What data can you take with you when leaving a dealer website provider?

The comprehensive list — what belongs to you

Data / assets you fully own and take with you

Your domain — registered in your dealership’s name at your registrar. Portable to any new provider via DNS update. See our answer on domain ownership for how to verify this today.

Your customer database — contact info, form submissions, communication history, vehicle interests. Export format depends on vendor; CSV is standard. See our answer on customer database ownership for what to check in your contract.

Your leads and inquiry history — related to customer database but often stored separately (in a CRM). Whether you own this depends on which CRM is integrated. If it’s your CRM (VinSolutions, DriveCentric, etc.) connected to your dealer website via API, the leads live in your CRM and always belong to you. If the vendor provides a proprietary lead management system, ownership depends on their contract.

Your Google Analytics data — if the GA property is under your Google account, you own it and take it with you. If not, see the migration guidance in our answer on GA ownership.

Your Google Search Console data — same pattern. If verified under your account, yours. Contains genuinely irreplaceable historical query data.

Your Google Business Profile — this is completely separate from your website vendor. Owned by your dealership’s Google account. Attached to your business, not your website. Stays with you regardless.

Your Yelp, Facebook, and other social profiles — same. Not vendor property.

Your inventory data — comes from your DMS via inventory feed (vAuto, HomeNet, DealerTrack). The feed flows to whichever websites are configured as destinations. Vehicles themselves live in your DMS, not on your website. Fully portable.

Your historical SEO equity — this is intangible but real. Google has assigned rankings to your URLs over time. You take this with you via 301 redirects (see our answer on switching SEO). If redirects aren’t set up properly, you lose it during migration.

Your custom photos — dealership photos, staff photos, product photography. Usually owned by you unless the vendor took them under a work-for-hire agreement (rare).

Your written content — pages, blog posts, staff bios, testimonials. You own the text; the vendor may own the presentation.

Your CCPA/GDPR compliance records — consent tracking, data subject request logs. Yours because they’re compliance records of your business.

Data / assets you leave behind

Your website’s design — the visual layout, CSS, JavaScript, page structure. Belongs to the vendor. You leave with content but not the design that presented it.

Custom development — any custom features built specifically for you on the vendor’s platform. May or may not be documented well enough to recreate on a new platform.

Vendor-specific integrations — proprietary chat widget, vendor’s inventory search UI, vendor’s financing widget. All left behind.

Content in vendor’s proprietary CMS — technically the text is yours, but if the CMS has no export function you may need to manually recreate content on the new platform.

Design and layout of email templates — if the vendor’s platform generates transactional/marketing emails with a specific design, those templates stay behind.

Historical uptime and performance data — vendor’s monitoring system, not accessible after termination.

What you DON’T own that most dealers assume they do

Vendor-generated content — if your vendor’s team wrote city landing pages, service pages, or blog posts for you (either as part of a service tier or a paid engagement), read the contract carefully. Some vendors classify their editorial output as licensed content that stays with them.

Custom design work you paid for — even if you paid extra for custom design, most contracts specify the design remains the vendor’s property under a license to you. You leave with the strategy conversation, not the design files.

Vendor’s analytics dashboard configurations — the specific dashboards, reports, and custom views set up in the vendor’s admin. Belongs to the vendor’s software, not to you.

Vendor’s integrations with third parties — if the vendor set up integrations with your CRM, DMS, or ad platforms using their credentials or accounts, those integrations may need to be recreated with your credentials on the new platform.

The practical export checklist

Before you switch providers, request the following exports (get them BEFORE cancelling — you’ll have less leverage after):

1. Customer database (CSV or JSON)
2. Lead / inquiry history (CSV)
3. All page content (as HTML files or in a CMS-portable format)
4. All blog posts (WordPress WXR or CSV)
5. Media library (images, PDFs — as a zip download)
6. URL list of all indexed pages (for the migration redirect map)
7. Historical analytics dashboards (screenshots if not exportable)
8. List of active integrations (CRM, DMS, ad platforms, chat, etc.)
9. Custom conversion goal / event configurations
10. Any custom domain / subdomain configurations

Store all of this in your dealership’s own file system (Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar) before terminating the contract.

What the timing should look like

60 days before contract end: request all exports listed above. Verify data is complete.

30 days before: begin migration to new provider. Old site still live.

Cutover day: DNS switches to new provider. 301 redirects go live. Old contract technically continues for the wind-down period per contract terms.

Post-cutover 30-60 days: keep old provider running as a fallback in case anything breaks on the new site. Historical URL access via old vendor may still be valuable if issues surface.

Contract end: old vendor’s access to your data ends. You’ve kept everything that matters.

The Zoomshop position

Zoomshop’s data-ownership approach is built around the assumption that you may leave someday, and the platform should make that easy — because vendor lock-in doesn’t build trust or long-term relationships. You always own your data. Full export in standard formats is always available with no request or fee. Cancellation is month-to-month. The design is licensed to you but portable (WordPress-standard, exportable as WXR). If Zoomshop stops meeting your needs, we’ve made sure the switching cost is low. That’s how mature SaaS relationships work.