When teams don’t agree on which Salesforce data matters, keeping everything can feel like the safest option. But in reality, this can lead to compliance risks and storage problems. A data retention policy helps teams make consistent decisions, protect customer information, and keep orgs running smoothly.
And it’s not just about the data in Salesforce itself. Retention is part of the data lifecycle and should be a consideration at each stage, from creation and use to ongoing maintenance, storage and updates, and eventual archiving or deletion. A strong policy can help you maintain system health and protect your data from both accidental loss and security threats.
But where do you start? From understanding regulatory requirements to automating data management processes, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to build a robust retention strategy that works for your org.
How do retention policies work?
Instead of keeping all of your data forever, it’s best practice to set a retention policy that defines how data is managed throughout its lifecycle. A retention policy should set a time limit on how long different data sets are kept for.
On-platform and off-platform data retention
Whether data is archived or backed up, you need a clear plan for how long to keep it and where. Knowing the difference between archiving and backup, and how each can be managed on and off the Salesforce platform, helps you make the right choices for your data.
Archiving moves older data out of day-to-day use while keeping it accessible for reporting, audits, or compliance. On-platform options like Big Objects or Salesforce Archive store that data inside your org, but they can come with trade-offs like limited access, restricted automation, and extra storage costs. Solutions that offer off-platform archiving, like Gearset, store data externally and give you more flexibility around retention periods, as well as more control over storage and access.
Backups store copies of your data and metadata so you can restore if needed. Salesforce offers Backup and Recover as a native solution, but many teams choose third-party tools for more granular control, faster recovery, and combined backup and archiving in one place. Storing backups off-platform also adds an extra level of security by isolating your backups from potential issues or vulnerabilities within the Salesforce platform itself.
Whether you’re archiving or backing up, retention policies help you stay in control — deciding how long data is kept, when it should be deleted, and how to meet compliance without overloading your org.
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Why you shouldn’t store everything in Salesforce
Data retention is about making smart decisions to keep your system running smoothly, your costs under control, and your customer data protected. Here’s why this matters in a Salesforce context.
Compliance and regulations
Most Salesforce orgs hold data that falls under strict regulatory requirements like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These regulations define not only how you collect and store data but also when you need to delete it. Retaining data beyond its required period can put your business at risk of non-compliance, leading to fines or legal complications. A strong data retention policy helps you maintain data privacy by ensuring that sensitive records are stored securely and deleted when no longer needed.
Storage limits and costs
Salesforce doesn’t offer unlimited storage, and exceeding your limits comes with added costs. Every record, file, and attachment takes up space, and as your org grows, storage can quickly become an expensive problem. If you don’t actively manage your data retention, you’ll find yourself paying for additional storage or scrambling to free up space at the last minute.
System performance
The more data you store in Salesforce, the harder your system has to work. Large datasets can slow down searches and processing times for reports, frustrating users and reducing productivity. This can delay your customer support response times or lead to decisions made based on outdated reports. It can also affect the performance of the agents you’ve built with Agentforce, as they rely on up-to-date, accurate data to deliver the right answers.
Security and risk management
The more data you store in Salesforce, the greater the risk of exposure — especially as users, permissions, and integrations increase too. Sensitive data, like customer information and financial details, become a liability if kept longer than necessary. Unused or outdated data increases your attack surface, making breaches more damaging and compliance harder to manage.
Best practices for implementing a data retention policy in Salesforce
A robust data retention policy helps you stay compliant, optimize storage, and protect sensitive information. But before putting one in place, there are a few key factors to consider.
Identify your compliance requirements
Retention policies are often needed to make sure your company’s archiving and backup practices comply with relevant data protection legislation like GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). These govern how long certain types of data must be retained and when they should be deleted. Work with your legal and compliance teams to ensure your policy aligns with these rules. Consider records like Cases, Opportunities, and field history tracking, which may have specific legal or operational retention requirements.
Categorize data to align with business objectives
Not all data is equally important. Some records, like customer transactions or audit logs, may need to be kept for legal reasons, while others, such as old email logs, may have no long-term value. Categorizing data helps define what to archive, delete, or store long-term.
Implement access controls
Data retention governs both how long information is kept and who is allowed to access it. Enforcing role-based access controls (RBAC) ensures that only authorized users can view or modify sensitive records, reducing the risk of unauthorized access or accidental deletion.
Document and review your retention process
A well-documented retention policy provides clear guidelines on what data to keep, for how long, and how deletions or archives are handled. This helps ensure consistency, makes compliance audits easier, and allows teams to follow best practices without confusion.
Regularly review your data retention policy
Business needs, regulations, and storage constraints change over time. Set a schedule to review and update your policy to ensure it stays relevant and your data lifecycle management continues to meet compliance and operational requirements. Storage costs can also play a role and while Gearset doesn’t charge based on data volume, some providers do, so reviewing and adjusting retention periods can help avoid extra costs.
Plan for data restoration
Before setting a retention policy, consider what data you might need to recover in the future. You don’t want to find yourself needing important records, only to realize they’ve been permanently deleted. While archiving helps manage storage by moving older records out of your live org, it doesn’t protect against accidental deletions or corruption. To fully safeguard your data, you’ll also need a backup strategy that allows you to restore lost records and metadata.
Automate data deletion and archiving
Manually managing retention can be time-consuming and error-prone, disrupting critical business processes and increasing the risk of data loss. Automating data deletion and archiving, either through scheduled jobs in Salesforce, third-party tools, or custom Apex scripts, ensures records are removed or archived consistently.
Carry out user training and enforce data governance
A retention policy is only effective if people follow it. Enforcing governance policies and training your team in data handling best practices will prevent unnecessary data accumulation and security risks.
How to implement a data retention policy using native tools on Salesforce
Once you’ve defined your data retention policy, and decided what to keep, archive, or delete, it’s possible to configure your Salesforce instance to put it into action — although the native tools have their limitations.
1. Automate retention with Salesforce Archive: Salesforce Archive is a new native option for setting archiving policies in Salesforce. If it’s available in your org, you can configure policies to move older records out of active use and configure retention policies to anonymize or delete data once it reaches the retention limit. Using Salesforce Archive doesn’t reduce your storage costs on Salesforce, as the archived data is still held on-platform.
2. Automate deletion with Privacy Center: Privacy Center is a paid add-on that supports compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA. It lets you create policies that automatically delete or anonymize personal data based on retention rules.
3. Use Big Objects for historical data retention: Salesforce offers Big Objects as a native solution for storing large volumes of historical data without affecting standard storage limits. This can help you retain high-volume data like logs, transactions, or audit trails while keeping your active org running efficiently.
As Big Objects don’t have a standard UI you can’t browse them like regular Salesforce records. Accessing data requires SOQL queries, which makes them less user-friendly than standard objects. There’s also no built-in automation, so if you need easier access or want to set automated retention policies, a third-party tool will be a better fit.
How to implement a data retention policy in Gearset
If you want more space and more control over your data retention, third-party tools like Gearset provide automated retention rules, archiving, and backup options. Gearset lets you store older records outside of Salesforce, automate deletions, and ensure long-term data availability.
Archiving in Gearset
Gearset’s archiving solution lets you set a data retention policy to automatically manage how long archived records are stored for before they’re permanently deleted. This helps free up storage in Salesforce, improving org performance while keeping historical data accessible for compliance, reporting, or future reference. And, as your archives aren’t stored on Salesforce’s servers, you’ll still have access even if Salesforce experiences an outage.
Here’s how to get started with an archive in Gearset:
1. Create or edit an archiving policy: In Gearset, go to the Archiving tab and select an existing archive job or create a new one.
2. Set your retention rule: In the archiving policy settings, you’ll see the Policy criteria section. Choose how long Gearset should keep archived records before deleting them. By default, it’s set to 99 years, but you can adjust this to match your specific data retention and compliance needs.
3. Assign permissions to your team: Set strict permissions so you only give access to the people who need it. You can assign granular permissions ranging from simply viewing the archive to being able to delete or restore.
Retention rules are implemented per policy, so you can apply different retention periods to different types of data within the same archiving job. This gives you the flexibility to keep certain records for longer periods while ensuring others are removed when they’re no longer needed. As Gearset’s archiving solution offers unlimited storage, you won’t be forced to buy more Salesforce storage as your data grows.
Backup in Gearset
Data retention policies don’t just extend to archived data; they’re also crucial for your backups. Of course you need to keep backups long enough to be able to restore data, should anything be lost or corrupted. But you shouldn’t keep backup data forever. Decades-old data is unlikely to be relevant and needed for restoration — it’s simply a security and compliance liability.
Gearset’s backups give you scheduled, restorable snapshots of your org, capturing both Salesforce data and metadata. When you configure a backup job in Gearset, you define the retention policy and Gearset automatically deletes backup runs older than your specified timeframe. Gearset suggests a 7-year retention period by default as this matches the most common compliance requirements.
Bringing visibility to your DevOps process
To manage data retention effectively, you need visibility. Understanding how your data is growing and changing over time is essential for preventing issues before they impact your org. This concept of monitoring changes and trends in your system is often referred to as observability, and it’s crucial for taking control of your data.
If you just want to know how much storage your organization is using right now, you can check the Storage Usage page in Salesforce. Head to Setup > Storage Usage to see a breakdown of your organization’s data and file storage, including usage by each standard and custom object.
Go beyond a static view of storage with Gearset’s data dashboard. Available to backup customers, the data dashboard helps track storage trends, identify fast-growing objects, and catch unexpected data spikes.
Instead of just seeing a snapshot of your current storage usage, you get a clear view of how your data has changed, so you can predict when you might run out of space and take action before it happens. By building observability into data retention, teams can store what’s needed, archive or delete the rest with confidence, and keep their Salesforce environment lean and scalable.
Get control of your data
Backups and archives are the foundation of securing your Salesforce data, but if you can’t define and enforce retention policies, you’re vulnerable to compliance issues and security threats. Gearset empowers you to manage retention for both your backups and archives with confidence. Ensure your critical data is protected for as long as you need it, and automatically archive older data according to your specific policies, all within a secure and compliant framework.
Ready to experience the peace of mind that comes with complete data retention management? Try backup and archiving with Gearset for yourself with a 30-day free trial of our complete Salesforce DevOps platform.
