Yes, even really good apps have a shelf life! It’s one of the important things to consider when purchasing or subscribing to an app that you will rely on for something that is important to you. What happens to your data once the app is gone? Are you stuck? Is your data lost? If you decide to move to another product, can you? Or is your data locked in?
And if the publisher of the app decides to sunset the app or put it in maintenance mode, it’s just as important to make sure if you choose an app to replace it, that app has a way to import your data so that you are not forced to start anew.
It turns out that Conor over at Bruji, and Kevin and I at Binary Formations consider data portability a very high priority.
Below technologist Allison Sheridan shares the migration process from one of her favorite apps that is now on hiatus, DVDpedia, to Under My Roof®, another favorite 🤩.
In similar fashion, we removed Home Inventory from sale and put it in maintenance mode in January of this year. Home Inventory has always had an export feature to a standard CSV formatted file. This can be imported into other apps including Under My Roof. No one is locked into Home Inventory or Under My Roof.
“I’m not sure this will be a story that helps you in your own life, but the transition between these two apps showed me that both sets of developers had made a significant effort to ensure data portability. DVDpedia made it easy for me to export the data, and with a smidge of handholding, Under My Roof made it easy for me to import the data.”