Exporting and deleting your Groundkeep Cloud data

Last updated: 2026-08-07

This page explains exactly what happens to your data when you export it, cancel your instance, or ask for everything to be erased. It describes what the system actually does, including the parts that are not instant and the parts that are not automatic.

It applies to Groundkeep Cloud, the hosted plan where we run an instance for you. If you bought the one-time local licence, none of this applies: that copy runs on your machine, stores its data in a file you own, and never sends it to us. Deleting it is deleting the folder.

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Exporting your data

Your data lives in your own instance, and you can take a complete copy at any time without asking us.

From the app — the export controls in your dashboard write out your data in a portable form.
Directly — GET /api/state on your instance returns every collection as JSON, in one response. It is the same endpoint the app itself uses, so there is no separate "export format" that could lag behind what you see.

The local licence reads the same shapes, so an export from Cloud can be used with the version that runs on your own machine.

Export before you cancel. Cancelling stops your instance, and once it is stopped the export endpoints are no longer reachable — the data still exists during the retention window below, but retrieving it then means asking us.

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Cancelling your instance

Immediately:

Your instance is stopped and its container removed.
Your instance stops answering. Requests to it return 410 Gone.
Your data is not deleted. The volume holding your database is kept.
Your subscription is cancelled. You will not be charged again.

Your account page then shows a restore-until date, which is 30 days after you cancelled.

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The 30-day retention window

For 30 days after cancelling, your data still exists and can be brought back. This is deliberate: cancelling by mistake, or changing your mind a week later, should not be unrecoverable.

To restore inside the window, sign in and use Restore my instance on your account page — the same page the Cancel button is on. It takes about a minute and needs nobody's help. If that does not work, email us and we will put your instance back with the data as it was at cancellation.
To have it erased immediately instead, email us and ask. We will bring the purge forward rather than wait out the window.

After 30 days it is gone, and we cannot get it back. At that point an automated sweep:

removes the storage volume holding your database, and
removes every encrypted backup snapshot of that instance from our backup storage.

There is no copy left after that. If you ask us afterwards to recover it, the honest answer will be that we cannot — not that we will not.

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What we keep after your data is gone

Two things outlive the purge, and both are deliberately small:

Your account record — your email address and the fact that an account existed. This is what lets us recognise you if you come back, and what stops a cancelled address being silently re-registered by somebody else.
An audit log of account and instance events: created, verified, signed in, provisioned, suspended, cancelled, purged. It records that things happened and when. It does not contain your dashboard contents.

We keep these because they are what we would need to answer a later question about your own account — including a question from you. Neither contains anything you typed into the product.

To have the account record itself removed as well, email us and say so. That is a manual step today rather than a button, and we would rather tell you that than imply an automation that does not exist. We will confirm when it is done.

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Payment records

If you paid us, our payment processor (Stripe) holds the transaction record, and so do we in the form of a receipt. These are financial records we are required to keep, and they survive deletion of everything else. They contain what you paid and when — not your dashboard contents.

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Complaints and enquiries

Email hello@groundkeep.app. If you are in a jurisdiction with a data protection authority and you are not satisfied with our answer, you are entitled to complain to it; our privacy policy names the rights that apply.

See also the [Privacy Policy](/privacy) and the [Terms](/terms).