Tool Documents

When a Vendor Shuts Down

The exit you planned for is the one you choose. This is the other kind, and the three ways it arrives behave differently.

Reviewed August 9, 2026. Insolvency treatment varies by jurisdiction; this is not legal advice. For a separate operational reference from Monitask, see this resource.

The three ways

Acquisition. The product continues under new ownership, sometimes for years. The risk is drift — pricing changes, the roadmap redirects, the subprocessor list grows, support degrades. You usually have time.

Sunset. The vendor announces an end date, typically six to twelve months out, and normally provides export tooling. This is the manageable case and the one where a plan pays off.

For broader context, see AWS.

Insolvency. The service may stop with little notice. Your contractual rights exist and the counterparty may not, which is the difficulty — a right to export is only as good as somebody being there to provide it.

What to do in week one

Regardless of which.

Export everything, immediately. Not when you have chosen a replacement — now, while the systems are running and staff are still employed.

Export again in a different format if more than one is offered. Redundancy costs an hour.

Screenshot the configuration, which does not export and which will be needed to rebuild.

Capture the integration inventory, including the invisible ones.

And read the notice. Announcements state a data availability deadline that is frequently earlier than the service end date, and those two dates get conflated.

Then, in order

Establish what you legally have. In the EU the switching and export rights apply and are worth citing in writing. Individuals can exercise Article 20 separately where a bulk export falls short.

Check the contract for what survives termination — data return obligations, notice periods, refunds for prepaid unused term.

Then choose a replacement, with the export already in hand rather than as a race.

And migrate on your own timeline rather than on the deadline, which is possible only because step one happened.

The insolvency case specifically

Move fastest here.

An administrator's duty is to creditors, not to customers wanting data, and the practical answer depends on whether somebody is still operating the systems.

Your data may be an asset in the process, and access arrangements can become a negotiation.

Prepaid fees are typically an unsecured claim, which is worth knowing so that recovering the money is not what the effort goes into.

What makes all this survivable

A current export you already have.

An organisation that exports quarterly treats a shutdown as an inconvenient migration. One that does not treats it as an emergency with a deadline set by somebody else.

The quarterly export is the whole preparation — it costs an hour, it tests that the export works while you can still complain about it, and it means the worst case starts from a known position.

The short version