Revel Roots

what apps actually cost

Your Data If You Leave

Every subscription you keep for more than a few months accumulates something: notes, records, tracked hours, saved items, a history.

Whether that is yours or the vendor's is determined by one feature, and almost nothing is written about it because it is the feature nobody checks before signing up — because it only matters at the moment you are leaving, which is exactly when it is too late to check. A useful contrast from the workplace-software market is employee PC activity tracking; it shows how similar feature and buying decisions change when the purchaser is a team.

The four questions

One. Is there an export, and what format? Not "can I print" and not a screenshot view. A file, containing the data, in something another program can read.

Two. Does the export include everything? Frequently it contains the main records and omits attachments, comments, history, or the structure that made the records useful. This is the commonest failure and it is invisible until you open the file. For an independent software-selection perspective, TechRadar productivity guides is another useful reference.

Three. Can you do it yourself, immediately? An export you request by email and receive in five business days is a different thing from a button, particularly when the account is about to lapse.

Four. What happens after cancellation? Some services keep data accessible in read-only form. Some give thirty days. Some delete on the renewal date. The difference decides whether you can leave calmly or must migrate before a deadline.

What a useless export looks like

Worth recognising, because most services technically have one.

A PDF. Human-readable, machine-hostile, and it cannot be imported anywhere.

A proprietary format that only that product reads. Technically an export, functionally a backup for returning to the same service.

A partial dump. Records without attachments, or notes without their organisation, or entries without their timestamps.

And one file per item. Four thousand individual files is an archive, not a migration.

The test: could another product in the category import this? If the answer requires a script, the export exists for compliance rather than for you.

The test to run early

Export in week one, before you have accumulated anything.

Ten minutes, and it answers all four questions while the stakes are zero. If the export is a button and produces a readable file, the question is settled for as long as you use the product.

If it does not, you have learned that now rather than in three years, and you can decide whether to accumulate anything here at all.

Then export annually, at the same time as the subscription audit. It doubles as a backup and it verifies that the export still works, which it does not always continue to.

Where this matters most

Anything you write. Notes, journals, documents. The accumulation is the value and losing it is not recoverable.

Anything with a history. Tracked time, health records, financial logs — the value is in the series, and a partial export destroys it.

And anything you might need to prove. Invoices, contracts, correspondence.

Where it matters least: consumption. A streaming service holds a watch history and losing it costs nothing. (The general case for keeping your own copy is worth reading once.)

The lock-in nobody notices

A free tier that accumulates data with no export is the strongest lock-in in this category, because it is entered without a decision.

Six months of material later, the upgrade is not a purchase decision — it is a ransom you have already paid the setup cost for. Check export before accumulating, not after.

The short version