How to backup monday.com data? Export and disaster recovery options
Our entire company runs on monday.com and I'm realizing we have zero backup strategy. What happens if: • Someone accidentally deletes a board? • We need to audit historical data? • monday.com has an extended outage? • We want to migrate to another platform? Questions: 1. Does monday.com have automatic backups? 2. Can we export all board data (including file attachments)? 3. Are there third-party backup solutions? 4. What's the data retention policy for deleted items? 5. Can we set up automated periodic exports?
2 Answers
Critical topic that most monday.com admins overlook. Here's the full picture:
monday.com's built-in protections: • Deleted items go to a 30-day Recycle Bin (then permanently deleted) • Deleted boards can be recovered within 30 days • Activity logs are retained for 6 months (Pro) or unlimited (Enterprise) • monday.com has their own server backups (99.9% SLA)
Export options: • Board export: Excel/CSV (includes column data, excludes files) • Account-level export: Admin > Export (all boards, takes time for large accounts) • API export: Most comprehensive — query everything including files, updates, activity logs
Third-party backup solutions: • Rewind.io — automated daily backups, one-click restore • CData — sync to your own database for full control • Custom: Use the API + cloud storage (S3/GCS) for DIY backups
My recommended strategy: 1. Weekly automated export via API to cloud storage 2. Rewind.io for quick restore capability 3. Monthly full account export stored offline 4. Document your monday.com structure so you could rebuild if needed
File attachments: These are NOT included in standard exports. Use the API to download them separately. This is the biggest gap.
We built an automated backup system using: • monday.com API (GraphQL) • AWS Lambda (runs daily at 2 AM) • S3 bucket with versioning
Total cost: ~$15/month for 50+ boards.
The script queries all boards, items, column values, updates, and file URLs. Files are downloaded and stored separately.
Key learning: The API has rate limits. For large accounts (1000+ items), you need pagination and backoff logic. Our full backup takes ~45 minutes for 80 boards.
Recovery testing: We test restoring from backup quarterly. Last test, we restored a deleted board with 500 items in 20 minutes.
If you don't want to build this, Rewind.io is worth every penny. Their restore is genuinely one-click.