Migration
What should be in your Contentful exit checklist: contract, notice, export and API access?
Short answer
A Contentful exit checklist covers contract and notice terms, a full export with drafts and archived entries, API (application programming interface) access until cutover, and retrieval after you leave. Contentful's online terms give closed accounts no retrieval period, so keep your final export; its EU Data Act Addendum grants one where it applies (Contentful terms; Contentful addendum, October 2026).
- Switching notice under the addendum
- Up to 2 months from Contentful's receiptThen a 30 calendar day transition, up to 7 months if unfeasible, and at least 30 days to retrieve data, with fees running throughout; addendum effective 12 September 2025Source: Contentful (EU Data Act Addendum)
- Archived space delivery
- 30 days, read onlyOn Enterprise (Premium in Contentful's help center), archiving is offered only after a renewal or a downgrade to Free, and nobody can create, edit or publish in an archived spaceSource: Contentful Help Center (Manage space licenses)
- Deleted space recovery
- Requested within 25 daysThrough Contentful support, for spaces or environments; Contentful doesn't restore a single deleted entry, and its backups aren't for customer restoresSource: Contentful Help Center (Backup, security and hosting)
- CLI export defaults
- Drafts and archived entries left outPass --include-drafts, --include-archived and --download-assets; version history, apps and space memberships don't come with a CLI exportSource: Contentful (Import and export content with the Contentful CLI)
Deploi’s call
Export, test-import and stage the new site before you give Contentful notice, and start early enough to finish before the notice deadline in your signed order. Notice starts your notice period, and Contentful's online terms promise no retrieval period once an account ends. Your own final export, with drafts, archived entries and assets, is the archive that counts.
WaitHold your Contentful notice, up to its deadline, when
- You haven't imported a full export, with drafts, archived entries and assets, into a test environment, because that export is the one copy you control once notice starts the clock.
- Your contract owner hasn't confirmed the notice period in your signed order, so you can't plan backward from the term end; confirm it first, because holding notice past that deadline leaves you on your order's renewal terms.
- Your new site isn't running in staging on a recent export, because Contentful's online terms give no retrieval period once the account ends, as of October 2026.
SanityGive Contentful notice and move to Sanity when
- A test import into a Sanity dataset matches your Contentful counts per content type, so the final export is a repeat, not a first try.
- Your front end runs on Sanity in staging, your redirects are mapped, and the Contentful API (application programming interface) keys your import uses are still live.
- Your confirmed notice date leaves room for a content freeze and a final export before the term ends, because Contentful's online terms make paid fees non-refundable as of October 2026.
What does a Contentful exit checklist cover?
A Contentful exit checklist covers four things: your contract and notice terms, a complete export, how long you can reach content after you leave, and the API (application programming interface) keys that must stay live until cutover. Whether to leave belongs to the decision to leave Contentful, so start the checklist once you've decided. Our view of Contentful rests on its own pages, opened 24 October 2026.
| Item | What Contentful's pages say | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Contract | Public 2020 agreement: no renewal or notice period | Read the term and notice in your signed order |
| Notice | Addendum: up to 2 months from receipt of the request | Confirm the addendum is in your agreement |
| Export | Command-line tool skips drafts and archived entries by default | Export every environment with both, plus assets |
| Access after you leave | No retrieval period in the online terms | Keep your final export as the archive |
| API access | Management API: 10 requests a second per space, paid plans | Keep export and delivery keys live until cutover |
What do you need from your Contentful contract before you give notice?
You need your term end, renewal rule and notice period, and they live in your signed documents, not on Contentful's public pages. Three public documents frame them:
- The public Master Subscription Agreement. The page shows the version effective 17 March 2020, refers to "the term of the Service Order" and states no renewal term and no notice period for leaving (Contentful, Master Subscription Agreement, October 2026).
- The online Terms of Service. Effective 15 September 2025, they cover accounts opened online. The customer may close the account "at any time through the account management tools", "fees paid are non-refundable", and a signed service order controls where the two conflict (Contentful, Terms of Service, October 2026).
- The EU Data Act Addendum. Effective 12 September 2025, it sets a maximum notice period of two months from Contentful's receipt of a switching request (Contentful, EU Data Act Addendum, October 2026). It says it forms part of Contentful's Master Subscription and Services Agreement, a name the 2020 page doesn't carry, so check your own signed copy for it.
Salesforce says it completed the purchase on 1 September 2026 (Salesforce, October 2026); these documents predate it, and what the deal has changed so far is tracked separately. Have your contract owner confirm notice terms in writing; Deploi doesn't give legal advice.
What does Contentful let you export, and what stays behind?
Contentful lets you export content, the model and assets with its command-line interface (CLI), and more through its application programming interfaces (APIs), but some data leaves by neither route. Contentful calls APIs "the primary procedure" for export (Contentful Help Center, Data export, October 2026). The CLI's defaults leave data out, so pass --include-drafts, --include-archived and --download-assets (Contentful CLI docs, October 2026).
| Data | Contentful CLI export | Contentful APIs |
|---|---|---|
| Drafts and archived entries | Only with their flags | Entries listed; drafts and archived entries not named |
| Scheduled releases, workflows and tasks | Not migrated | Releases, workflows and tasks listed as exportable |
| Comments | Not on the CLI list | Listed as exportable |
| Version history | Starts fresh in the new space | Snapshots listed as exportable |
| Webhooks | Without credentials | Signing secret listed as exportable |
| Apps and space memberships | Not exported | Listed as exportable |
| Sign-on settings and access tokens | No | Not exportable under the EU Data Act |
A CLI import also loses author history (Contentful CLI docs, October 2026). What Sanity's converter drops is in the Contentful to Sanity migration plan, and exporting everything from Sanity covers your next exit.
How long can you still reach your content after you leave Contentful?
You can count on no time at all unless your agreement grants it, because Contentful's online terms and its public 2020 agreement state no retrieval period after termination (Contentful, Terms of Service; Contentful, Master Subscription Agreement, October 2026). Contentful publishes three windows that apply in narrower cases:
| Window | Length | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Data retrieval under the EU Data Act Addendum | At least 30 calendar days | After the notice and transition periods, where the addendum is in your agreement |
| Archived space delivery | 30 days, read only | An Enterprise space (Premium in the help center) archived after a renewal or a downgrade to Free |
| Deleted space recovery | Requested within 25 days | A space or environment deleted by accident, through support |
Under the addendum, a 30 calendar day transition follows the notice period, you pay then-current fees throughout, and an expiring order renews month to month (Contentful, EU Data Act Addendum, October 2026). Contentful doesn't restore a single deleted entry, and its backups serve platform disaster recovery, "not for customer-level point-in-time restoration" (Contentful Help Center, Backup, security and hosting, October 2026). So your own final export is your archive.
Which Contentful API access must stay live until cutover?
Three kinds of Contentful application programming interface (API) access must stay live until the new site serves every page: the management token your exports use, the delivery keys your live site reads with, and the asset URLs your import downloads from.
- Content Management API (CMA) token. Contentful's command-line interface (CLI) exports with a management token, one environment at a time,
masterby default (Contentful CLI docs, October 2026). The CMA allows 10 requests a second per space on paid plans and 7 on Free (Contentful Docs, Technical limits, October 2026), so a large space exports slowly: time a full run before you set the freeze. - Content Delivery API keys. The live site reads Contentful until cutover, at up to 78 requests a second per space on paid plans (Contentful Docs, Technical limits, October 2026).
- Asset URLs. An import that fetches files from Contentful's asset URLs needs the space live until it finishes.
Personal and API tokens are on Contentful's list of data it won't export under the EU Data Act (Contentful Help Center, Data export, October 2026), so the new platform gets new keys. Revoke every Contentful token after cutover.
In what order should you run a Contentful exit?
Run a Contentful exit backward from your notice deadline, so a tested export and a staging run come first. Sanity's re-platforming course says the migration script should run "against the most up-to-date version of your current platform's content", which keeps the content freeze short (Sanity Learn, Migrating without downtime, October 2026).
A Contentful exit, from contract to cancellation
- Read the signed order. Your contract owner confirms the term end and notice period.
- Dry-run the export. Export each environment with drafts, archived entries and assets.
- Test the import. Import into a test environment and compare counts per content type.
- Give notice. Once counts match and staging runs on recent content, or on time if your notice deadline comes first.
- Freeze and export. Freeze editing, export again in full, and keep that file as your archive.
- Cut over. Import, switch the front end and turn on redirects at scale, with a rollback plan for cutover.
- Revoke and cancel. Revoke tokens, then cancel licenses, because deleting a space doesn't cancel its license (Contentful Help Center, Manage space licenses, October 2026).
Deploi’s point of view
- Where we disagree
- Two claims mislead teams leaving Contentful. The first is that the EU Data Act lets you stop paying once you ask to switch: Contentful's addendum keeps then-current fees running through notice, transition and retrieval, renews an expiring order month to month, and allows up to two months' notice plus a 30 day transition. The second is that comments, tasks, workflows and releases can't leave Contentful. The command-line export skips them, but Contentful's data export page lists them as exportable through its APIs, so a script can reach them.
- What we’ve seen
- The release runbook for deploi.ca's Shopify FAQ hub takes a full export of the Sanity dataset as the restore point before any change, and a restore is an import of that export with --replace. That is why we treat the export you hold as the only rollback you control. Our view of Contentful rests on its documentation and public sources.
- What this adds
- The leaving-Contentful page decides whether to leave and where to go. This page is the exit itself: where your notice terms live, the windows Contentful publishes (two months' notice, a 30 day transition, at least 30 days' retrieval, 30 days of archived delivery, 25 days to recover a deleted space), what each export route leaves behind, and which keys stay live until cutover.
- What we'd tell you to do first
- Find the signed order and read three things before anyone mentions leaving: the term end, the renewal rule and the notice period. Then run a full export of every environment and count entries, assets and archived entries, so the final export has numbers to match.
- What we refuse to promise
- We won't tell you your notice date or whether the EU Data Act Addendum covers your contract. Both live in your signed documents, and your contract owner or counsel confirms them.
When this answer changes
- Contentful publishes new Terms of Service or a new EU Data Act Addendum after the 1 September 2026 completion Salesforce reports
- Contentful publishes a retrieval period for closed accounts
- Contentful changes the 30 day delivery window for archived spaces or the 25 day recovery window for deleted spaces
- Contentful's CLI starts exporting releases, tasks, workflows or version history
- Contentful changes the Content Management API limit of 10 requests a second on paid plans
Sources
Every source opened and checked on 25 October 2026.
- Contentful, Terms of Service
- Contentful, Master Subscription Agreement
- Contentful, EU Data Act Addendum
- Contentful Help Center, Data export
- Contentful, Import and export content with the Contentful CLI
- Contentful Help Center, Manage space licenses
- Contentful Help Center, Backup, security and hosting
- Contentful Docs, Technical limits
- Contentful Help Center, Billing
- Salesforce, Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Contentful
- Sanity Learn, Migrating without downtime