How to Back Up a Shopify Store: Products, Images and Theme
To back up a Shopify store without an app, export your products, inventory, customers and orders to CSV files from the admin, save copies of your product images, and download your theme as a ZIP file. Each export covers one part of the store, and none of them restores everything in one step, so a backup is a set of files you keep together and refresh before any big change.
The steps come from Shopify’s Help Center pages on exporting products, using product CSV files, the inventory CSV, exporting customers, exporting orders, downloading themes and files, read on 23 and October 31, 2026.
What a backup should include
| Part of the store | How to save it | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Product CSV export | The image files, collections, variant metafields |
| Inventory by location | Inventory CSV export | Everything except quantities and identifiers |
| Product images and files | Download the files yourself | No bulk export is described |
| Theme | Download theme file (ZIP by email) | Products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts, images, files |
| Customers | Customer CSV export | Tags and metafields, unless you check them under Fields included |
| Orders | Order CSV export | Authorization data in transaction histories |
Shopify’s Help Center describes no CSV export for pages, blog posts or menus. If they matter to you, copy them by hand or look at a backup app in the Shopify App Store, and check what its listing says it restores.
Export products and inventory
- In the admin, go to Products and click Export.
- Choose All products, or the current page, selected products or products that match your search and filters.
- Pick CSV file for Excel, Numbers, or another spreadsheet program, or Plain CSV file if you’ll open it in a text editor.
- Click Export products.
An export of all products is emailed to you, and to the store owner if that’s someone else. Only a current-page or selected export downloads straight to your browser, and even then the file is emailed if a single product has more than 100 variants.
Know what the product CSV keeps before you rely on it:
- Images. Shopify’s page says the images themselves aren’t included in the file. The image columns hold URLs, so save the files separately (next section).
- Collections. The Collection column isn’t included in an export, although you can add one to a CSV to put products into collections on import.
- Metafields. Product metafields with a definition are exported as their own columns; variant metafields aren’t supported in the product CSV.
- SEO fields. SEO title and description are blank unless you set them by hand.
- Inventory. The Inventory quantity column works only for stores with a single location.
With more than one location, export inventory separately. Go to Products > Inventory, click Export, choose a location or All locations, pick All states or Available, choose the variants and the file format, and click Export inventory. The All states file includes the on-hand quantity at the moment of export, which Shopify uses on re-import to reject rows whose stock has changed since.
Re-importing a product CSV needs care. Leaving out the Option1 name and Option1 value columns creates a new default variant and deletes the existing ones, and changing option values gives variants new IDs, which can break apps that rely on them. In our view a backup CSV is best kept untouched, with any editing done on a copy.
Save images and files
Everything you upload through the admin’s file picker, including product media, lands in Content > Files, where you can search and filter it. The product CSV holds the URL of every product and variant image, so one way to keep the files is to collect those URLs from the image columns and download them with a script or a download manager into a folder named after the export date.
Keep the folder next to the CSV. If you ever re-import, the CSV’s image URLs need to be working URLs, because Shopify downloads each image during the import and uploads it again. We’d point them at your own copies, hosted where Shopify can reach them.
Shopify’s own caution about Files applies to backups as well: the section is for files meant to be public on your store, so never upload a backup of customer or order data there.
Theme, customers and orders
Theme. Go to Online Store, open the theme’s menu and click Download theme file. The ZIP arrives at the email address of your staff login. Shopify lists making a backup as one reason to do this, and notes that the download holds no products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts, images or files. Download the live theme before you edit its code or install a theme update.
Customers. On Customers, click Export, choose All customers, and under Fields included check Customer tags and Customer metafields. Up to 50 customers download straight away; more than that is emailed to you and the store owner, and each file is limited to 15 MB.
Orders. On Orders, click Export, choose the orders, for example Orders by date, pick a format and click Export orders. Large exports arrive by email and can take hours: Shopify’s example is under an hour for fewer than 100,000 items and about 4 hours for 400,000. Export transaction histories gives the payment side, with captured payments only.
Customer and order files hold personal data. Store them as carefully as you would the admin itself, and delete old copies you no longer need.
How often to refresh it
We’d make a full set of exports before any bulk change, theme update or app install that edits products, and a product and inventory export on a fixed day each month. A dated CSV from the day before a bulk change lets you compare the catalog before and after and repair what went wrong. For catalog structure that the product CSV leaves out, keep your collection rules written down too; Shopify collections explains the conditions behind automated collections. The inventory and catalog hub has the related guides.
FAQ
Does Shopify back up my store? Shopify’s Help Center doesn’t describe a store backup you can restore from. Exports cover products, inventory, customers and orders, and the theme can be downloaded; restoring means re-importing those files.
Does a product CSV export include images? Shopify says the images aren’t included in the CSV file. The file has image URL columns, so download and keep the image files separately.
How do I download my Shopify theme? Go to Online Store, open the theme’s menu and click Download theme file. Shopify emails a ZIP file to the address of your staff login.
Are collections included in the product export? The Collection column isn’t included when you export products, so note your collections and their conditions separately.