Managing Salesforce data gets harder as your business grows. Without a deliberate archival strategy, an overloaded org slows down, storage costs climb, and finding the right records during an audit turns into a scramble. A good archiving plan prevents all three.
This guide covers what Salesforce data archiving is, how it differs from backup and retention, how to build a strategy and run the process step by step, the best practices that keep archived data safe and accessible, and how the leading Salesforce data archiving solutions compare, including Flosum.
What is Salesforce Data Archiving?
Salesforce data archiving is the process of moving inactive records out of your active Salesforce org into separate long-term storage, while keeping them accessible for compliance, audits, and historical reference. It reduces the data volume in your org, which improves performance and lowers storage costs, without permanently deleting the records.
The benefits are straightforward: lower storage costs by freeing up active org storage, faster searches, reports, and calculations from a leaner org, retained records for legal and regulatory audits, continued access to archived data for analysis, and simpler day-to-day operations.
Archiving is not backup, retention, or deletion
These terms get used interchangeably, and conflating them leads to buying the wrong tool. They are distinct:
- Archiving moves inactive data to separate long-term storage while keeping it accessible. The goal is a leaner, faster org and compliant long-term retention.
- Backup copies active data so you can recover it quickly after loss or corruption. The goal is short-term recoverability, not decluttering the org.
- Retention is the policy layer: the rules for how long each type of data must be kept. Archiving and deletion both enforce retention.
- Deletion and purging permanently remove data. Archiving is deliberately not deletion, since archived data stays retrievable.
- Restoration brings data back into the org, whether from a backup or an archive.
The practical takeaway: a backup product is not automatically an archiving product. When you evaluate solutions, separate genuine archiving capabilities from backup features that happen to sit in the same platform.
Common Salesforce Data Archiving Challenges
Archiving is essential for performance and compliance, but organizations regularly hit the same obstacles.
- Identifying what to archive. Deciding which records are safe to move requires understanding business processes and usage patterns. Criteria like creation date, last activity, or fiscal-year closure have to be defined carefully so only non-essential data is archived.
- Preserving data integrity and relationships. Archived records often have parent-child relationships and dependencies. Keeping those links intact during archiving is critical to accuracy, and it is where naive archiving breaks.
- Keeping archived data accessible. Archived data still has to be retrievable for audits, analysis, and reference. A solution that stores data but makes it slow or awkward to reach defeats the purpose.
- Meeting regulatory requirements. Different industries carry different rules, healthcare has HIPAA, finance has FINRA and SOX, and privacy regimes like GDPR apply broadly. Archiving has to respect each one's retention and access obligations.
- Handling variable data growth. Teams with high data churn, like sales, generate archival need faster than others. A one-size schedule rarely fits, so archiving frequency has to flex by object and department.
How to Archive Data in Salesforce
A repeatable archiving process turns a risky one-off cleanup into something you can run on a schedule. Work through these steps in order.
- Assess your data. Identify which objects and records are candidates using objective criteria: last-activity date, record age, status, or fiscal-year closure. Quantify how much storage each candidate set frees up so you can prioritize.
- Map relationships. For every object you plan to archive, trace its parent-child and lookup relationships so you do not orphan child records or break dependencies. Decide whether related records move together.
- Define retention and archival policies. Set, per object, how long data stays active, when it gets archived, how long it stays archived, and when (if ever) it is purged. Align these rules with your regulatory obligations and get them in writing.
- Test in a sandbox. Run the archival job against a sandbox first, ideally with masked data, to confirm relationships survive, access still works, and nothing essential gets swept up. Never validate a new policy in production.
- Execute the archive. Run the job in production against a defined, reviewed record set, under a least-privilege integration user rather than a broad admin account.
- Validate the results. Confirm record counts moved as expected, relationships resolved, and archived records are retrievable. Spot-check a sample end to end.
- Monitor and maintain. Track storage savings and job performance on a dashboard, confirm scheduled jobs run, and revisit policies as data models and regulations change. Reassess legal holds with your compliance team on a regular cadence.
Top 5 Salesforce Data Archival Solutions
Five solutions come up most often for Salesforce archiving. A note before the profiles: some of these lead with backup and treat archiving as a secondary capability. Where that is the case, this guide says so, because the brief that matters most for you is whether the tool genuinely archives, not whether it backs up. Ratings below are approximate and current as of publication; check the linked sources for the latest.
1. Flosum
Flosum is an end-to-end enterprise DevSecOps platform purpose-built for Salesforce, and its Backup & Archive product covers both disciplines. On the archiving side, it moves inactive records to separate storage while keeping them accessible, and it lets you host that data where your compliance requirements dictate: public cloud (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), private cloud, or on-premise.
Archiving capabilities
- Policy-driven archiving with granular filters to select the exact records to archive and retain.
- Flexible hosting so archived data can live in the environment your data-residency rules require.
- Accessible archives with retrieval when you need records for audit or analysis.
- Compliance and governance support across frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX, with control over access permissions and retention policies.
Related backup capabilities
Flosum also provides automated and composite backups (capturing only new, changed, and deleted data), single-click sandbox seeding, and one-click control over workflows, flows, process builders, and validation rules during restore. These are backup and DevOps capabilities rather than archiving, but they matter if you want both in one native platform.
Security
Flosum encrypts data in transit and at rest using industry-standard methods (AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2 in transit), and offers customer-controlled encryption keys so data stays under your control.
Pros and cons
- Pros: 100% Salesforce-native architecture suited to regulated industries; flexible hosting for data-residency compliance; granular filtering to select and recover specific records; both archiving and backup in one platform.
- Cons: Salesforce-only, so it is not a cross-platform archiving tool; pricing is gated (custom quotes only).
Pricing and ratings
Custom pricing; contact Flosum for a quote. Ratings are strong on both G2 and AppExchange; check those pages for current scores.
2. Gearset
Gearset is a Salesforce DevOps platform best known for deployment, CI/CD, and backup, and it offers archiving as a separate module. Its archiving stores data off-platform with access controls and restoration, and lets you set rules to archive automatically.
Archiving capabilities
- Automated archiving with custom rules to reduce manual effort.
- Off-platform secure storage with access controls and quick restoration.
- Retention enforcement that can delete archives automatically once retention limits are reached.
- Preview and dashboards to review data sets before scheduled runs and monitor archiving activity in one place.
Pros and cons
- Pros: industry-grade security; centralized monitoring of archived data; archive previews before runs; automatic archive deletion at retention limits.
- Cons: archiving is a separate module from its core deployment product, so it can be costly to add; reviewers note a learning curve.
Pricing and ratings
Gearset prices its products modularly, per connected org for core tiers, with archiving licensed separately from deployment. Because the archiving module is priced independently, confirm current figures on Gearset's pricing page rather than assuming the deployment price. A 30-day free trial is available. Ratings on G2 are strong; check for the current score.
3. Odaseva
Odaseva is an enterprise data platform for large Salesforce customers, and archiving is a first-class product for it rather than an afterthought. It archives obsolete data to keep the org lean while maintaining access, with a focus on complex data models and privacy compliance.
Archiving capabilities
- Automated data removal from the active org to free storage and improve performance.
- Customizable archiving policies to tailor retention rules to compliance needs.
- Salesforce-native archive viewer so archived records stay accessible in a familiar interface.
- Complex data model support that handles intricate relationships, cascade deletions, and orphan records so dependencies are preserved.
- Zero-trust security with encryption and access controls.
Pros and cons
- Pros: genuine, dedicated archiving product; strong handling of complex data models; customizable compliance-aligned policies; Archive Viewer for easy retrieval.
- Cons: gated pricing (custom quotes only); enterprise focus may be more than smaller teams need.
Pricing and ratings
Custom pricing; contact Odaseva. Compliance coverage includes GDPR and CPRA. Ratings on G2 and AppExchange are solid; check those pages for current numbers.
4. AutoRABIT
AutoRABIT's Vault is a data protection product that leads with backup and metadata management and includes built-in archival. Its archiving moves obsolete data to lower-cost cloud storage while keeping it accessible from Salesforce.
Archiving capabilities
- Built-in archival that moves obsolete data to scalable, enterprise-class cloud storage to reduce active-org storage costs.
- Accessible archives that remain reachable from within Salesforce.
Related backup capabilities
Vault is primarily a backup product: automated cloud backups of data and metadata, snapshot comparison tools, and sandbox seeding with anonymized data. Useful, but backup and seeding are not archiving, so weigh Vault on its archival features specifically if archiving is your goal.
Pros and cons
- Pros: encryption in transit and at rest; long-term storage for performance; fast recovery objectives; broad recovery of data, metadata, and attachments.
- Cons: reviewers note complexity and a meaningful learning curve; archiving is secondary to the backup story.
Pricing and ratings
Custom pricing; see AutoRABIT's plans. Ratings on G2 are solid; check for the current score.
5. Grax
Grax is a data management platform whose archiving keeps obsolete data out of the active org while ensuring it never leaves your environment, which is its main differentiator. It targets records precisely and keeps archived data actionable inside production.
Archiving capabilities
- Auto-archive for recurring, set-and-forget archival jobs.
- Precision targeting of records using Salesforce reports, custom criteria, or SOQL queries.
- Lifecycle management to create and maintain retention and lifecycle policies for compliance.
- In-app access so you can view and act on archived data directly in production without leaving the environment.
- Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS) to archive to your own AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-premise storage, so data stays in your environment.
Pros and cons
- Pros: archived data stays in your own environment; precise SOQL-based targeting; automated recurring jobs; restore anytime.
- Cons: gated pricing; archiving is Salesforce-focused.
Pricing and ratings
Tiered plans with a free trial; see Grax's pricing. Compliance coverage includes GDPR and CCPA. Ratings on AppExchange are strong; check for the current score.
Salesforce Data Archiving Best Practices
The tool matters less than the discipline around it. These practices separate archiving that helps from archiving that creates new problems.
- Assign policy ownership. Someone, usually a data or compliance owner, has to own the archiving policy. Unowned policies drift and go stale.
- Use objective archival criteria. Base what-to-archive decisions on defined signals (record age, last activity, status, fiscal-year closure), not ad hoc judgment.
- Preserve relationships. Confirm parent-child and lookup relationships survive archiving so you do not orphan records or break dependencies.
- Encrypt archived data. Require encryption in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher) and at rest (AES-256). Reject any solution that moves data unencrypted across networks.
- Enforce least-privilege access. Limit who can archive, view, and restore. Excessive access to archived data raises risk and complicates compliance.
- Get legal and compliance review. Have legal sign off on retention periods and legal holds before you automate anything that deletes or moves regulated data.
- Automate the process. Manual archiving does not scale and invites error. Automate scheduled jobs with clear rules.
- Run test archives first. Validate every new policy in a sandbox, ideally with masked data, before it touches production.
- Monitor continuously. Track storage savings, job success, and policy drift on a dashboard rather than assuming jobs ran.
- Test restores, not just archives. An archive you cannot retrieve is worthless. Periodically restore archived records to prove the round trip works.
How Flosum Supports a Salesforce Data Archival Strategy
Archiving directly affects your org's performance, which affects everything your teams do in Salesforce, so the solution you choose matters. Flosum fits organizations that want archiving and backup in one place, run natively inside Salesforce.
As an end-to-end enterprise DevSecOps platform purpose-built for Salesforce, Flosum works directly inside the platform, so archived data can stay within your Salesforce trust boundary or in hosting you control. It provides policy-driven archiving with granular filters, accessible archives for audit and analysis, and compliance-aligned controls for frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX, with encryption in transit and at rest and customer-controlled keys. Because archiving and backup share one native platform, teams avoid stitching together separate tools for recovery and retention.
Want to reduce archival complexity and keep your Salesforce org fast? Schedule a demo to see how Flosum fits your archival strategy.
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