Can I Restore Backups Without an Active License?

You can browse, restore, and export existing Workspace user backups without an active JITBackup license. This covers backed-up Gmail, user Drive, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks data. New backups require a valid trial or active paid license.

Shared Drives are an exception in the current software: Shared Drive browsing, restore, and export, including recovery to a Shared Drive destination, require an active, activated paid license. These features are also unavailable during trial.

What Must Still Be Available?

An expired license does not replace the practical requirements for recovery:

  • A working JITBackup installation and a console account authorized for the source domain.
  • The required backup data, index, application configuration, and access credentials.
  • A readable backup location, with network access if it is on a share or cloud storage.
  • For restoration into Google, an available destination account, working service account authorization, and the permissions required to write the selected items.

Keeping only the storage media is not a complete recovery plan. Protect the configuration and access information, and test recovery before retiring or replacing the backup server.

Can I Download Instead of Restoring to Google?

Yes. Export an existing user backup to download supported items through your browser. This does not need to write to the original Google account, but the console and backup storage must remain accessible.

Cloud-hosted backups still depend on the storage provider and its credentials. Restoring into Google still depends on Google's services. Self-hosting does not make these operations independent of every external service.

What Should I Check Before the Subscription Ends?

  1. Confirm the final successful backups for the users and apps your company needs.
  2. Review retention; license expiry is not a setting to keep every historical version forever.
  3. Test a user-data export and a small restore while the server and credentials are available.
  4. Plan for the active paid license requirement if Shared Drive recovery will be needed.

See Trial and licensing questions for activation and backup allowance issues.