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What happens to your data when you cancel
Of the 5 vendors here, only 2 — Shopify (2 years) and HubSpot (30 days, and only on the plans it names) — state anywhere official how long your data survives cancellation. monday.com's “7 days” is not a retention promise: it is the window in which a closed account is treated as a free trial. Asana deletes nothing on cancellation and downgrades you to the free plan, and Squarespace gives no number at all.
The export is a job to do while the contract is still live. Of the 6 services covered on this site, Semrush is dealt with separately.
5 terms to settle up front
Export means taking the data you have put in and saving it as a file on your own machine. CSV is table-shaped text that opens in Excel. A record is 1 row in a CRM — 1 customer, or 1 deal. Board and item are monday.com's table and 1 row within it. Grace period is the time your data survives after cancellation.
There are 4 operations. First, cancel — stop paying. Second, delete the account — remove the whole thing. Third, request erasure — ask for personal data to be deleted. Fourth, reactivate — restart what you stopped. The day counts start from cancellation.
Only 2 of the 5 state a number of days
| Service | What canceling does | Days stated officially | How to read this row |
|---|---|---|---|
| monday.com | For 7 days after the account is closed it is treated as a free trial. After that it becomes “inactive”, and neither you nor your team can sign in. Moving from paid down to the free plan (2 seats, 3 boards, 200 items, 500MB) instead leaves the data in the account, and anything above those limits stays readable in a view-only mode (nothing new can be added, and private or shareable boards show as unavailable unless they are converted to main boards beforehand) | 7 days. Beyond that, monday.com describes a policy of keeping all data available by default, while stating that it is not guaranteed to continue indefinitely and that it reserves the right to delete the data of inactive accounts at any time | The 7 days are not a migration window; they are the time before you are locked out. Once data is fully deleted there is no undo |
| Asana | Canceling a paid plan is a downgrade to the free plan (Asana Personal). The data stays; what you lose is advanced team and project permissions, custom fields, timeline view and task dependencies | Cancellation takes effect on the last day of the billing period. No retention period is given. Account deletion completes within 30 days, organizations and workspaces within 90 days, and erasure of all data within 180 days | The only numbers Asana gives apply to deletion. Canceling on its own removes nothing |
| HubSpot | From the cancellation date the account drops to the free tools. There is no mid-term exit; cancellation takes effect on the renewal date | For Marketing Hub Professional / Enterprise (Marketing Contacts) only: on a written request made within 30 days of termination, HubSpot provides a means of retrieving the data. After 30 days it has no obligation to retain or provide it | The only one of the 5 with a day count at contract level. The scope is narrow, and the 30 days are a deadline for making the request |
| Shopify | The store is deactivated. It can be reactivated within 2 years | 2 years. Separately, if you request erasure of personal data, it is deleted within 14 days of the request being completed. Before those 14 days elapse you can call it off by contacting support | The only grace period measured in years. But once erasure is requested it becomes irreversible in 14 days, and the store can no longer be reactivated |
| Squarespace | The site displays “Website expired” and can be reactivated from the dashboard at any time | We could not find this stated on the vendor's own pages. For site deletion it says the site cannot be recovered (a manually deleted site may be restorable depending on a support inquiry) | No stated limit does not mean the data stays forever. It means nothing has been promised |
A HubSpot contract is a “Hub”, chosen by purpose, multiplied by a “grade” — Starter, Professional or Enterprise. The 30-day clause (3.3.3) applies only to Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise on Marketing Contacts. You can see what you hold under Subscriptions in the settings. Those 30 days are the deadline for a written request, not a working window.
Section 1.3 narrows the scope: “for the HubSpot Smart CRM and Free Services, we will not provide you with any access to Customer Data after termination or expiration of your Subscription Term.” That is as far as the official wording goes; what follows is our own reading. Sales Hub and Service Hub fall under neither the 30-day clause nor 1.3, which should leave them with no commitment at all.
The 3 vendors with a free plan (monday.com, Asana, HubSpot) let you treat cancellation as a downgrade rather than a closure. Shopify and Squarespace offer no such route; for “Pause and Build”, the official pages say only that a reduced monthly fee applies, and we could not find the amount stated.
What you lose is everything that is not the text
| Service | Export while the contract is live | Attachments and images | What cannot be exported or moved | How to read this row |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| monday.com | An admin exports the whole account in one zip. Board by board, the format is Excel | Included in the account-wide export (they can be excluded to make it faster) | Archived boards and workdocs (documents written inside monday.com), and the Emails & Activities (mail history) timeline. The Excel export covers the table view only; sorting, conditional coloring and subitem updates are lost | Excel only copies the grid on screen. If you need the history of the exchange, take the account-wide zip |
| Asana | CSV or JSON, project by project. We could not find an account-wide export stated on the vendor's own pages | We could not find this stated on the vendor's own pages | We could not find this stated on the vendor's own pages | The 1 vendor here with no official list of what gets dropped. The only way to know is to test it yourself |
| HubSpot | Records as CSV/XLSX/XLS, pages and blogs as HTML, plus Files and HubDB (HubSpot's own lightweight database) | In the Files tool, tick the folders and use “Export (ZIP)” for a single batch (Super Admin permissions required; when it finishes, a link arrives by email and in the notification center) | Workflow (automation setup) performance data and history, and the data of emails used inside workflows | The export is spread across 4 separate entry points. Set your cancellation date assuming 1 button and you will run out of time |
| Shopify | Products, customers, orders, gift card codes, discount codes and finance data as CSV. Themes from the admin | Product images are not in the CSV (the CSV holds only the URLs) | Cannot be moved: issued gift cards, discount codes, saved custom reports, visitor traffic data. Orders cannot be imported from the admin | The problem is not that they cannot be exported but that they cannot be transferred. On the new platform they have to be reissued or re-imported |
| Squarespace | Site content in 1 format only, .xml (intended for WordPress). Products and contacts as .csv | No bulk option. 1 image at a time from the asset library | Page types other than gallery, every blog from the 2nd onwards, page-specific headers, footers and sidebars, dropdowns, audio, product and video blocks, drafts, style settings and custom CSS | The .xml gives you the text of standard pages and 1 blog, nothing more. What you take with you is the copy, not the site |
Only 2 of them pull attachments and images out in bulk: monday.com (the account-wide zip) and HubSpot (the ZIP from the Files tool). Squarespace is 1 image at a time, so 100 photographs means 100 operations.
Being able to export is not the same as being able to load the result into the next tool. Shopify's “can't be transferred” means that discount codes and gift cards can be written to a CSV and still cannot be imported into a new store.
The day you sign, and the day you decide to leave
All day counts are as stated in each vendor's own help pages and terms (verified August 2026). monday.com's 7 days is the period in which a closed account is treated as a trial, not a period in which data retention is guaranteed
Settle this on the day you sign. Keep the originals of images, video and attachments outside the SaaS as well, and put 1 line in the approval document: within N days of cancellation, an administrator runs the account-wide export and files it in internal storage. 4 of them publish a list of what cannot be exported; only Asana does not. Export a test project and check for yourself.
On the day you decide to leave, the order is this. First, finish the export before you stop the billing: monday.com blocks sign-in 7 days after closure, and HubSpot drops to the free tools. Second, monday.com's account-wide export takes up to 24 hours and can be run only 1 time in 24 hours; 7 days = 168 hours, so 168 ÷ 24 gives at most 7 attempts, which is not something to start on the day itself. Third, HubSpot's export is spread across 4 entry points and records are limited to 3 at a time, so allow half a day. Fourth, open the files you have downloaded and check the contents before you cancel.
Who should not choose these 5
Each of these is a poor fit in the following cases.
Not monday.com if you need archived boards, workdocs or mail history kept as a record (the account-wide export does not cover them). Not Asana if you will run dozens of projects or more, since it is 1 project at a time and 50 projects means 50 operations. Not HubSpot if you are below Marketing Hub Professional and expect to reach your data after cancellation. Not Shopify if you might stop after 1 or 2 months, since there is no free plan, only a free trial. Not Squarespace if photographs are the point of the site.
Sources (all verified August 2026)
- monday.com, the 7 days / inactive status / right to delete / no undo after full deletion → How to cancel and close your account
- monday.com account-wide export (up to 24 hours, 1 run per 24 hours, zip, file exclusion, archived boards / workdocs / Emails & Activities not covered) → How to export your entire account's data
- monday.com what the Excel export does not carry (table view only, sorting, conditional coloring, subitem updates) → Export from monday to Excel
- monday.com free plan 2 seats / 3 boards / 200 items / 500MB, view-only mode, treatment of private boards → Understanding the Free Plan
- Asana downgrade to the free plan, features lost, end of the billing period → Modify your Asana plan
- Asana account deletion 30 days / organizations and workspaces 90 days / erasure of all data 180 days → Delete your Asana account
- Asana CSV / JSON export by project → Project importing and exporting
- HubSpot the 30-day clause (3.3.3) and section 1.3 on Smart CRM and the Free Services → Product Specific Terms
- HubSpot record export formats, up to 3 at a time → Export records
- HubSpot HTML for pages and blogs, Files, HubDB, workflows not covered → Export your content and data
- HubSpot bulk ZIP export of attachments (Super Admin permissions, email and notification center) → Organize your files with folders
- HubSpot no mid-term cancellation, effective on the renewal date, downgrade to the free tools, limits on deletion → How do I cancel my HubSpot account?
- Shopify the 2 years (deactivating and reactivating) → Deactivate or reactivate your store
- Shopify the 14 days (erasure of personal data, deadline for calling it off) → Delete store data
- Shopify what the CSV export covers / can't be transferred / orders cannot be imported from the admin → Duplicate your store
- Shopify product images are not included in the CSV → Export products
- Shopify Pause and Build (a reduced monthly fee; no amount stated) → Billing considerations when pausing or deactivating
- Squarespace “Website expired” after cancellation, reactivate at any time → Cancel your website subscription
- Squarespace a deleted site cannot be recovered, manual deletion depends on a support inquiry → Delete your site and its content
- Squarespace list of what the .xml export leaves out → Exporting your site
- Squarespace no bulk image export, no video, .csv for products and contacts → Importing and exporting content
Retention periods and specifications change. Before you actually cancel, check each vendor's own pages for the current wording.
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