Can I Directly Migrate My Aptible Database Backups to Another Platform?

Last updated: July 29, 2025

At Aptible, we understand that data portability is important. We're committed to ensuring customers always have control over their data, including when it's time to move on. However, due to how our backup system is designed for reliability, security, and operational consistency, direct export of Aptible-managed backups outside of our platform isn’t feasible.

Why Can’t Aptible Backups Be Exported?

Aptible uses encrypted EBS volume snapshots to back up your entire database container’s data volume. This approach ensures:

  • Crash-safe volume-level snapshots, capturing your database’s data in its native storage format, not as a SQL dump.

  • No Performance Impact on your Running Database.

  • Faster, more reliable recovery, especially in disaster scenarios or unexpected container failures.

  • End-to-end encryption using keys managed by Aptible’s platform.

Because of this design, the backups:

  • Aren’t in a traditional SQL dump or compressed archive format.

  • Require Aptible’s database image, configuration, and decryption tools to be restored correctly.

  • Can’t be directly mounted or used outside of the Aptible platform.

This architecture prioritizes operational safety and customer reliability, but it does mean that direct portability of the backup format isn’t supported.

What Are My Options for Taking Data Off the Platform?

You still have full access to your data and several supported options to migrate or archive it:

1. Export the Database via Traditional Dump Utilities

You can connect to your database directly using tools like pg_dump, mysqldump, or similar, and export your data in a standard format suitable for migration to other platforms or storage providers. They’re well-suited for long-term archival or universal migration to other database services.

2. Convert Automatic Backups to Manual for Archival on Aptible

If you are planning to deprovision a database and want to retain Aptible-managed backups for a period of time afterward:

  • Contact us BEFORE deprovisioning a database and have us mark its automatic database backups as "manual." If you deprovision a database without first having done this, all automatic backups will immediately be purged.

  • This lets you deprovision the associated database while retaining specific backups.

  • You can then prune these manual backups at your discretion through the Aptible CLI or Dashboard.

This is often a good option if you want to remove a database from Aptible but still maintain access to critical historical backups for compliance or reference.