One thing that I think needs to change is the fact that subscription apis are completely private to the app that created the subscription contract. If I can’t access and export my data freely because my app doesn’t have that feature, then my data isn’t actually mine, it’s theirs. And getting it from them when I want to migrate is extremely difficult.
I’ve been going back and forth with my current subscription app for a month, trying to get a complete export of my data so I can migrate to a better app. The app I’m currently using was great when I started using it. I had direct contact with the founder/developer. But the app was sold to a non-tech entrepreneur and now it’s gone to crap. I’m losing subscribers and still can’t get my data.
It’s really dumb that I can’t use another app to “read” my subscription data. I understand not giving apps write access to the subscription APIs, but blocking all access is just asking for problems. What if my app went out of business and couldn’t afford to pay developers to do the export? I just lose my subscriptions? That’s insane!
We’ve worked too hard to build up our subscribers to have our data sitting in the hands of someone else. Please give other apps read access to subscriptions. Or add subscription contracts to the admin. I shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through when it’s my data.
I completely understand your frustration with the lack of access to your subscription data. It’s a significant issue when your data is essentially held hostage by an app, especially after changes in ownership or management that affect its quality. It makes sense to allow other apps read access to this data to provide flexibility and ensure continuity if a business relationship with the original app becomes problematic.
Your point about ownership of the data is critical. If you can’t freely access or export your data, it’s not truly yours. Hopefully, Shopify or other platforms recognize this need and start offering more control over subscription contracts. You’ve clearly worked hard to build your subscriber base, and it’s unacceptable for that hard work to be jeopardized because of a technical limitation or policy.
If you haven’t already, it might be worth escalating the issue with Shopify support and worth mentioning providing them with detailed feedback on this matter
Thanks for the reply. Looks like we finally worked it out with our subscription app, although their export was incomplete, messy, and contained a lot of test data/data from other shops. I had to pay our dev agency to go through it using the Shopify API and fill in missing info to get it into an importable format.
The subscription contracts exist in Shopify so I’m hoping at the very least that Shopify surfaces this information in the admin. Why not? The only thing that subscription apps do is keep a tab on contracts and control when the billing attempts are made. But contracts, payment data, etc., are all in Shopify.