that refer to it are pointed at the new one.
  • Product images are added back only where the live product is missing them, and only if the original file is still available.
  • A metaobject definition field is never deleted, and a field added since the snapshot is left in place.
  • A restored file (Pro plan) gets a new ID and URL, because Shopify cannot recreate a file at its old address.
  • A sales channel that was uninstalled since the snapshot is skipped and reported.

Comparing and restoring

Open a completed snapshot to see what it captured, and search it for an item by title. Click Compare to live on any item to see exactly what has changed since the snapshot was taken, with its value then and now.

When you are ready to restore, choose to restore one item, one content type, or everything in the snapshot. The confirmation dialog states what will be overwritten and the limits above.

Before any restore runs, the app takes a safety snapshot of the current state first. If the restore does not do what you expected, open the snapshot’s restore history and click Undo this restore.

Real-time change capture (Pro)

On the Pro plan, Uncomplicated Backup captures product, collection and metaobject entry changes as they happen, and checks pages, blogs, articles and menus every 15 minutes, so you can restore to any captured point, not just the last snapshot. Every other content type is captured when a snapshot is taken. The Recent changes list on the app’s home page shows what changed and when; open an item to see its full version history and restore it to any version there.

On the Free plan, real-time capture is not available and Recent changes stays empty with a note saying so.

Downloads, alerts and the weekly email (Pro)

The Pro plan lets you download a snapshot’s contents as JSON, or as CSV for products and collections. It emails you when a scheduled backup fails, and sends a weekly email summarising the week’s changes; the weekly email can be switched off on the app’s schedule card.

Plan limits

The Free plan is manual backup only, keeps 7 days of history and backs up the first 100 products in your catalogue. If your store has more products than that, the snapshot’s product count is capped at 100 and the app tells you so, along with how many products are not covered. The Pro plan, $10/month, adds scheduled and real-time backups, downloads, file backup and the weekly email, and raises the limits to 50,000 products and 90 days of history.

Troubleshooting

A snapshot shows “Failed” - Open the snapshot for details. Click Back up now to try again. On Pro, a failed snapshot does not stop the next scheduled backup from running, and you are emailed about it.

I uninstalled the app - Your existing snapshots are kept until they reach the end of their normal retention window (7 days on the Free plan, 90 on Pro), then removed automatically. Reinstalling before then keeps your history.

I want a copy on a different store - Uncomplicated Backup only restores into the same store a snapshot came from. To copy your catalogue to a different Shopify store, use ShopSync instead.