Which real estate software lets you take your data when you cancel? 13 export policies compared

Who gives you time to get your data after you cancel?

Three vendors, and each window is narrower than it sounds. Follow Up Boss gives you 30 days after termination to email support for help getting a copy of your Contact List. The list, and only if you were not cut off for breach. The same terms put the download on you: “it is their sole obligation to download such data before the conclusion of the term.”

Inside Real Estate, which runs BoldTrail and BoldTrail BackOffice, gives you 30 days from termination and payment in full to ask in writing for the data “that can be exported, as defined by IRE”, and costs may apply. Lofty is the most generous: 90 days on written request to download all exportable data, after which it may delete.

The other eight tell you to export first or say nothing. CINC, Real Geeks and SkySlope use the same clause, word for word: the vendor “makes no representations it will be accessible or exportable to you”. Lone Wolf says your data may be permanently deleted and that help after termination may carry fees. Paperless Pipeline erases everything within three weeks on its terms page and immediately on its billing page, so plan for immediately. The rest are in the table.

What can you actually take with you?

Can I export everything from Follow Up Boss before I cancel?

Most of it. The export is an instant CSV from People, run by the account owner or anyone the owner has given Can Export, and the owner gets an email every time someone runs one. Turn on Export All Columns and each contact comes with its most recent 50 calls, 50 texts and 50 notes. A contact with 200 notes leaves with 50.

Emails do not come out. Follow Up Boss's reason is that anything sent or received in the product is still in the agent's connected mailbox, which is true and does nothing for the texts past the fiftieth or the call recordings, which do not export either. Attachments download one file at a time from each profile. Templates, action plans, tasks and appointments do not move to another account, so screenshot your action plans before you go.

What about BoldTrail, Lofty, CINC and Real Geeks?

BoldTrail is the strictest about who and where. Its export article sends the CSV only to the account's login email, pauses exports for 48 hours if you change that email, and adds a 24-hour pause if you have not logged in for three months. You export only the contacts you own, admins can export company- and team-owned ones, and support will not run it for you. Notes ride along. Email, text and call history have no field. Smart Campaigns move to another BoldTrail account by share token.

Lofty gates export by lead ownership. You can export your Personal Leads. Company, office and team leads stay behind when you leave unless an admin changes the default, and the sample export file has one Note column and no email, text or call columns. CINC emails a 41-field CSV that includes Notes and nothing for emails, texts or files, and its terms add that text-message media sits with a third-party servicer on its own schedule. Real Geeks' export may include notes and does not include a full activity history. If your team's value is in the conversation record rather than the contact card, none of these four will hand it to you.

Can I get my closed files out of dotloop, SkySlope and the rest?

A CRM has one leaver, the customer who stops paying. A transaction tool bought by a brokerage has two: the brokerage that cancels and the agent who leaves while the brokerage keeps paying. SkySlope, dotloop and Lone Wolf write for the second.

A SkySlope Suite account belongs to the brokerage, and files never move to another one, so its leaving-brokerage article is a download checklist to finish before you are deactivated: one zip per archived file, DigiSign and Forms envelopes saved separately. Asked for something faster on SkySlope's support community, Ryan from its product team answered: “At this time, we don't have a faster way to get all the files downloaded.” dotloop lets the team admin decide whether a departing agent keeps access to their loops and downloads the documents. Template folders stay with the team either way. The only backup dotloop documents is a third-party API Nation subscription, and it skips archived documents. Cancel Premium and your account drops to Freemium with the loops intact.

Lone Wolf's TransactionDesk keeps a terminated agent's transactions with the office and, where the office allows transfer, emails the agent a PDF of them. BoldTrail BackOffice emails the owner a zip per transaction with a 7-day link. Paperless Pipeline is the one tool here whose export covers the whole file. Its monthly backup is a ZIP by property address with every document in its original format and the notes, emails, checklists and activity history as plain text. The last month's backup stays available for 30 days. Older months cost $140 per four months, which is the same $35 a month as its Archive Plan. It is also the vendor that deletes fastest, so download the last backup before you send the cancellation email.

Notice what the transaction tools have in common: the file comes out one deal at a time, and the contract runs a year. dotloop's Business+ and Teams plans are yearly terms through a success manager, a SkySlope brokerage's cancellation lands at the end of its term, and Inside Real Estate and CINC charge the rest of the term if you leave early. DeedSpring is month to month on every self-serve plan, you cancel from settings, and every closing downloads as a ZIP of the originals or one merged PDF from its Documents tab.

What should you do before you cancel?

Export a month before the term ends, while you still have a login, and open the files to check what came out. Where the terms give you a window, at Follow Up Boss, Inside Real Estate and Lofty, send the written request inside it and keep the receipt. In BoldTrail, leave the login email alone for the last 48 hours. In Paperless Pipeline, download the last monthly backup first. Then read your signed order form: Inside Real Estate's terms say the ordering paperwork wins where the two conflict, and your contract may be better or worse than the public page.

If you never want to be locked in again

DeedSpring runs the closing itself. Upload the executed contract and it reads the price, deposits, contingencies and dates into deadlines on the file, checks every open closing every hour, and drafts the chases and client updates for you to send. Every closing's documents download as a ZIP of the originals or one merged PDF, with a cover sheet, from the Documents tab.

Starter is $15 a month for one closing a month. Standard is $25 a closing, $19 at 20 or more, with unlimited agents and teammates and unused closings rolling over. Both are month to month: cancel from settings and you won't be billed again. Nobody asks you to sign a year.