Read your export file before you need it

"You can export your data at any time" is the sentence every feedback vendor uses to close the lock-in objection, and it is usually true in the narrowest possible sense. Canny.io's CSV export is post data only, with no comments; comments require its JSON API. Its own public board carries open, unshipped requests asking for full data export. Check the file before you need it.

This page is one part of a larger guide. For the whole subject in one place, see what feedback tools actually cost.

Why does every vendor say you can export your data?

Because it works. "Are we locked in?" is the question that stalls a purchase, and "you can export whenever you like" answers it in one sentence, in the sales call, before anyone opens a file. It is not a lie. It is also not the whole answer, because "you can export" and "the export contains everything you put in" are two different claims, and the sentence is built to sound like the second one while only promising the first.

Nobody tests the difference at signup. There is no reason to: the export button sits in settings, unused, for as long as the tool is working. The only time anyone opens it is the week they are leaving, which is the worst possible week to discover a gap.

What is actually in Canny.io's export file?

Canny.io's own help article on exporting feedback lists what the CSV contains, and it is post data only. Comments are not in it; getting comments out requires calling Canny.io's JSON API instead of clicking the export button in the admin panel. That is a meaningfully different task: one is a download, the other is a script.

Canny.io is not hiding this. Its own public feature request board carries open, unshipped requests titled "Export Board Data" and "Export users", filed by its own customers and still sitting there, visible to anyone who looks. That is worth noting in Canny.io's favour: the gap is on the record, in public, rather than buried. It has simply not been shipped.

If a year of comments and context is the part of your feature request board that actually matters, a CSV of post titles is not a copy of your data. It is a copy of the index.

What does the law require now?

Less than the popular version of it suggests, and more than any pricing page tells you. Since 12 September 2025 the EU Data Act has required a switching contract to set out three periods, running one after another: a notice period of up to two months, then a transitional period of at most 30 calendar days for the port itself, then a retrieval window of at least 30 calendar days. The short clock caps the switch, not the wait. No vendor in this category currently mentions any of it anywhere in their own marketing or documentation.

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. The obligation sits on providers of data processing services, a defined term in the Act, and whether a feature request board falls inside it is a judgement we are not qualified to make. What you can do without settling that is ask your vendor which periods its own contract states, and see what comes back. The EU Data Act gives you three windows, not one deadline has the detail.

Test your own export this afternoon

This takes about ten minutes and needs nothing but your own admin login.

1. Open your export function now, while nothing is wrong, and download the file. 2. Open it and count the columns. Is there a comments column, or only a comment count? 3. Look for voter identity, status history and dates, not just the post title and description. 4. If comments, replies or activity history are missing from the download, find out whether an API call is required to get them, and whether that API needs a paid plan you are not on. 5. Search your vendor's own public feature request board for the word "export" and read what other customers have already asked for and not received. 6. Ask support directly: what notice period and what transitional period does our contract set out for switching, and is this file structured, machine-readable data at the end of them?

Whatever the file gives back, you now know it before the week you actually need it, which is the only week it was ever going to matter.

Is this only a Canny.io problem?

Almost certainly not, but Canny.io is the one whose export we have actually opened and checked, so it is the only one this page speaks about with confidence. UserJot ships a two-minute Canny.io importer that carries boards, posts, votes, comments, statuses and users across in one pass, which is itself evidence that the category treats leaving Canny.io as a solved, ordinary thing to want to do rather than something to be talked out of.

That does not tell you what your own vendor's export file contains. Run the six-step test above against whatever tool you are actually using. The answer for your account is the only one that matters, and it takes ten minutes to get it yourself rather than take anyone's word for it, including this one.

Where does this leave Docket?

Honestly: Docket does not have an export button, because there is nothing to export. Every feature request, bug report and comment is a Markdown file, committed to your own repository, from the first post onward. There is no separate copy sitting in someone else's database that you would need to ask for, on a schedule, in a format they chose. Whatever git clone gives you is the whole thing, comments included, on any day you ask.

That is not a claim that Docket is more feature-complete than a tool built for this from the start; it is narrower software, on purpose. It is a claim about where the data physically lives, and the honest answer is that it never left.

Frequently asked questions