What exists, record by record.
| What you edited | What Shopify keeps | What Actorly adds |
|---|---|---|
| Products and prices | An activity log of actions: a date, a time, an action and a name, with at most 250 results and no export. Shopify's help pages describe no field-by-field history of a product. | Old and new value of each product and variant change, with who for product changes when Shopify reports it. |
| Inventory | Adjustment history for a product or variant with inventory tracking on, with a Created by column. | History per location with the quantity before and after. It does not put stock back. |
| Discounts | A timeline showing when a discount was created and when it is active or expired. | Title, status and the start and end dates, before and after. The discount amount itself is not compared. |
| Theme code files | A Timeline view for a code file, from which you can restore its contents. Asset files such as images, CSS and JavaScript have no Timeline history. | Which theme is published and what each theme is called, with the date. It does not compare the files inside a theme. |
Collections, pages, blogs, articles, menus, URL redirects, price lists, policies, files, markets, locations, shipping profiles and store settings are also recorded by Actorly, with the old and new value. The Coverage page gives the fields and the limits for each.
How Actorly keeps a version history.
Shopify tells Actorly when a record changes, and Actorly reads the record again to capture exactly what changed, keeping the old value and the new value. For eight kinds, Shopify sends no notice, so Actorly looks on a schedule: weekly on Watch, daily on Restore.
It is a history of changes, not a stored copy of each version of your store. You can search it and, for 15 named fields, put an earlier value back one field at a time.
What a version history here cannot be.
- The record starts the day Actorly is installed. It cannot show what your store looked like before that.
- It is not a way to roll the whole store back, and not a way to pick a date and go back to it.
- It does not restore themes: Shopify lets an app change a theme only with an exemption that Shopify grants, and Actorly does not hold one.
Seeing is free. Actorly Watch costs $0 and keeps three months of change history and one restore a month. Actorly Restore is $29 a month or $240 a year, with unlimited history while you stay on Restore, unlimited single-field restores and export. Shopify bills it on your usual invoice, never per change. There is no trial: Watch is the free plan, with no clock. See pricing.
Questions.
Does Shopify have version history?
For theme code files, yes: the Timeline view lets you compare an entry and restore a file's contents. For a product, Shopify's help pages describe an activity log of actions and no field-by-field history.
Can I see a product's earlier version in Shopify?
Not from a page of its own. A CSV export made before the edit holds the old values, and an app such as Actorly records changes from install.
What does Actorly record that Shopify does not?
The old and new value of each change to the parts of a store it tracks, searchable in one place.
Can Actorly restore an earlier version of a page or a theme?
No. Restore covers 15 named fields on products, variants, collections, files, locations, shipping profiles and markets. Pages are recorded and not restored, and theme restore is not possible.
How long is history kept?
Actorly Watch keeps three months (90 days) of change history. Actorly Restore keeps history for as long as the store stays on Restore and Actorly stays installed. If a store moves from Restore to Watch, history older than 90 days is deleted after a 14-day notice, and upgrading again does not bring it back.