For Salesforce Admins, Architects, and IT teams, data growth isn’t just a storage concern; it directly impacts org performance, user experience, and long-term scalability. As objects become heavier and record volumes climb, reports slow down, automations lag, and storage costs spike. A well-designed Salesforce data archiving strategy is one of the most effective ways to maintain a clean, high-performing org without sacrificing compliance or data accessibility.
In this blog, we break down the top Salesforce data archiving strategies you can implement today, from native capabilities to advanced third-party and cloud-based approaches, along with when each one makes sense.
Why Salesforce Data Archiving Strategy Matters: Key Business Drivers
Salesforce orgs naturally grow over time. For Salesforce Admins, Architects, and IT teams, the challenge isn’t whether to archive but how. Here are the key business drivers that show why Salesforce archiving matters:
Storage Cost Optimization
Salesforce storage is expensive. As objects accumulate millions of records, your data and file storage quickly reach their limits, forcing costly upgrades. Archiving older, low-access records to Big Objects, external systems, or tiered storage helps teams control storage spend while keeping Salesforce lean.
Performance & Scalability
It is one of the important reasons why admins create a Salesforce archival strategy. High-volume objects slow down queries, reports, list views, automations, and user experience. By offloading historical data, admins can boost system responsiveness, reduce timeouts, and maintain stable performance even as the business scales.
Compliance & Regulatory Requirements
Industries with strict retention mandates (financial services, healthcare, government) must store data securely for years—even decades. Archiving helps teams meet retention laws, preserve audit trails, and enforce defensible deletion without bloating production orgs.
Better Data Lifecycle Management
Not all data needs to live in Salesforce forever. Archiving supports a clean data lifecycle—active data stays in the CRM for daily operations, while historical data is retained safely but cost-effectively elsewhere. This ensures clarity, consistency, and easier governance across the org.
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Top 5 Salesforce Data Archiving Strategies You Shouldn’t Miss
Among many data archiving strategies, these five proven approaches help to successfully archive Salesforce data and retrieve it whenever required. Implementing the right data archival strategy ensures scalability, compliance, and long-term efficiency.
Custom External Objects for Salesforce Data Archiving
External objects function similarly to custom objects in Salesforce, except that their record data is stored outside the Salesforce org. Each external object is linked to an external data source definition, which defines how to access the external system. This Salesforce archive approach works best for organizations where data security is not a major concern. When used strategically, it can be part of an effective data archiving strategy to reduce storage pressure and optimize performance.
Heroku-Based Solutions for Salesforce Data Archiving
Data Extraction as a Simple Salesforce Archiving Strategy
A straightforward data archiving strategy in Salesforce involves extracting Salesforce data into external systems. Records can be exported directly from Salesforce or via ETL tools as .csv files, stored as flat files externally to reduce production load. However, this manual Salesforce archive method often introduces complexity and reliability concerns, making it less effective compared to automated Salesforce data archiving solutions.
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Native Archiving Using Big Objects – A Core Salesforce Archival Solution
Big Objects is Salesforce’s native, big data-based storage designed to handle billions of records in a read-only format within the trusted Salesforce platform. By leveraging Big Objects, enterprises can move inactive data from primary storage into a secure Salesforce archive, ensuring consistent performance and seamless access.
However, this Salesforce data archival strategy requires additional tools to automate and manage archiving at scale. That’s where specialized Salesforce archival solutions like DataArchiva come into play—offering automation, monitoring, and compliance control to make data archiving in Salesforce simpler and more effective.
AppExchange Archiving Solutions like DataArchiva
For enterprises seeking to archive data to external databases such as Heroku, AWS, or Azure, DataArchiva External Archiving offers an advanced Salesforce archival solution—helping implement flexible and cost-effective Salesforce data archiving strategies aligned with compliance and business goals.
Ways to Strengthen Your Salesforce Data Archiving Strategies
- Classify Data Before Archiving: Identify critical vs. inactive data to ensure accurate and efficient data archiving in Salesforce.
- Follow Compliance & Retention Policies: Align your data archival strategy with GDPR, HIPAA, or other regulations to ensure secure retention.
- Use a Scalable Salesforce Archival Solution: Choose Salesforce data archiving solutions that grow with your data and business.
- Archive Data to Cost-Effective Storage: Move inactive records to external platforms like AWS or Azure for better ROI.
- Ensure Data Accessibility & Searchability: Index archived records for quick, seamless retrieval.
- Automate Archiving Salesforce Data: Use policies and schedules to automate Salesforce archive processes efficiently.
- Maintain Data Integrity & Security: Encrypt and protect archived records with secure Salesforce data archiving tools.
- Regularly Audit & Optimize Archives: Continuously refine your data archiving strategy based on retention timelines and compliance requirements.
- Integrate Archiving with Analytics & AI: Leverage archived data for analytics, reporting, and AI-driven insights.
Conclusion
With various Salesforce data archiving strategies available, organizations can now make informed decisions to maintain compliance, performance, and scalability.
If you’ve been wondering, “What are the best Salesforce archiving solutions?” or “How can I implement a robust Salesforce data archiving strategy?”—then DataArchiva is your definitive answer.
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