Frequently Asked Questions

Not at all. Installing is purely a convenience — a home-screen icon and a full-screen view. Everything works exactly the same in an ordinary browser tab, on any device.

This is what SteelFolio is built for. The goal isn’t just to list what you own — it’s to produce a record that holds up when you actually need it. A strong entry for each knife includes:

• Clear photos — overall and close-ups of marks, blade, and any flaws.
• Identifying details — maker, model, blade steel, serial and model numbers, and your own inventory number if you cross-reference a policy rider.
• A receipt or proof of purchase, uploaded right alongside the knife.
• A condition assessment — SteelFolio walks you through a structured condition audit and records a grade, so the knife’s state is documented and dated, not just asserted.
• A current value, with the date it was last updated.

When you’re ready, SteelFolio generates a full appraisal-style PDF report from those records — the kind of dated, photographic, itemized documentation an adjuster relies on at claim time. That’s the difference between logging a collection and being able to prove it.

See a sample report (PDF) →

That comes down to your policy type — worth confirming with your agent before you file a claim, not after. Three common structures:

• Agreed value / scheduled — you and the insurer set each item’s covered value up front from your documentation, and that’s what a covered loss pays. The usual standard for serious collectibles.
• Replacement cost — pays what it costs to replace the piece with like kind today: current market value.
• Actual cash value (ACV) — replacement cost minus depreciation. Fine for a laptop; a poor fit for an appreciating collection, since it can discount what your knives have actually become worth.

For an appreciating collection you generally want agreed-value or replacement-cost coverage — and on either, what you originally paid isn’t the payout; the documented current value is. That’s why SteelFolio helps you set current value using comparable-sales research, then puts that value — and the date it was last updated — front and center on the report, with your receipt on file as proof of ownership rather than as the figure that gets paid.

Policies vary, and this isn’t insurance advice — ask your agent which structure yours uses, and whether your schedule reflects current values.

We ask for as little about you as possible. To use SteelFolio you give us a username and an email address — that’s it. No legal name, no mailing address, no phone number. The less identifying information we hold, the less there is to protect, and the less is ever at risk.

Your collection is tied to your account and is private by default — other collectors can’t browse, search, or see what you own. The only things another person ever sees are what you deliberately choose to share: a knife’s share link you send them, or a market comp you log for the community (which you can attribute to an anonymous “Collector #” alias in Settings).

We don’t sell your data, ever. The only parties that touch it are the service providers required to run SteelFolio — hosting, payments, and email delivery — each receiving only the minimum it needs. The full list, and everything else about how your data is handled, is in our Privacy Policy.

Payments are handled entirely by Stripe, a dedicated payment processor — your card and billing details go to them, never to our servers.

Complete privacy from us isn’t something any service can honestly promise: a SteelFolio administrator can access account and platform information when it’s needed to run the service or help with a support request. But because we collect so little to begin with, there’s simply far less here that could identify you than most apps hold. Your records exist to serve you, not to be a product we trade on.

Your account is also protected by encrypted connections and optional two-factor authentication, so access stays in your hands.

Yes — on your terms, one knife at a time. Every knife in your collection can generate a share link: a public, read-only page for that piece that you can send to anyone, no SteelFolio account required on their end. It’s built for the real reasons a collector shares — showing a piece to a buyer, a fellow collector, an appraiser, or family.

You stay in control: price and receipt information are hidden by default, and every link can be revoked the moment you want it gone. Paid plans add finer control — choose exactly which fields are visible, show an asking price, and set links to expire automatically.

Sharing your whole collection as a browsable showcase isn’t here yet — that one is still on the roadmap. And as always, you can generate a PDF report or export your data and hand it to anyone yourself.

Your records are yours, and we won’t hold them hostage. SteelFolio lets you export your entire collection — photos, details, and receipts — as a downloadable backup at any time, on every tier including the free one. You can also generate PDF reports of what you own.

That means you’re never locked in. If you stop subscribing, your underlying data and your ability to export it don’t vanish, and if you ever want to walk away entirely, you can take a complete copy of everything with you. A documentation tool you can’t get your records back out of isn’t worth trusting — so we built it the other way around.

Those aren’t just promises in a FAQ: our Terms of Service commit to free export at every tier, and if SteelFolio ever shut down, to at least 60 days’ notice with export available the whole time. And if you want to leave today, deleting your account is self-service and immediate — here’s exactly how deletion works, including what happens to backups.

SteelFolio is a documentation tool, so it’s designed to be online when you’re viewing or editing your collection — that keeps your records consistent and your data current and secure. The installed app loads its shell quickly, but your collection itself always comes from the server, never from a copy left on the device.

That said, your records don’t have to live only online. On any plan, you can export your complete collection as a spreadsheet or full ZIP backup at any time and keep those files on your phone or computer. On the Collector plan, you can also generate your appraisal PDF whenever you like and store it the same way — so a current copy of your documentation rides with you into the safe-deposit box, the insurance binder, or a show floor with no signal.