Salesforce keeps the platform running. Recovering from the damage your own team causes (a mass delete, a bad Data Loader import, a flow that rewrites 50,000 records overnight) is your job. That's what a Salesforce backup is for.
We build cloud data protection at Eon, so we spend most of our time on one question: will this copy actually restore when someone needs it?
What is Salesforce backup?
Salesforce backup is a separate, restorable copy of your org's records, files, and configuration, taken on a schedule so you can roll back specific records or settings after they're deleted or corrupted.
Salesforce splits an org into data and metadata, and a complete backup plan covers both, plus files:
- Data: Records in standard and custom objects (accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases) and the lookups that connect them.
- Files and attachments: Documents, images, and Chatter content, which live in separate file storage.
- Metadata: The configuration your org runs on, including custom fields, page layouts, flows, validation rules, profiles, reports, dashboards, and Apex code.
A copy that can't rebuild the relationships between those records on restore leaves your admins stitching parent and child records back together by hand.
Does Salesforce back up your data?
Under Salesforce's shared responsibility model, the company secures the infrastructure while you protect your own data, configurations, and access rights.
The built-in safety net is thin. You can restore items from the Recycle Bin up to 15 days after deletion, and then Salesforce schedules them for permanent removal. Past that point, recovery falls to Data Loader's Export All, an old data export, or a full sandbox copy, and all of them are time-sensitive.
The most common risks all start inside your own org: mass imports through Data Loader, buggy Apex triggers or flows, and plain user error. When a bad import overwrites records, nothing lands in the Recycle Bin at all, so there's nothing there to restore.
How does Salesforce data backup work?
A backup tool connects to your org through Salesforce's APIs, copies everything once, and then captures only what changed on each run after that. Restores reverse the process: the tool writes selected record versions back into the org and relinks related records.
A typical cycle has five stages:
- Connect: The tool authenticates to your org with an integration user and reads objects through the API. Salesforce's managed backup app skips objects the Bulk API doesn't support, so check that list against your org.
- First full copy: The initial run captures every in-scope record, file, and (if the tool supports it) metadata component.
- Incremental runs: Later runs capture adds, changes, and deletes. Backup & Recover Next, for example, runs daily incrementals plus a full backup every Sunday.
- Retention: Your policy sets how long the tool keeps each version, so you can pick a point before the damage started.
- Restore: You filter to the affected object and time window, compare versions, and write the good ones back.
Say a Data Loader update on Tuesday overwrites the Owner field on 12,000 opportunities. Monday night's backup still holds the old values. You filter the restore to Opportunity records changed on Tuesday, check a few against the live org, and restore only the changed fields.
Updated records keep their original IDs during a restore, while deleted records come back with new IDs, which is why relationship handling decides how much cleanup follows.
Native Salesforce options and what each one misses
Salesforce sells a paid backup add-on (in three versions) and offers three free export paths. The free ones all produce files your team reloads by hand.
Salesforce Backup and Backup & Recover
Salesforce's paid backup lineup has changed names a few times. The managed package shipped first as Backup and Restore. After Salesforce bought Own, it rebranded Own Recover as Backup & Recover, and in April 2026 it launched Backup & Recover Next, which runs entirely inside Salesforce's infrastructure.
Each version needs a Backup & Recover add-on license. The managed app backs up object data, related records, files, and attachments on a daily, custom, or manual schedule. The Own-based Backup & Recover adds metadata, managed packages, and sandboxes.
Backup & Recover Next is the one to watch. Salesforce says it's "conservatively 200% faster" than Backup & Recover and runs free of API governor limits. It's only in select regions for now, and pricing is quote-only across the whole lineup.
What it misses: The managed app is data-focused, so backing up configuration takes separate metadata tools.
Data Export Service
Data Export Service is the scheduled CSV export under Setup. Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions get weekly exports. Professional and Developer Editions get one every 29 days or a monthly schedule, and Salesforce deletes the zip files 48 hours after the notification email goes out (weekends don’t count).
Salesforce also limits downloads to one file at a time, with a 60-second wait between downloads, which can stretch a large org’s weekly export into hours of manual downloading.
What it misses: Restores, metadata, and up to six days of changes between exports.
Data Loader
Data Loader is Salesforce's client app for bulk imports and exports. You can run it through the interface or from the command line, which lets you script scheduled exports. Its Export All option also pulls records that are already out of the Recycle Bin but not yet purged.
What it misses: Any restore is a manual re-import. Reinserted records get new IDs, so every lookup pointing at them has to be remapped before the data makes sense again.
Report export
Any user with the Export Reports permission can export a report. In Lightning Experience, a Details Only export to CSV has no row limit, while .xlsx and formatted exports cap at 100,000 rows (2,000 for formatted matrix reports). Long text fields get cut to 255 characters either way.
What it misses: Everything outside the report's columns, including relationships and files. It's handy for a quick snapshot before a cleanup and nothing more.
Why metadata backup needs its own plan
Metadata is the configuration that gives your data meaning: the custom fields, record types, flows, validation rules, permission sets, and code. When a deployment deletes a field or breaks a flow, restoring records alone won't fix it. The records come back into an org that no longer has a place to put their values.
The native path for metadata is an unmanaged package, or the Metadata API and Salesforce CLI for anything more advanced. Unmanaged packages don't cover every metadata type, so restore into a sandbox first, then deploy to production.
Sandbox refreshes and change sets move configuration between orgs, but neither keeps a versioned history you can roll back to.
That missing version history is a big reason teams that deploy often look past native tools. The risk grows with release cadence, since a team shipping weekly deployments has far more chances to break something than one shipping quarterly.
Third-party backup tools for Salesforce
For scheduled backup of both data and metadata, teams turn to AppExchange partners. These are seven options to compare:
- Own from Salesforce: Renamed from OwnBackup in 2023 and acquired by Salesforce, now sold as Backup & Recover. The same family also covers Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Workday data.
- GRAX: Keeps backup data in your own AWS or Azure account, which appeals to teams that want the copy outside Salesforce. Business and Enterprise tiers add archiving, sandbox seeding, and replication.
- Gearset: Sold as part of its Salesforce DevOps suite or standalone, with daily automated jobs for data and metadata. The Teams plan adds high-frequency jobs for objects that change all day.
- Flosum: Stores backups outside Salesforce, in your own AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure account or a private VPC, with encryption keys held only by you. It offers a restore guarantee of up to $100,000.
- Spanning: Daily automated backups plus unlimited on-demand runs, versions kept with no retention cap, and coverage for 17 metadata types.
- Commvault: Protects data, metadata, and hierarchical relationships across production and sandbox orgs through Commvault Cloud, with unlimited storage in the per-user price.
- Veeam: Offers a managed service (Veeam Data Cloud for Salesforce) and a self-managed product. Its free Community Edition covers orgs with 50 or fewer Salesforce user licenses, with email-only support.
If you're weighing a managed service against a tool you run yourself, it comes down to who operates the backup and where it lives. That's the tradeoff backup as a service is built around, and the same question decides which BaaS providers fit the cloud infrastructure around your Salesforce org.
What Salesforce data backup costs
Salesforce doesn't publish a price for its add-on. Pricing varies by customer, so you'll get a quote through your account executive. Most third-party vendors price per Salesforce user per month, and a few publish their rates:
For a 300-user org, that works out to roughly $825 a month on Gearset Starter, $1,080 on Commvault, and $1,251 on Veeam's managed service.
Per-user pricing follows headcount, so an org with a few heavy integration users and millions of records can land in the same bracket as one with light usage.
How to back up and restore Salesforce data
These steps follow Salesforce's managed backup app, since it's the native path most admins reach first. Third-party tools follow the same shape with different screens.
Set up backups
- Get the license: Buy the Backup & Recover add-on and install the managed package.
- Pick your objects: Create backup policies for the objects you need, including files and attachments.
- Set the schedule: Keep the daily scheduled backup, set a custom schedule, or run one manually.
- Set retention: Configure the retention policy so older versions stay available long enough to catch slow-burn corruption.
- Back up before big changes: Take a manual point-in-time backup before any major data project.
Restore records mid-incident
First, stop the source of damage. Pause the flow, deactivate the trigger, or kill the running import, or your restore will be overwritten as fast as it lands. Then check the Recycle Bin, since a plain deletion from the last 15 days is the fastest recovery.
For anything bigger, restore from the backup:
- From the Restore & Export tab, set Data Category to Restore Records.
- Choose the object and filter by change type and by when records were modified or backed up.
- Click Show Backups and compare a few record versions against what's in the org now.
- Select the versions to restore (or restore all returned records) and add any related objects.
- Pick the backup version for updated and deleted records, then click Restore and confirm.
- On the Logs page, export Records with ID Mappings and Applicable Errors to see what failed and which new IDs replaced deleted records.
You'll need object-level permissions for everything you restore. Without the add-on, the fallback is your latest Data Export Service files reloaded through Data Loader or the Data Import Wizard, with lookups remapped by hand.
Salesforce data backup best practices
The practices below are the ones that decide whether a restore takes an afternoon or a week.
- Back up data and metadata together: A record restore into an org whose fields have changed needs the matching configuration, so keep both on the same schedule. Coverage differs by tool, so ask for the list of supported metadata types before you buy.
- Match frequency to acceptable loss: Daily is the floor for most orgs. Objects touched by integrations all day (cases, orders, activity) may need hourly or continuous data protection.
- Restore down to the field or file: Pick a tool that restores a single field on a single object, or a single file. After a bad Data Loader update to the Owner field on 12,000 opportunities, you put back those 12,000 values and leave every other change in the org alone. A deleted contract PDF should take a single file restore.
- Snapshot before every mass change: Run a manual backup before large imports, data cleanups, and major deployments. A copy taken 10 minutes before an import gives you a clean restore point for exactly that change.
- Keep a copy you can reach when Salesforce is down: Ask every vendor where the copy lives and whether you can reach it during a Salesforce outage. A copy in your own AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud account stays reachable when Salesforce is down, and it lines up with the 3-2-1 backup rule. GRAX and Flosum can write to your own cloud account.
- Set retention by data type: Keep regulated records longer and sandbox copies shorter. Our backup retention policy guide has a tiered model you can adapt.
- Test restores into a sandbox: Run a restore drill every quarter or so, and time it.
- Scope restore permissions: Keep restore rights with a small, named group, not every admin. A careless restore should only be possible from a few hands.
Backup vs. data export vs. sandbox: What's the difference?
People often lump these together because all three produce a copy of Salesforce data. Only a backup is built to put that data back.
A sandbox is a point-in-time clone for development, so it's useful as an emergency source and poor as a recovery plan. The same logic applies outside Salesforce, which is why we separate replication from backup in cloud environments too.
Native or third-party: Which fits your org?
Orgs that want everything under one Salesforce contract can stay native. Orgs that deploy often, or want the copy outside Salesforce, tend to land on a third-party tool.
Go native with Backup & Recover if you:
- Want backups inside Salesforce's infrastructure and one vendor for support.
- Want the newest native option, Backup & Recover Next, as it rolls out to more regions.
- Mostly worry about record-level mistakes, with few metadata deployments.
Look at third-party tools if you:
- Ship metadata changes weekly or faster and need versioned configuration history.
- Want a copy stored in your own AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud account, so you can reach it when Salesforce is down.
- Want published per-user pricing, or protect other SaaS apps alongside Salesforce.
Our take on Salesforce data protection
Any Salesforce org with more than a handful of admins, or any automated imports, needs a real backup with record-level restore. The weekly export has no restore path, and the Recycle Bin only covers plain deletions for 15 days.
The choice between native and third-party comes down to metadata and control. If your team deploys often, pick a tool that versions configuration alongside records. If you need the copy outside Salesforce, pick one that writes to your own cloud.
Whatever you choose, test the restore. If you can't prove a restore works, you don't have a backup.
Where Eon fits in your data protection plan
Salesforce rarely lives alone. The AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud workloads that feed it need the same standard you’d set for Salesforce, and so does the Microsoft 365 tenant where contracts and deal documents live. Both need a recovery copy outside the production platform, and both need restore down to the item.
Eon doesn’t protect Salesforce. It protects the data around your org, from one platform:
- Coverage you can prove: Cloud Backup Posture Management (CBPM) discovers and classifies cloud resources and applies backup policy autonomously as your environment changes.
- Recovery at the level you need: Restore individual files, tables, or records on supported services, without rehydrating a full environment, whether the cause is a bad write, a mass delete, or ransomware. NETGEAR cut recovery for a mission-critical 10TB SQL Server database from 24 hours to under three.
- Microsoft 365: Eon now protects Exchange Online, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Backups run daily by default, and after the first full backup, Eon captures only what changed. Admins restore a single email, file, or folder, and Eon stores recovery points outside your Microsoft 365 tenant, so they stay isolated from ransomware, compromised accounts, and malicious sync activity in production.
- Microsoft Teams: Protection covers channel conversations in standard, private, and shared channels, plus 1:1, group, and meeting chats. Admins restore a single reply, a thread, a channel, or a chat, and restored messages keep their original sender and timestamp.
- Microsoft Entra ID: Eon backs up users, groups, devices, directory roles, licenses, and app registrations, along with the memberships and role assignments that connect them. Admins restore selected users and groups with those relationships reattached, and each restore reports what it couldn’t return, such as MFA registrations and secrets.
- Google Workspace: Eon covers Gmail, Google Drive, Shared Drives, and Google Groups, with backups that can run about every 12 hours. Admins restore a single email, file, folder structure, Shared Drive item, or Google Groups data. Each customer’s data sits in a dedicated, single-tenant Eon environment with immutable, logically air-gapped protection.
Protect the Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and cloud data around your Salesforce org. Book a demo and see how Eon does it.
Frequently asked questions
Does Salesforce back up my data?
No. Salesforce secures the infrastructure, but restoring deleted or corrupted records is your responsibility unless you buy the Backup & Recover add-on or a third-party tool. Deleted records stay in the Recycle Bin for only 15 days.
Did Salesforce buy OwnBackup?
Yes. Salesforce agreed to buy Own Company (formerly OwnBackup) for about $1.9 billion in September 2024 and closed the deal in November 2024. Own's recovery product is now sold as Backup & Recover.
How much does Salesforce backup cost per month?
Published third-party prices run from $2.75 to $4.17 per user per month, with minimums on some plans. The Backup & Recover add-on is quote-only, and Veeam's Community Edition is free for orgs with 50 or fewer user licenses.
Do native Salesforce exports include metadata?
No. Data Export Service, Data Loader, and report exports copy records only. For metadata, Salesforce suggests unmanaged packages, the Metadata API, or Salesforce CLI, or a backup tool that versions configuration.
How often should you back up Salesforce?
Daily at minimum, plus a manual backup before any mass import or major deployment. Orgs with busy integrations often run high-frequency jobs on the objects that change throughout the day.
