Guide
Your data is not really yours if you cannot get it out
19 September 2026 · 2 min read
There is a question worth asking every software vendor, including us, before you sign anything: if I leave in two years, what exactly do I get, in what format, and how do I ask for it.
It is an awkward question and that is precisely why it is useful. The answer tells you a lot about how a company thinks, and you will never get a more honest version of it than while they are still trying to win your business.
“The right time to ask what an export looks like is while they are still trying to sell you something.”
A good answer is specific. It names the formats. It says whether documents and photographs are included or only the database rows. It says whether it is self-serve or a support ticket. It says how long it takes. A poor answer is reassuring in tone and vague in every detail, and the vagueness is the answer.
Three things are worth checking specifically, because they are where exports quietly fall short.
Documents and photographs. A CSV of your contacts is not your data. Your data includes every brochure, every signed agreement, every inventory report and every property photograph, and those are the things most likely to be excluded from an export or offered as a link to a server that will stop existing. Ask explicitly.
History as well as state. An export of your current contacts is much less useful than an export that includes what happened: the viewings, the offers, the notes, the dates. State tells you who you have. History tells you what you did, and history is the part that cannot be reconstructed.
Whether it works after you cancel. This is the one that actually bites. Plenty of systems will happily export while you are a customer and lock the account the moment the subscription lapses, which means the export has to happen before you cancel, which means you have to know that in advance. Ask what the window is.
The reason this matters beyond the obvious is that switching cost is what allows a price to rise. A system you can leave has to keep earning the money every year. A system you cannot leave does not, and both parties know it. The difficulty of leaving is a price you pay continuously, in increments, and it is not on any invoice.
For what it is worth, our position on this is that the export should be self-serve, should include documents, and should not require a conversation with anybody. Not out of generosity. It is simply the only arrangement under which a customer staying means something.
If you are currently on a system and have never tested this: request an export this week, while nothing is at stake, and look at what arrives. Do it as a fire drill rather than as a decision. The worst possible time to discover that your photographs are not included is the week you have already given notice.