Exporting your data should be a right

There's one question almost nobody asks before signing up for a SaaS: how do I leave? Not whether you can — the export button exists almost everywhere — but what actually comes out through that door, and in what condition. Most of the time the answer is: less than you think, in a worse format than you need.

We start from the opposite end: exporting your data isn't a courtesy from the vendor. It's a right, and software should be born with it.

The ten-minute test

The test is simple: can you leave in ten minutes? Not cancel the subscription — that's always easy, because it suits them — but take everything, in an open format, without talking to anyone, and rebuild your operation somewhere else the same day.

The test has four parts:

Complete: everything that went in and everything that was generated along the way. If you export the links but not the click analytics, that's not an export — it's a souvenir.
Open: JSON, CSV — formats that have been around for decades and that any tool can read. A proprietary file is a safe with your name on it and somebody else's key.
No middlemen: no support ticket, no "contact your account manager", no 48-hour wait. A button and an API.
Verifiable: you can run the test on day one, with dummy data, before migrating anything. If a product fails the test with fake data, it won't pass with yours.

How Link exports today

Link, our shortener, passes the whole test:

From the dashboard you export all your links — alias, destination, password, expiration, max clicks, tags, UTM parameters — in JSON or CSV, in one click.
The analytics travel with them: every recorded click, with timestamp, referrer, country, device, browser and OS. Raw rows, not just the pretty aggregates on the dashboard.
The v1 API exposes all of the above over HTTP with your API key. A twenty-line script downloads your entire account. No permission needed from us.
And if you self-host, the most brutal export of all: your database is a single SQLite file. Copy it and you're done. That's portability.

What happens out there

The market, meanwhile:

Slack: on the free plan, the export covers public channels only. Your direct messages and private channels don't come out through the regular door.
Notion: yes, it exports. Databases come out as flat CSVs: the relations between tables, the rollups, the structure that gave your information meaning — that doesn't travel. You take the rows; the model stays.
And then there's the most honest tactic of all: the tools that simply have no export and redirect you to support, where a human decides when — and whether — you get your data back.

None of this is an accident. A complete export is a customer who can leave.

Our rule: export ships with the product

At Zerosoftware the rule is single and non-negotiable: no product launches without complete export from day one. JSON and CSV from the interface, a documented public API, open formats. Link already does it. The CRM, Cal and Track — all coming soon — will open with the same guarantee the day they launch.

And the code is open source: if we ever do things wrong, you won't need the export — you'll need a $5 VPS and an afternoon.

Your data is yours. Software that doesn't get that is telling you, in advance, exactly how much leaving will cost.