Owning your data (see data ownership) is only useful if you can actually retrieve it. A data-portability clause spells out your right to export — in what format, through what mechanism, and for how long after termination the vendor must keep it available.
For an owner-operator, the danger is the exit. A vendor that will only return your data as an unusable dump, charges a large fee for extraction, or deletes everything the moment the contract ends has enormous leverage over you at renewal. That is a form of hostage-taking dressed up as a technical limitation.
Negotiate a defined export format (standard CSV/JSON or API access), a transition/retrieval window after termination (30–90 days), and clarity on any fee. Also confirm the vendor will delete your data on request once you have it back.
"Upon termination, Vendor shall make Customer Data available for export in a standard machine-readable format for ninety (90) days, after which it will be deleted."
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