Safeguarding your Salesforce data is critical, but are native backup tools enough to meet your organization’s needs?
While Salesforce offers built-in solutions, their speed, automation, and restoration limitations can leave gaps in your data protection strategy. Third-party tools, on the other hand, deliver advanced features like full automation, seamless integration, and enhanced customization.
In this article, we’ll dive into the strengths and shortcomings of both native and third-party options, equipping you with the insights needed to choose the best solution for your business.
Data Backup
“It is important for Salesforce customers to develop a routine data backup strategy as part of their overall data management and security model.”
Although not intentional, it is common for users and administrators to accidentally modify and even delete large amounts of data. To prepare for the inevitable loss or modification of data, it is best practice to develop and implement a data backup strategy. Salesforce offers native tools for data backup and the AppExchange has numerous solutions listed.
Data Definitions
Data refers to all of your records, including Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and other records. Data also includes your custom object records, files, content, and Chatter.
- Metadata refers to all of your configuration settings, such as custom fields, page layouts, reports, dashboards, and custom code like Apex and Visualforce.
Native Tools
Salesforce provides native tools to support data backup. “It is important to note the order in which data is restored, so that relationships and the connection to related records can be preserved.”
- Data Tools -
1. Data Export Service
Description: Manual or scheduled exports of your data via the User Interface (UI)
Difficulty: Moderate
Benefits: Schedule data export on a weekly and monthly basis (depending on edition). Data is exported to a comma-separated values (CSV) file. There is no cost for this solution as it is built into to all editions as an included feature.
Disadvantages: Backup files can only be manually exported once every 7 days. Heavy traffic can delay an export delivery. Only active users can run export jobs (ensure the running user for export jobs is an active user). Users with access must download the backed up CSV files and store them offline manually before the backup files are automatically delete (in 48 hours from date they were created. In large Salesforce deployments, the back-ups can contain 20 or move individual CSV files. Restoring from data export CSV files is complex and time-consuming.
2. Salesforce Data Loader
Description: Manual on-demand exports of your data via the API
Difficulty: Expert
Benefits: Move up to 5 million records at one time. Schedule regular data loads/exports (on a nightly basis). Free client provided by Salesforce.
Disadvantages: Data Loader must be installed on your computer. Using the Data Loader command-line functionality requires mid-level developer understanding. Similar to Data Export Service, restoring data is complex and time-consuming.
3. Report Export
Description: Manual on-demand exports of your data via reports
Difficulty: Easy
Benefits: A user can export a report manually (assuming the user as the export data permission which can be granted by a System Administrator). Users can schedule reports to be emailed on specified timetable (there is a limit to the number of scheduled reports – dependent on the edition and only user email addresses are eligible for export).
Disadvantages: A report can only have up 100,000 rows and 100 columns. Long text and rich text fields are truncated to 255 characters. No restore solution.
- Metadata Tools -
1. Change Sets
Description: Copy metadata from your production org to a sandbox or developer org (and vice versa)
Difficulty: Moderate
Benefits: Create and test new functionalities (automation, objects, Apex, etc.) in a related org without impacting the live production environment.
Disadvantages: Only metadata can be moved in a change set. Running validation and deploying change sets takes time and must include all changes. A deployment connection is required to use change sets.
2. Force.com Migration Tool
Description: Java/Ant-based command-line utility for moving metadata between a local directory and a Salesforce org
Difficulty: Expert
Benefits: Ant Migration allows multistage release processes and scheduling batch deployments.
Disadvantages: Must have knowledge working with API SOAP and Apex. Java is required to use Ant Migration.
3. Sandbox Refresh
Description: Refreshing a related sandbox, your configuration metadata is copied over automatically from the source org
Difficulty: Easy
Benefits: A sandbox can be refreshed directly from the source org – no knowledge of Salesforce/Apex/APIs is required.
Disadvantages: When a sandbox is refreshed, all work within the sandbox is erased. You must ensure that whoever is using the sandbox is prepared for the refresh.
- Third-Party Solutions -
Reasons to consider a third-party solution:
1. Comprehensive Solution
Salesforce’s native solutions are not comprehensive. As Salesforce was designed as a CRM, data backup tools were not the only priority. third-party backup tool producers have dedicated themselves to producing comprehensive backup tools. Some of these allow you to automate backups of both your data and your metadata and provide a mechanism by which to restore that data easily.
2. Backup Speed and Down Time
Data loss is unfortunately all too common. Some of the causes are human error, data import or mass update, workflow rule, trigger or anonymous APEX, malicious user behavior, hardware failure, or cyberattacks. Whatever the cause of the data loss, it is important to have a backup solution that can be operated quickly and efficiently and unfortunately, Salesforce’s native solutions are not known for being quick.
3. Data Restoration
Backing up the data and metadata of your salesforce is only the first step to a proper disaster recovery strategy. It is important to be able to restore your data back into your live environment in order to restore operation. Salesforce native tools do not provide as effective tools for data restoration as third-party tools.
4. Customization
Third-party solutions provide a greater degree of customization for data backup, which may be important for some organizations to meet their data security requirements.
5. Adaptability and Usability
Salsforce’s native backup tools are not known for their adaptability and ease of use. third-party backup tools can often provide a greater degree of adaptability to backing up data no matter the customizations made to the instance. They also can provide you a way to back up data across multiple salesforce environments.
6. Integration with DevOps Tools
Using a third-party backup tool can sometimes allow you to integrate it more easily with your dev ops tools. With some third-party solutions, you are able to use a singular tool for both your dev ops and your data backup solutions.
7. Full Automation
Most third-party backup tools can run and backup unattended. Most provide cloud based storage for the data, liminating the need to manually store data offline (but most all allow you to manually download if needed).
- Types of Third-Party Tools -
1. Managing metadata with development tools
If an organization has a development team, the metadata is usually retrieved for development using tools such as Visual studio code or IntelliJ with Illuminated Cloud or MavensMate and is then versioned and backed up on source code management systems like Git.
2. Mirroring as a database
The salesforce database is not directly accessible, however, there are multiple tools such as (Heroku, cData, Skyvia and others) that can enable an organization to mirror their salesforce object data as a relational database such as Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQ ect. Keep in mind that these solutions do not back-up metadata (except for customized object fields), so another backup solution will be necessary for backing up the metadata.
3. Specialized backup tools
There are specialized backup tools that can provide a comprehensive backup solution backing up both the metadata and the data of an organization. These tools are sometimes also part of a one-tool solution having dev ops tools as part of the tool set. Some of these tools allow for automated backups, a simple solution to data restoration.
Backup Tools Examples
While there are a lot of options for backup tools on the market, some of the tools that are popular on the appexchange are:
- DailyExport.io by Odaseva (free solution with 50,000 record limit)
- GRAX by Grax (starting at $9,000 org/month)
- Odaseva by Odaseva ($1,750 company/month)
- Own acquired by Salesforce in September 2024 (starts at $2.9 user/month) and includes backup for Salesforce, Microsoft, and ServiceNow
- Replicate by Avankia (starting at $1.5 user/month)
- Spanning by Kaseya (various pricing options) includes backup solutions for Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google
- Replicate by Avankia (starting at $1.5 user/month)
- SysCloud includes backup options Salesforce ($29/user/year), Google, Box, Slack, Hubspot, Quickbooks, and Microsoft
