A sanitised database export is a working copy of your site’s data with anything sensitive — customer personal information, payment details, private user data — removed or replaced with realistic placeholders, so a developer, agency, or testing environment can work with real-feeling data without you handing over information you shouldn’t.
What “sanitised” actually covers
This isn’t a blanket scrub of absolutely everything; it’s a targeted removal of specific sensitive fields — customer emails and addresses, payment tokens, private messages — while preserving the structure and realistic shape of your data so the export is still genuinely useful for development or testing.
We agree with you upfront exactly what counts as sensitive for your specific site, since that varies by what you actually store — a membership site holds different sensitive data than a simple brochure site with a contact form.
It’s worth deciding this deliberately rather than defaulting to “remove everything that looks personal,” since over-sanitising can leave a developer testing against data so generic it no longer surfaces the real edge cases your actual customers create, defeating much of the point of using real data in the first place.
Timing is worth a mention too. This is a point-in-time snapshot, and if the recipient needs it to stay current with the live site over a longer project, that’s a different, ongoing arrangement rather than a single export, worth flagging before we scope this as a one-off rather than discovering partway through the project timeline that ongoing, continuous, live access was actually what was genuinely needed all along.
Database export & sanitised copy for handover
You need to hand a working copy of your database to a developer or agency without exposing customer or payment data. We sanitise it properly and confirm what was removed.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
What we need from you
- Confirmation of who’s receiving the export and what they’ll use it for
- What data you consider sensitive for your specific site beyond the obvious (customer PII, payment data)
- Whether you need the whole database or specific tables only
- The format the recipient needs it in, and any tooling constraints they’ve mentioned
This or something else?
| Handing off a working copy of your site to a developer, agency, or contractor | This fix covers it |
| Setting up a staging environment for your own team, lighter sanitisation needs | This fix covers it too |
| General database size or bloat, not about handover | Database size audit & reduction report |
| A full site migration to new hosting, not just a database copy | Host-to-host migration |
| Ongoing sync between environments rather than a one-time export | Doesn’t apply; this is a single point-in-time export |
What we do
- Confirm exactly which data counts as sensitive for your specific site and use case
- Export the full database or specified tables
- Replace or remove sensitive fields with realistic, non-identifying placeholder data
- Verify the sanitised copy still functions correctly for development or testing purposes
- Package it in the format and structure the recipient actually needs
- Confirm with you that nothing sensitive made it into the final export before it’s sent
What is included
- A sanitised, working copy of your database
- Sensitive fields identified and handled according to what you specify
- Verification that the sanitised copy remains functionally usable
- A written summary of exactly what was removed or replaced
Not included
- Setting up the destination environment the export is delivered to
- Ongoing syncing between the sanitised copy and your live site
- Sanitising media files or uploads, which is a separate consideration
- Legal advice on what you’re required to remove for compliance purposes
Questions about this fix
Will the sanitised data still work for testing realistic scenarios?
Yes — the aim is data that looks and behaves like the real thing structurally, just without anything identifying a real customer, so testing against it still catches genuine issues.
Who decides what counts as sensitive?
You do, ultimately — we bring the technical knowledge of where sensitive data typically lives in a WordPress and WooCommerce database, but the final call on what must be removed for your situation is yours.
Can you sanitise just the customer table and leave the rest untouched?
Yes, if that's genuinely all the recipient needs — we scope this to what's actually required rather than exporting more than necessary by default.
Does this include media files and uploaded images?
Not by default, since those live outside the database itself. If the handover needs images too, tell us and we'll scope that in separately.
How do I know nothing sensitive slipped through?
We provide a written summary of exactly what was removed or replaced, and you're welcome to spot-check the result yourself before it goes to the recipient.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.