Your home’s records should outlive any app — including ours
Two shutdowns in eighteen months taught this category its real lesson: the exit matters more than the features. Here is KeepUp’s answer, in writing.
Checked on 13 Jul 2026
General information, not legal or tax advice.
At a glance
- Every KeepUp account — free or paid — can download its entire vault as one zip, from the account page, any time
- The export is plain files: your documents and photos as they are, plus a CSV of every appliance. Readable without KeepUp
- The lesson behind it: Centriq deleted its users’ data in 2025; Property Hawk closes this month
- UK GDPR calls data portability a right; we treat it as one, not as a retention lever
In January 2025, Centriq — for years the best-known home-management app — shut down and deleted everything its users hadn't exported. This month, Property Hawk, free landlord software since 2006, closes with a two-line notice. Different products, same ending: people who did the responsible thing and kept their records organised lost them anyway, because the organiser disappeared.
If you're deciding whether to trust KeepUp with your property's paperwork, that history is the right lens. So here is our answer to it, in writing, where you can hold us to it.
The promise
Everything you put into KeepUp can be taken back out, in one download, at any time, on any plan.
From your account page, one button produces a zip of your entire vault: every document as the file you uploaded, every photo, organised by property and appliance, plus a CSV listing every asset with its details. No email to support, no waiting period, no paid tier. The formats are deliberately boring — PDFs, images and CSV — because boring formats are the ones that open in twenty years.
Try it early. Put a few documents in, export them back out, and check the zip. The exit should be tested while it doesn't matter, not discovered when it does.
Why the promise is affordable
Centriq's data deletion wasn't malice; it was economics. A free product with venture funding has to grow or die, and when it dies, servers are a cost someone stops paying. The promise above is only credible if the business model behind it doesn't fight it.
KeepUp is a paid product — free for one place, paid for portfolios — which means the export button and the renewal invoice have to coexist. We keep your subscription by being useful, or we lose it with your records intact. Lock-in is what products reach for when usefulness stops carrying them; we'd rather feel that pressure than hide from it.
What we can't promise
No software company can honestly promise to exist forever, and we won't insult you with that one. What we can promise is narrower and more useful: your records will never be hostages. While KeepUp runs, the export is always there. And if it ever came to winding down, the shutdown plan is the opposite of Centriq's: long notice, exports on by default, and your data readable without us — because it always was.
UK GDPR frames data portability as your right, not a vendor's favour, and that's how it's built here: not a retention feature with a legal minimum, but the design principle the vault started from.
The habit worth keeping
Whatever tool you use — KeepUp, a rival, a folder on your own disk — the practice that survives every shutdown is the same: keep the records in formats you could walk away with, and test the walk occasionally. Your house will outlast every app on your phone. Its paperwork should too.
Common questions
- What does the KeepUp export include?
- One zip containing every document you have uploaded (as the original files), every property and appliance photo, organised by property, plus a CSV of every asset with its details — manufacturer, model, serial number, dates and costs.
- Is the export available on the free plan?
- Yes. Export is available on every plan, including the free one, without limits. Data portability is not a paid feature.
- What happens to my data if KeepUp ever shuts down?
- The commitment is the opposite of the Centriq precedent: long notice, exports available throughout, and data in plain formats (PDF, images, CSV) that remain readable without KeepUp. The export exists today precisely so that promise never depends on trust alone.