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ViewExport vs Backupery
Overall: Backupery for Slack is a desktop app that takes scheduled local backups. ViewExport is a desktop and cloud eDiscovery tool designed around what happens after the backup — search, redact, review, and produce defensible exports.
ViewExport vs Backupery Overview
Same form factor, different jobs
Both ship as Mac and Windows desktop apps and both keep data on your machine. The difference is what they're built to help you do once the data is there.
| Feature | ViewExport | Backupery |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Search, redact, and export Slack data for legal holds, DSARs, and HR cases | Scheduled local backups of a Slack workspace, with eDiscovery as a secondary use case |
| Form Factor | Mac and Windows desktop app, plus a cloud edition | Mac and Windows desktop app |
| Best For | Teams that need to investigate, review, or produce Slack data on demand | IT admins who want a local backup of Slack as workspace insurance |
| Licensing | Annual license with a year of included updates; the app keeps running after renewal | One-time perpetual license; updates depend on plan |
| Search & Review UI | Full-text search, date range filters, channel/user filters, redaction, defensible exports | Basic browsing of backed-up content; not optimized for legal review |
| Audit Trail | Immutable audit logs of every search, view, and export | Not the primary use case |
| Data Locality | Desktop edition keeps data on your machine; cloud edition is also available | Backups stay local on the machine running Backupery |
| Cloud Option | Yes — full SaaS for teams that prefer hosted | ❌ Desktop only |
The main question
Backup, or review?
Backupery answers 'is the data safe?' ViewExport answers 'what does the data say?' If you need both, you may want both — they don't overlap as much as the marketing suggests.
Built for review, not insurance
ViewExport assumes the moment you open the app, someone is asking a question: who said what, when, and to whom. Date filters, full-text search, redaction tools, and defensible exports are all front and center.
Desktop edition with the same local-data guarantee
ViewExport’s desktop edition runs on Mac and Windows, keeps every byte of your Slack data on your machine, and ships an annual license that includes a year of updates. The app keeps running after renewal — you just stop getting new features.
Cloud option when you want it
Backupery is a desktop product only. If your team prefers a hosted SaaS with shared review across colleagues, ViewExport’s cloud edition is available alongside the desktop app.
When to pick Backupery
Honest take: Backupery is the right call for these cases
Backupery has been around for years and has a real install base. If your goal is genuinely just a local backup, it does that job well.
You want a one-time license and walk away
Backupery’s perpetual licensing means you pay once and own it. If you’re an IT admin running scheduled backups and you have no review workflow to support, that’s a perfectly reasonable model.
You only need 'insurance' against Slack outages
If your worst-case scenario is “Slack lost our data” or “we lost access to the workspace,” a scheduled local backup solves that problem cleanly. You don’t need a full eDiscovery toolchain.
You're an individual or very small team
Backupery’s desktop-only, one-license-per-machine model fits small teams that don’t share review work. ViewExport is built around teams of reviewers — that’s overkill for one admin.
When to pick ViewExport
If anyone has to do anything with the backup, switch
Backups are only useful when you can find the message that matters. Once a legal hold, a DSAR, or an HR investigation lands, basic file browsing isn't enough.
Real search, not just storage
Find every message a former employee sent across every channel and DM in a date range — without joining channels and triggering Slack alerts. Backupery is built to store; ViewExport is built to find.
Defensible exports for legal review
PDF and CSV bundles with attached metadata, redaction support, and an immutable audit trail of who searched what and when. Counsel and regulators expect this. A backup folder isn’t the same thing.
DSARs and GDPR without the manual work
ViewExport has purpose-built workflows for subject access requests and right-to-erasure scenarios. With Backupery, you’d be manually searching through backup folders and assembling a record.
Security
Same data-stays-local guarantee, with a review UI on top
Both products have a strong security story because the data never has to leave the machine. ViewExport adds the workflow.
Desktop edition: zero data leaves your machine
With the ViewExport desktop app, Slack data stays on the Mac or Windows device you install it on. Our servers never see your data — same security posture as Backupery, with full eDiscovery features on top.
Cloud edition: SOC 2, audit logs, access control
If you choose the hosted edition, you get the full enterprise security stack: encryption at rest and in transit, immutable audit logs, role-based access, and alignment with GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA expectations.
You can switch between editions
Start on desktop, move to cloud if your team grows. Start on cloud, move to desktop if a contract or regulator requires data locality. ViewExport ingests the same Slack export format either way.
Testimonials
Trusted by attorneys and IT leaders.
Most customer testimonials are anonymized at their request.
“With ViewExport, we were able to easily work with a very large Slack export and resolve our incident much faster compared to other Slack export solutions. The tool has great functionality with improvements happening on a regular cadence as well as fantastic support from the ViewExport team.”
Matt R, Head of IT
Large Game Studio in California
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“Glad for ViewExport - in Slack you can't filter easily by date range, which is annoying and not usable for Legal/eDiscovery. And Onna is way too expensive. You guys are perfect.”
Chief Information Officer
NYSE-Listed Adtech Company
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“Handling DSARs is a massive pain point for me with GDPR compliance. We've been working around this problem for 6+ years, across multiple companies.”
Head of IT & Security
Midmarket UK Tech Company
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“This is marvelous. I'm the Slack admin of my company and I'm tired of searching through the json files for messages for HR investigations. Now I can share relevant exports with legal in a few clicks.”
Deborah, IT Manager
Large Not-For-Profit Organization
“With ViewExport, we were able to easily work with a very large Slack export and resolve our incident much faster compared to other Slack export solutions. The tool has great functionality with improvements happening on a regular cadence as well as fantastic support from the ViewExport team.”
Matt R, Head of IT
Large Game Studio in California
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“Glad for ViewExport - in Slack you can't filter easily by date range, which is annoying and not usable for Legal/eDiscovery. And Onna is way too expensive. You guys are perfect.”
Chief Information Officer
NYSE-Listed Adtech Company
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“Handling DSARs is a massive pain point for me with GDPR compliance. We've been working around this problem for 6+ years, across multiple companies.”
Head of IT & Security
Midmarket UK Tech Company
Name and company redacted for client privacy.
“This is marvelous. I'm the Slack admin of my company and I'm tired of searching through the json files for messages for HR investigations. Now I can share relevant exports with legal in a few clicks.”
Deborah, IT Manager
Large Not-For-Profit Organization
FAQ
Need help?
Whether you're a small startup, a growing mid-sized business, or a large enterprise, we're here to make things simple and support you at every step.
We're compatible with all Slack plans: Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Just export any Slack JSON archive!
Yes! Find pricing for the downloadable, local-hosted edition of ViewExport on our pricing page. Great for if you have security concerns about employee data leaving your private cloud, or if your contractual obligations prevent sensitive IP from touching third-party servers. With the local edition, we'll never see or have access to your Slack data files.
You can upload anything that is included with the .ZIP file that contains your .JSON exports from Slack. If those files contain private channel and direct message data, they'll be searchable in ViewExport as well. However, we can't help you get data from Slack that was not contained in your export.
There's no implementation required: ViewExport is as easy as setting up an account, and uploading a .ZIP file. That said, we're happy to walk you through configuration and best practices.
We take security seriously and serve organizations around the world who are entrusted with strict data governance procedures, including for their Slack data. Here's our full security overview.
Yes, with 2 year contracts we can offer 12% off the Annual Enterprise plan, and with 3 year contracts we're able to offer 14.5% off the Annual Enterprise plan. Above-contract usage is billed monthly pro rata. Reach out to our team for details and we can get you set up.
No, ViewExport is an independent service not affiliated with Slack Technologies Inc. We provide tools to view and search Slack export files but are not connected to, funded by, or endorsed by Slack.
ViewExport is a modern, cloud and desktop platform for searching and governing corporate Slack messages to maintain compliance. Think of us as a single-purpose tool — an alternative to Onna, Mimecast Aware, Hanzo, Smarsh, and Pagefreezer. Technical teams can also compare us to Slackdump or Backupery, or read why teams outgrow Slack's native export for legal review. Message Crawler customers will also enjoy switching to ViewExport so that they can filter and search their Slack archives before uploading them to Relativity, saving a reported $10-50k per year on RelOne data and hosting costs, according to some of our customers. You can read more here about the top Slack eDiscovery tools available.
The free trial is 7 days with a nominal data usage limit to prevent abuse. We want you to know that we're able to handle your needs, and we've noticed that most organizations can determine this in 24-48 hours. Need help with your trial? Shoot us a note and see if we can customize the experience for you, or provide a walkthrough.
