Encircle shut down its home inventory app. Here is where to go.

If you exported before the deadline, you have PDF or Excel reports. Those are your rebuild reference: every item, room and value you captured is in them.

If you did not export, Encircle's own notice says the data is inaccessible. There is no back door once a service is switched off server-side.

One practical tip that costs nothing: check your email for old Encircle report attachments. The app generated PDF and Excel reports, and people often emailed those to themselves or their insurer, so a copy of your inventory may be sitting in your inbox already.

Encircle was photo-based and organized by room. That is the right model for a home inventory, and it is worth keeping when you choose a replacement.

A replacement should do three things:

• Capture by photo, fast, because photos are the strongest single piece of proof.
• Organize by room or container, so the record maps to your actual home.
• Export to PDF or CSV, so you are never locked in again.

That last point is the lesson of this shutdown. Export is what turns a service ending into an inconvenience instead of a loss.

Itemlist is our app, so read this knowing that. It follows the same model Encircle used, and it is free to start on iPhone and iPad.

• Set up rooms to mirror Encircle’s room structure, then go deeper where it helps: containers can nest inside containers, so a labeled box inside a closet keeps its own address.
• Photograph each item as you go, the same room-by-room pass you did before. Items take multiple photos, plus brand, model, value and serial number fields.
• Scan barcodes to fill in serial numbers, or to find an item later by scanning it again.
• Documented more than one property in Encircle? One Itemlist inventory holds several locations, free.
• Rebuilding goes faster as a household: with Pro, share a location with family or roommates as editors or viewers.
• Export to CSV whenever you want, so the exit door is always open.

The honest limit: Itemlist runs on iPhone and iPad only. If you need Android, it is not the one for you, and the options below or the full comparison will serve you better.

• Under My Roof if you want the Apple ecosystem, including a native Mac app.
• Everspruce if you want a web app too. It runs on iOS and web, with 50 entries free.
• Home Contents if you want the longest track record in the category.

The full breakdown, with prices and ratings, is on our best home inventory apps comparison.