How to Export Your Data From Front (and Its Real Limits)

The one export you can run yourself: contacts

Front has exactly one self-serve export UI, and it covers contacts only. Open the Contacts Manager, pick a contacts tab, click Export at the top, choose which set to pull — Shared contacts, Private contacts, or Shared and auto-created contacts — and click Generate export to download a CSV. Per Front's own guide to importing and exporting contacts, the file carries the fields you would expect: name, email, phone, contact list, account name, and any custom contact fields you have configured.

That is the whole of Front's in-app export surface. There is no button anywhere in Front to export conversations, message history, or ticket data. If you were expecting a "download my inbox" option, it does not exist — which is exactly where the second, harder path begins.

The real export: a Support request (and what it drops)

To export your actual account data — conversations, messages, history — you have to ask Front Support. There is no in-app equivalent. Following Front's account data export documentation, a company admin submits Front's contact form with the exact line "Account data export request for {Customer name}." Front will acknowledge the request within 72 hours and tell you processing has begun. The finished export arrives as CSV files organized into a set of folders by inbox, with each file representing roughly 700MB of data in alphabetical order; larger inboxes are split across multiple files, and EML-format message files are available on request.

Now the honest part. This export is lossy, and Front says so plainly. It does not include, in Front's own words, "attachments, comments, conversations, or discussions from individual inboxes or contact data" — and separately, it excludes message templates and tags. Shared-inbox data fares better (attachments come through, but EML only, alongside comments and conversations), yet anything living in an individual inbox — plus every template and every tag you built — simply does not come out through this path.

So the mental model to carry into any Front export is this: the self-serve tool gives you contacts; the Support request gives you shared-inbox conversations (minus tags and templates); and individual-inbox history, attachments outside EML, tags, and templates are the data you will not get back this way. For a fuller picture of the platform you are exporting from, what Front actually is sets the context.

The API alternative: complete, but you build it

If completeness matters, the Front API is the way around the export's gaps. Every conversation, message, comment, tag, and attachment is reachable programmatically, so an engineer can pull exactly the data the Support export drops. This is the route teams choose when they need attachments preserved, individual-inbox history retained, or tags carried across — the things the CSV path leaves behind.

The trade-off is effort: you are writing (or running) code, paginating through conversations, handling rate limits, and downloading attachments one reference at a time. Our walkthrough of how to use the Front API covers authentication and the core endpoints. It is more work than a button, but it is the only Front-native way to get a genuinely complete export.

What moves vs what you rebuild

If your export is really a migration, a third-party tool does most of the heavy lifting the API otherwise demands. Help Desk Migration supports Front as both a source and a target, moving teammates, contacts with custom fields, accounts, conversations (with subject, tags, channel, state, and assignments), comments with attachments, and knowledge-base content. Front is API-driven, so setup requires generating an API token, temporarily disabling two-factor authentication, and pausing rules before the run. Here is the honest split between what ports and what you rebuild by hand:

The pattern is consistent across every help desk: structured records (contacts, conversations) travel; behavioural configuration (rules, templates, tags, drafts, analytics) does not. Your Front rules, shared drafts, and reporting are logic you designed inside Front, and there is no export format that carries that logic to another platform — you re-create it wherever you land.

Downtime and the honest caveats

A well-run migration involves little hard downtime, but the rebuild is real work. Help Desk Migration runs transfers in the background with Delta and Interval options so your team keeps working during the move, which keeps true outage close to zero. What is not zero is the human effort on the far side: reconnecting channels, rebuilding rules, recreating templates and tag taxonomies, and re-training the team. Budget for that, not for a server being down.

A few more caveats worth naming. The Support export's 72-hour acknowledgement is an acknowledgement, not a delivery estimate — large accounts take longer to process. EML attachments and folders-by-inbox CSVs are archival formats, not something you can drop straight into another tool without transformation. And migration-tool pricing is volume-based with no flat number — a free demo migrates around 20 tickets so you can validate the mapping before committing. On Front's side, which features you can even export from depends partly on your plan; our Front pricing breakdown covers what sits where.

GDPR and data-subject exports

GDPR is a separate question from a bulk export, and Front treats it that way. If you need to satisfy a data-subject access or erasure request, the account data export is the mechanism Front points admins toward — a company admin requests it, and Front can provide message files in EML on request so you can produce or delete a specific individual's records. Because the standard export excludes contact data and individual-inbox content, teams handling formal GDPR requests often combine the Support export with a targeted API pull to be sure every record for a data subject is captured. Treat GDPR completeness as a reason to lean on the API rather than assume the CSV export is exhaustive.

Where Macha fits (honestly)

None of the above is a Macha feature — Front's export is Front's, and the API and migration tooling belong to Front and Relokia respectively. Where Macha comes in is after the move. Macha is an AI agent layer that sits on top of the inbox you land on — it is not a help desk, and it does not replace Front, Gorgias, Zendesk, or wherever you go next. Once you are set up, Macha reads incoming conversations, understands intent rather than keywords, and drafts or sends grounded replies, pulling real order or account data through a custom tool that turns your API into something an agent can call. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists for exactly the reasoning work a migrated rule can't do, and if Front is where you are staying, the Macha–Front connector plugs in directly. Macha's credits are consumed per AI action — never per resolution — so automation and reasoning are priced for what they actually cost.

FAQ

Can I export conversations from Front myself? No. Front's only self-serve export is contacts as a CSV, from the Contacts Manager. To export conversation and message history you must submit an account data export request to Front Support as a company admin — there is no in-app button for it.

What does Front's account export leave out? Per Front, the export excludes "attachments, comments, conversations, or discussions from individual inboxes or contact data," and separately excludes message templates and tags. Shared-inbox conversations and comments do come through, with attachments in EML format only.

How long does a Front data export take? Front acknowledges the request within 72 hours and then begins processing. Actual delivery depends on account size — larger accounts, split into ~700MB CSV files by inbox, take longer.

How do I get a complete export including attachments and tags? Use the Front API. It exposes conversations, messages, comments, tags, and attachments programmatically, so an engineer can pull the data the Support export drops — it is the only Front-native way to get a genuinely complete export.

Does migrating carry my Front rules and templates to the new platform? No. Structured records (contacts, conversations) migrate, but behavioural configuration — rules, shared drafts, templates, and analytics history — does not port to another platform. You rebuild that logic wherever you land.

Moving to a new inbox, or backing one up? Get the reply layer sorted early. Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to whichever help desk you land on.