I uninstalled my reviews app and lost every product review. Can I get them back?
If you uninstall a reviews app expecting your star ratings and customer feedback to stick around, you may be in for a bad surprise. Here's what actually happens to that data and how to protect it.
What's going on
A merchant switching review apps assumed their existing product reviews, years of star ratings, written feedback, even customer photos, would simply carry over or at least remain retrievable after removing the old app. They uninstalled first, only to discover the review data was effectively gone: no export, no backup, and the new app had nothing to import.
This is a common assumption because Shopify's own core data, like products, orders, and customers, is durable and tied to your store regardless of which apps are installed. But most review apps don't work that way. The reviews, ratings, and media shown on your storefront are typically stored in the app vendor's own database, not inside Shopify itself, unless the app specifically writes some of that data into Shopify metafields. Uninstalling the app removes its access to your store and can set in motion a deletion process on the vendor's side, since Shopify requires apps to honor data protection obligations around shop data after an uninstall.
The result: what looks like a simple app swap can quietly become permanent data loss, especially if reviews were never exported and the old app didn't sync anything into Shopify's own data layer.
Why it happens
Third-party Shopify apps almost always store the content they generate, such as reviews, loyalty points, subscription history, or wishlist entries, on their own servers, connecting to your store only through the Shopify API while the app is installed. Shopify's core platform doesn't own or back up that data; it belongs to the app vendor's infrastructure.
Shopify also requires apps to honor data protection obligations that include deleting a shop's data from the vendor's systems after an uninstall, with the specifics of timing and retention left to each vendor. That's a privacy safeguard for merchants and their customers, but it means there often isn't a long recovery window once an app is removed.
Merchants coming from platforms where reviews are a built-in, permanent feature, or from marketplaces where review history is tied to the seller account itself, don't expect this vendor-controlled model, which is exactly why the assumption trips people up during migrations.
5 ways to fix it
Export your reviews before you touch the uninstall button
Review apps almost always store your ratings, written feedback, and photos in their own database rather than inside Shopify itself, and most give you a way to export that content, usually as a CSV or spreadsheet, from somewhere in the app's settings such as a Reviews or Import/Export section. Run that export and save the file locally, downloading any photos or videos separately if the app hosts them, before you uninstall or downgrade. This is the single most reliable safeguard, and it costs nothing.
Install and set up the new app before uninstalling the old one
Many established review apps offer a built in tool for importing reviews from a competitor while that competitor's app is still installed and authorized on your store. Sequencing matters: install the replacement app first, run its import against the still-live old app, verify the review count and content match, and only then uninstall the original. Uninstalling first can cut off the very access the new app needs to pull your history.
Check whether any review data lives in Shopify metafields, not just the app's own database
Some apps write review counts, ratings, or snippets into product metafields so your theme can display them without calling the app's servers directly. That data can persist after uninstall even though it becomes harder to see or edit in admin once the app that manages it is gone. If your theme shows star ratings independent of the review app's widget, check your product metafields, whether through the admin's custom data settings or the Admin API, before assuming everything is lost. You may be able to recover ratings even if full review text isn't stored there.
If you already uninstalled and lost data, contact the app's support right away
Shopify requires apps to honor data protection obligations that include deleting a shop's data after uninstall, typically triggered a short time after the app is removed. Exactly how long a vendor holds onto that data before deleting it varies and isn't standardized, so don't assume it's gone the moment you uninstall. Reach out to the vendor's support with your shop domain and ask whether your data can still be recovered. Act quickly, since reinstalling the app alone won't necessarily restore anything.
Turn this into a standing pre-migration checklist
Before swapping any app that touches customer-facing data, such as reviews, subscriptions, loyalty points, or wishlists, write down what the app stores, whether it offers a native export, whether any of that data lives in Shopify metafields versus purely on the vendor's servers, and what the vendor says about data retention after uninstall. Keeping that checklist handy for future migrations prevents the same surprise from repeating with a different app category.
Bottom line
There's no platform-wide safety net for third-party app data on Shopify. Reviews, like most app-generated content, live on the app vendor's own servers unless the app deliberately mirrors some of it into Shopify metafields, and uninstalling doesn't guarantee an undo. The fix is procedural rather than technical: export before you uninstall, sequence the new app's import before removing the old one, and keep a written migration checklist for any app swap that touches customer data. No app is obligated to solve this for you. It's a workflow habit, not a missing feature.
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