FAQ — Backup Samurai

Getting Started

Installation & Setup

Visit the Shopify App Store listing and click Install. You'll be asked to approve the required permissions, then redirected to the Backup Samurai dashboard inside your Shopify admin. No external account is needed — it works entirely within Shopify.

Backup Samurai requests read access to products, collections, themes, customers, orders, and metafields. Write access is required only for restore operations — to push data back to your store. We request the minimum permissions needed to operate the backup and restore service.

Yes. Backup Samurai works with all Shopify merchant plans including Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Shopify Plus. It is a Shopify app and does not require any external account or integration.

After installing, open the Backup Samurai dashboard from your Shopify admin. Click the Backup Now button. A backup will start immediately and complete within seconds to a few minutes depending on your store size. You'll see a confirmation and can browse the backup from the Backups list.

Backup

How Backups Work

Products — all products, variants, images, options, and tags
Collections — manual and smart collections including rules
Themes — all theme files and settings
Customers — customer records including addresses and tags
Orders — order data including line items and fulfillment status
Metafields — custom metafield data (Silver plan and above)

Automatic daily backups are available on Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Custom plans. You set the preferred backup time in app settings. On the Free plan, backups are manual only — click Backup Now whenever you want a snapshot.

Retention periods by plan:

Free — 7 days | Silver — 30 days | Gold — 90 days | Platinum & Custom — 1 year

Backups older than your plan's retention limit are automatically deleted. Upgrading extends future backup retention but does not retroactively recover already-deleted backups.

No. All plans include unlimited backup storage. We never charge based on storage volume — you only pay for your plan tier.

The order limit is how many orders your store can process in a billing month while remaining on that plan. It is not a limit on how many orders we back up — we back up all your order data. If your store exceeds the limit in a given month, automatic backups pause until the next billing cycle. Manual backups are unaffected.

Restore

Restoring Store Data

Open the Backups tab in the app dashboard. Find the backup snapshot you want to restore from. You can:

— Click the restore icon next to any individual item to restore just that product, collection, or theme file
— Click Restore All on a backup entry to restore the full snapshot

You'll be asked to confirm before any data is written back to your store.

A full restore will overwrite current data with the values from your selected backup snapshot. For individual item restores, only that specific item is affected. We always show a confirmation prompt before any restore operation so you can review what will change.

No. All plans including the Free plan have unlimited restores. There is no cap on how many times you can restore data.

Individual item restores are typically instant. Full snapshot restores depend on store size — most stores complete in under 5 minutes. You'll receive an email notification when the restore is complete.

Cloud Export

Google Drive & Dropbox

Cloud export is available on Gold plan and above. Go to Settings → Cloud Storage in the app dashboard, choose Google Drive or Dropbox, and click Connect. You'll be redirected to authorise access to your cloud storage account. Once connected, each backup is automatically copied to a Backup Samurai folder in your chosen cloud.

No. Cloud export is an additional copy — your backups continue to be stored on our servers as usual for in-app restores. Cloud export gives you an independent, off-site copy in your own cloud account.

Billing

Plans, Payments & Cancellation

All billing is handled through Shopify's built-in billing system. Charges appear on your Shopify invoice — there is no separate payment account required. Shopify charges your store's payment method on the billing cycle you choose.

You can downgrade to the Free plan at any time from the Billing tab inside the app — your current plan continues until the end of the billing period, then switches to Free. Alternatively, uninstalling the app from Shopify admin will also cancel your subscription at the end of the current billing cycle.

Yes. All paid plans (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Custom) offer annual billing at a 20% discount versus monthly billing. Annual plans are billed upfront for 12 months. You can switch between monthly and annual from the Billing tab.

Refund requests are handled through Shopify's billing policies. If you have a billing concern, contact us at support@backupsamurai.site and we'll do our best to help.

Data & Privacy

Your Data & Privacy Rights

All backup data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+). Access tokens are stored encrypted. Backup data is access-restricted to your authenticated session only. We never sell or share your store's data with third parties.

When you uninstall Backup Samurai, your backup data is automatically deleted within 30 days. If you need immediate deletion, submit a request at backupsamurai.site/data-request or email support@backupsamurai.site with "Data Deletion Request" in the subject line.

Use our Data Request form to submit a GDPR data access or deletion request. We will respond within 30 days. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Yes. Backup Samurai is fully compliant with Shopify's mandatory privacy webhooks (customers/data_request, customers/redact, shop/redact). We respond to all three webhooks and process data deletion within 30 days as required.

Frequently Asked Questions

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