Guides / Snapshots vs backups
Snapshots vs real workflow backups
A Snapshot answers “how do I set up the next client?” A backup answers “what did this workflow look like before someone edited it?” Agencies need both, and confusing one for the other is how automations get quietly broken.
What a Snapshot actually is
A Snapshot is a packaged template of an entire sub-account: workflows, funnels, pipelines, calendars, custom fields, templates. You export it from an agency dashboard and import it into a fresh sub-account, where every included asset gets recreated.
That makes it the right tool for exactly one job: deploying a proven setup to the next client. Two-day onboarding becomes two hours.
What a Snapshot can’t do
It’s not readable
A Snapshot file is a deployment artifact. You can’t open it and read what a workflow does, and you can’t compare last month’s snapshot to this month’s to see what changed. For history and auditing it might as well not exist.
It’s all-or-nothing
You don’t export “the Appointment Reminder workflow”, you export the account (or coarse asset groups). Restoring one workflow from a Snapshot means importing everything else it carries and cleaning up duplicates afterwards.
It needs agency access
Snapshots live at the agency level. If you’re a contractor or team member working inside someone else’s agency, they’re out of reach entirely.
Imports create duplicates
Applying a Snapshot to an existing sub-account adds its assets alongside what’s already there. “Restoring” into a live account means untangling two copies of your funnels and pipelines.
What a real backup gives you
A backup is a dated, readable record of what a workflow said at a point in time. When something breaks or a client asks “did the follow-up sequence always send three emails?”, you answer from the record instead of memory. The practical test: can you diff two versions? With a Snapshot, no. With JSON exports, yes, that’s the default.
The side-by-side
- Deploying to new clients: Snapshot. Nothing else comes close.
- Surviving edits: backup. Before any meaningful change to a live workflow.
- Auditing inherited accounts: backup with reference checking: dead tags, renamed pipelines, triggers pointing at nothing.
- Handovers: both. Snapshot so the next agency can deploy, exports so they can see what they’ve been sold.
How we’d sequence them
Build the setup once → Snapshot it for deployment. Then, before every meaningful edit to a live client account, export the workflows you’re about to touch as dated JSON. Monthly bulk exports for accounts nobody’s watching. Ten seconds per workflow, free tier covers it, and it’s the difference between “something changed” and knowing exactly what.