Shield Analytics is winding down. Its founders published a notice saying that both Google and LinkedIn made it clear they could not continue operating Shield as it was built, and that they decided not to fight it. The Chrome extension has been pulled.
If you used Shield, you have two problems, and only one of them is urgent.
The urgent one is your data. Shield had been retaining LinkedIn post history since 2018, and for most people it holds the only complete record of how their content performed. The non-urgent one is picking a replacement, which you can take a week over.
Most of the advice published so far tells you to "export your data before it's too late" and then recommends whichever tool the author sells. That is not wrong, but it skips the part that actually matters: some of your history is recoverable from LinkedIn itself and some of it is not, and knowing which is which changes what you should do in the next hour.
Key Takeaways
- Export Shield first. It is the only place your pre-2025 performance history exists
- LinkedIn will give you back the last 365 days with impressions and engagements intact, so that portion is not lost even if you miss the Shield window
- LinkedIn's full data archive returns your post text and dates but no metrics at all, which is why it is not a substitute
- No replacement tool can backfill anything beyond LinkedIn's rolling window, so the sooner you connect one, the shorter your blind spot
- FeedBoss is the best fit if you used Shield to decide what to write, because its AI writer learns your voice from your own top-performing posts, at $29/mo with writing, scheduling, and engagement included rather than as a separate subscription
- AuthoredUp is the closest like-for-like dashboard, Metricool is the budget multi-channel option, and LinkedIn's native analytics is free if you export it yourself twice a year
What Actually Happened
Shield launched in 2018 and became the default LinkedIn analytics dashboard for creators: impressions, engagements, follower growth, earned media value, top posts, and a full post history that went back as far as your account did.
The wind-down notice is short. It says Google and LinkedIn made clear that Shield could not continue operating as it was built, thanks the people who trusted it, and points to support@shieldapp.ai. It does not give a shutdown date.
That last detail is the one to act on. There is no published deadline, which means there is no date you can safely plan around. Treat access as something that could end at any time.
Shield is not an isolated case either. Inlytics, the other well-known LinkedIn analytics specialist, folded into Taplio around the same time. The category of third-party tools that read LinkedIn data from outside LinkedIn is visibly narrowing, and that is worth factoring into what you replace it with.
What You Can and Cannot Get Back
This is the part almost every other guide gets vague about. There are three separate data sources, they contain different things, and only one of them is disappearing.
| Source | What it contains | How far back | At risk? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shield export | Full post history with impressions, engagements, follower growth, earned media value | As far back as your account | Yes, this is the one that disappears |
| LinkedIn creator analytics export | Post-level impressions and engagements, audience demographics, follower trends | Rolling 365 days | No, but it only ever shows the last year |
| LinkedIn full data archive | Post text, dates, links, media. No reactions, comments, or impressions | All time | No |
Read that table again, because it contains the one thing worth knowing today: anything older than roughly 12 months exists only inside Shield. Your last year of performance data is safe regardless, because LinkedIn will re-export it on demand. Your 2019 through 2024 numbers are not.
It also explains why "just download your LinkedIn data archive" is bad advice on its own. The archive's Shares file tells you what you wrote and when. It says nothing about how any of it performed. If a tool offers to import your LinkedIn archive and restore your history, understand what that actually restores: your posts, not your metrics.
The Export Checklist, in Order
Do these in this order. The first one is time-sensitive and the other two are not.
1. Export everything from Shield
Log in at app.shieldapp.ai and download every CSV it offers, across the widest date range available. Do not filter to the last quarter because that is what you usually report on. The whole point is the years you cannot get anywhere else.
If you report to clients or an exec from Shield dashboards, screenshot or PDF those views too. Recreating a chart from raw CSV later is possible but tedious, and screenshots take a minute now.
Store the files somewhere you will find them in two years, not in your Downloads folder.
2. Export the last 365 days from LinkedIn directly
Go to your LinkedIn analytics, open the Content or post analytics view, set the date range as wide as it will go, and export. LinkedIn caps the window at 365 days from today and will not go further back.
This gives you impressions and engagements per post plus audience demographics and follower trends, in a format you own. It overlaps with your Shield export, and that redundancy is a feature: it gives you a clean, LinkedIn-sourced version of the most recent year to check the Shield numbers against.
Worth putting a recurring reminder in your calendar to repeat this every 6 to 12 months from now on. That habit is what Shield was quietly doing for you.
3. Request your full LinkedIn data archive
From Settings and Privacy, request a copy of your data. It takes up to 24 hours to arrive.
You get your complete post text and dates going back to the beginning, which is genuinely useful for repurposing, for training a writing tool on your own voice, or for rebuilding a content inventory. Just do not expect metrics in it.
How to Choose the Replacement
Before you compare tools, work out what you actually opened Shield for. Most people used it for one of three jobs, and they point to different answers.
- Deciding what to write next. This is what most Shield users actually did with it. You checked which hooks, formats, and topics worked, then wrote more of those. You need analytics wired into a writing workflow, not a standalone dashboard you open on Mondays.
- Client or exec reporting. You need polished exports, date-range control, and per-profile separation. Depth of history matters and price matters less.
- Curiosity and a weekly number check. You looked at impressions on Monday and moved on. LinkedIn's native analytics probably covers you for free.
If you skip this step you will buy on feature count and end up with a dashboard you check twice.
The Alternatives, Honestly
These are ordered by the three jobs above, not by which one has the longest feature list.
FeedBoss: if analytics was how you decided what to write
If you opened Shield to work out which hook or topic to repeat, a standalone dashboard was always a slightly awkward fit for that job. You read the numbers in one tab, then went and wrote in another, and nothing carried across.
FeedBoss closes that loop, and it does it in a way a dashboard structurally cannot: your best-performing posts are what the AI writer learns your voice from. It reads your top posts by engagement and builds the voice profile every draft is generated against. You are not reading a chart and then trying to remember what made those posts work. The thing that worked is the input.
Analytics itself tracks the engagement side: reactions, comments, reposts, and engagement rate charted over time, follower growth, and a breakdown of how your text posts, images, carousels, and videos perform against each other. It compares any date range against the equivalent previous period, and it works out your strongest day and time of day from your own posting history rather than from a generic industry chart.
Around that sit the things Shield never did: writing, carousels, scheduling, engagement tools, and separate client workspaces on the higher plans.
Two things to know before you switch. FeedBoss tracks engagement rather than impressions, so if reach is the number you report on, pair it with LinkedIn's native export, which gives you impressions for free. And no tool can hand back data LinkedIn no longer exposes, so if years of retained history is the whole requirement, AuthoredUp is closer to what you had.
Pricing: $29/month Starter, $59 Pro, $149 Agency, with analytics included rather than billed as a second subscription. 7-day free trial, no card required.
AuthoredUp: the closest like-for-like dashboard
AuthoredUp is the nearest thing to what Shield did. It keeps a full post history with advanced metrics including saves, sends, reach, profile views, and followers gained, and breaks performance down by post type, length, and posting time. It also does the formatting side, with real desktop and mobile previews and the "see more" fold visible before you publish.
It is a Chrome extension, which is the same architecture Shield used, so it collects when you have LinkedIn open rather than continuously in the background. That is a real difference from Shield's server-side monitoring and worth knowing before you switch.
Pricing: $19.95/month for individuals, $16.63/month billed yearly, or $14.95 per profile per month on Business with a three-profile minimum. Free trial, no card required.
Metricool: the budget multi-channel option
Metricool covers LinkedIn scheduling and analytics alongside other social platforms, with competitor benchmarking and exportable client reports. It is the cheapest way to keep a durable record, though its free plan excludes LinkedIn, so you need a paid plan for this job.
It is a generalist, so the LinkedIn depth is shallower than Shield's was. If your job is a monthly client report across several channels, that trade is fine. If LinkedIn is the only channel that matters, you will feel the gap.
Pricing: Starter from $25/month for up to 5 brands ($45 for up to 10), Advanced from $67/month. The free plan does not include LinkedIn.
Taplio: analytics plus writing, and where Inlytics went
Taplio pairs post analytics and follower tracking with an AI writer that learns your style, plus a viral post inspiration feed and a light CRM. It also absorbed Inlytics in 2026, so if you were an Inlytics user this is where you already ended up.
Pricing: from $39/month, free trial available.
LinkedIn native analytics: free, and enough for some people
Do not skip this option out of habit. LinkedIn's own creator analytics gives you post-level impressions and engagements, audience demographics, and follower trends, exportable, for free. The single real limitation is the rolling 365-day window.
If you export every six months and keep the files, you have effectively rebuilt the core of what Shield did at no cost. It is more manual, and it will not chart three-year trends for you, but for a lot of people it is genuinely sufficient.
For a wider view of the category, see our roundup of the best LinkedIn analytics tools.
The Lesson Worth Taking From This
Shield did not fail because it was a bad product. It was the best in its category for seven years. It stopped because the platforms it depended on decided it could not keep operating the way it did.
That risk applies to every tool that reads LinkedIn data from outside LinkedIn, including the ones recommended above. It is not a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to change one habit:
- Export on a schedule. Twice a year, pull your data out of whatever tool you use. Ten minutes, and it makes any future shutdown an inconvenience instead of a loss.
- Prefer tools that export cleanly. If a tool makes it hard to get your data out, that is a signal about what happens when it goes away.
- Do not let one tool be the only copy of anything. This is the whole lesson in one line.
Shield users are learning this the expensive way. Everyone else gets to learn it for free.
One last thing worth saying plainly. Shield was a dashboard, but almost nobody wanted a dashboard. What people wanted was the answer to "what should I write next week?", and reading it off a chart and carrying it into another tab was the manual step everyone tolerated because there was no alternative.
That is the job FeedBoss is built for. Your best posts are not just something you read about in a chart, they are what the AI writer learns your voice from, and the scheduling and engagement tools are right there to act on it, in one $29/mo subscription instead of two. If you want a pure reporting dashboard and nothing else, AuthoredUp is the closer swap and this guide stands by that. For everyone else, replacing Shield is a chance to stop doing the manual step.
Reactions, comments, shares and follower growth, one period against the last.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shield Analytics really shutting down?
Yes. Shield published a wind-down notice stating that Google and LinkedIn made it clear it could not continue operating as built, and its Chrome extension has been pulled. The notice does not give a shutdown date, which is why exporting now rather than later is the right call.
Why is Shield shutting down?
According to its founders, both Google and LinkedIn made clear that Shield could not continue operating as it was built, and they chose not to fight it. Shield read LinkedIn data from outside LinkedIn, which is the same architecture every third-party LinkedIn analytics tool depends on.
How do I export my Shield data?
Log in at app.shieldapp.ai, set the widest date range available, and download every CSV export it offers. Also screenshot or PDF any dashboards you report from. Store the files somewhere permanent rather than leaving them in Downloads.
Can I recover my LinkedIn analytics history without Shield?
Partly. LinkedIn's own creator analytics will export post-level impressions and engagements for a rolling 365 days, so the last year is recoverable at any time. Anything older than that window exists only in Shield. LinkedIn's full data archive returns your post text and dates for all time but contains no performance metrics.
Will any tool import my Shield history?
No tool can restore performance data older than LinkedIn's 365-day window, because LinkedIn does not expose it. Some tools can import your LinkedIn data archive, which restores your posts but not their metrics. Keep your Shield CSVs as the archive of record.
What is the best Shield Analytics alternative?
It depends what you used Shield for. If it was to decide what to write next, FeedBoss is the better fit at $29/month, because analytics sit alongside the AI writer, calendar, and engagement tools rather than in a separate app you have to check. If you need a pure reporting dashboard, AuthoredUp is the closest like-for-like at $19.95/month, and Metricool is the cheapest durable option at $25/month.
Can FeedBoss replace Shield?
For creators, mostly yes. FeedBoss tracks reactions, comments, reposts, engagement rate, follower growth, and performance by post format, compares any period against the one before it, and identifies your best day and time from your own history. It adds what Shield never had: AI writing trained on your top posts, carousels, scheduling, engagement tools, and separate client workspaces. Two gaps to know about: it tracks engagement rather than impressions, and no tool can restore history older than LinkedIn's rolling 365-day window.
Is there a free Shield alternative?
LinkedIn's native creator analytics is free and covers post-level impressions, engagements, audience demographics, and follower trends, with export. The catch is the rolling 365-day window, so you have to export regularly and keep the files yourself. Metricool has a free plan, but it excludes LinkedIn, so its cheapest LinkedIn option is Starter at $25/month.
What happened to Inlytics?
Inlytics, the other well-known LinkedIn analytics specialist, folded into Taplio in 2026. The inlytics.io domain now redirects there, so it is no longer a standalone option.