When Salesforce Gets Slow: 5 Signs You Need Data Archiving

Your Salesforce org used to hum along smoothly. Reports loaded instantly, searches returned results in seconds, and users rarely complained about performance. But lately, things feel a little different. Dashboards take longer to refresh. List views lag. Users are getting that spinning wheel more often than they'd like.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Here's a sobering statistic: 70% of CRM data becomes irrelevant within a year (Source: Salesforce). That means the majority of records in your org—old opportunities, closed cases, inactive contacts—are just sitting there, weighing down your system without providing value to daily operations.

The good news? These performance issues usually appear in predictable patterns. Recognizing these five warning signs early can help you address Salesforce performance problems before they become critical—and understand when data archiving becomes necessary rather than optional.

TL;DR: Key Takeaways

Salesforce performance degradation follows predictable patterns as data volume grows. If you're experiencing two or more of these symptoms, your org likely needs data archiving:

• Reports timing out or taking 30+ seconds to generate
• Search taking 5+ seconds to return results
• Record pages loading slowly, especially related lists
• API limits being exceeded more frequently  despite stable integration patterns
• Users consistently reporting general system slowness

The solution: Data archiving; the removal of historical records from production while maintaining accessibility for compliance and analytics. Organizations typically see 40-60% improvements in report runtime and 50-70% reductions in API consumption.

Bottom line: Archiving isn't just about storage—it's about maintaining system performance, user productivity, and scalability as your business grows.

In This Guide

• What Is Data Archiving for Salesforce?
• Sign #1: Reports and Dashboards Are Timing Out
• Sign #2: Search Functionality Returns Results Slowly
• Sign #3: Record Page Load Times Have Increased
• Sign #4: You're Hitting API Limits More Frequently
• Sign #5: Users Complain About General Slowness
• Real-World Example: What Data Volume Looks Like
• Salesforce Data Archiving Best Practices
• When to Consider Data Archiving
• Building Your Data Archiving Strategy
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Data Archiving for Salesforce?

Data archiving is the process of moving historical records from your production Salesforce org to secure, long-term storage while maintaining accessibility when needed. Unlike deletion, archiving preserves data for compliance, auditing, and analytics—but removes it from day-to-day operations that affect performance.

For Salesforce specifically, data archiving addresses Large Data Volume (LDV) challenges by identifying records that are business-critical for historical purposes but rarely accessed in current workflows. These records are securely extracted, stored outside the production environment, and remain fully searchable and restorable when required.

Think of it this way: your production Salesforce org is like your desk—you need quick access to current projects and active work. Archived data is like your filing cabinet—important documents you need to keep, but don't need cluttering your workspace every day.

1. Reports and Dashboards Are Timing Out or Taking Minutes to Load

What you're seeing: Reports that used to generate in 5-10 seconds now take 30+ seconds or time out completely. Dashboards fail to refresh, or users get the dreaded "report has timed out" message.

Why it happens: When reports query tables with millions of records—especially with filters, formulas, or cross-object relationships—Salesforce has to process massive datasets to return results. As your data volume grows, these queries strain system resources that lead to performance degradation.

What it means: When reports on objects like Accounts, Contacts, Cases, or Opportunities are consistently slow, you're likely dealing with Large Data Volume (LDV) challenges. This is especially true if the slowdown affects reports with date range filters that pull historical data. This is where a Salesforce data archiving strategy becomes essential.

The diagnostic test: Run a simple report on your highest-volume standard object with a filter for "LastModifiedDate = THIS_YEAR". If it takes more than 10-15 seconds, you've got a volume problem. Now try the same report with "LastModifiedDate = LAST_YEAR". If it's significantly slower—or times out—that historical data is dragging down performance.

2. Search Functionality Returns Results Painfully Slowly

What you're seeing: Global search, lookup fields, or search-based list views take 5+ seconds to return results. In some cases, users report that search seems to "miss" records that they know exist.

Why it happens: Salesforce search indexes have to scan across all records in searchable objects. When you're searching through tens of millions of records—many of which are years old and irrelevant to current operations—the system has to process far more data than necessary.

What it means: Search performance degradation is one of the clearest indicators that data volume is overwhelming your org. This directly impacts user productivity, as sales reps, service agents, and other users rely on search to find records quickly. Data archiving solutions can dramatically improve search responsiveness by reducing the volume of records that must be indexed.

The diagnostic test: Search for a common term (like a company name you know appears in multiple records) and note how long results take to appear. If it's more than 2-3 seconds, your search indexes are struggling with your or’s large data volume.

3. Record Page Load Times Have Increased Noticeably

What you're seeing: When users open Account, Contact, or Opportunity records, the page takes several seconds to fully load—especially the related lists section.

Why it happens: Each record page loads, it needs to query related data to populate related lists, activities, history tracking, and other components within the page. When an Account has thousands of closed Opportunities, hundreds of old Cases, and years of Activity history, retrieiving  all of the related records creates significant overhead.

What it means: This symptom indicates that your data relationships have become complex and voluminous. Even though users typically only need to see recent or active related records, Salesforce still has to query the entire dataset to determine what to display.

The diagnostic test: Open a high-profile Account record (one that  has years of history) and use your browser's developer tools to measure page load time. If the initial page render takes more than 3-5 seconds, related data volume is likely the culprit.

4. You're Hitting API Limits More Frequently—Especially Bulk API

What you're seeing: Integrations are failing with "API limit exceeded" errors. Bulk API jobs for data loads, updates, or backups are consuming a higher percentage of your daily limits or failing to complete.

Why it happens: The more data in your org, the more API calls required to process it. Backup jobs, integration syncs, and data operations that used to consume 20% of your API limits now consume 60-80% because they're processing millions of additional records.

What it means: If your API consumption is trending upward despite stable integration patterns, data volume growth is the driver. This becomes especially problematic when you hit limits during business hours, causing integration failures that impact operations. Data archiving tools can significantly reduce API consumption by removing historical records from regular processing cycles.

The diagnostic test: Review your API usage in Setup → System Overview. If you're consistently using more than 50% of daily limits—or if you see sharp increases in API usage over the past 6-12 months—growing data volume is likely consuming resources that should be available for business operations.

5. Users Complain That "Salesforce Feels Slow"—But You Can't Pinpoint Why

What you're seeing: Vague but persistent user complaints about system responsiveness. Activities that should be quick—updating records, creating new entries, navigating between pages—just feel sluggish. But when you test specific functions, you can't always reproduce the issue.

Why it happens: This is the cumulative effect of data volume on overall system performance. While individual operations might not be critically slow, the aggregate impact across all user activities creates a perception of poor performance. Background processes like indexing, trigger execution, and workflow rules all work harder when processing Large Data Volumes.

What it means: User perception is often the earliest and most reliable indicator of performance degradation. If multiple users across different teams report sluggishness—even if you can't isolate specific slow operations—it's a sign that data volume is creating system-wide overhead. Implementing data archiving best practices can restore system responsiveness.

The diagnostic test: Survey power users who work in Salesforce all day. Ask them to compare current performance to 6-12 months ago. If there's consensus that things feel slower—even without specific examples—trust that intuition. It's usually backed by real (if subtle) performance changes.

What Data Volume Actually Looks Like

To put these symptoms in context, consider DoorDash's experience. As their Salesforce org grew to handle millions of delivery operations, they faced significant performance challenges. According to their Lead Salesforce Engineer, Jeegar Brahmakshatriya:

"We don't have to worry about our Salesforce Org hitting data limits anymore. Performance has improved significantly since we started archiving data with Odaseva, allowing us to do more complex activities in the Org. It's also easy to access data that has been archived."

DoorDash's situation is increasingly common. Organizations reach a tipping point where historical data—vital for compliance and analytics but rarely accessed in daily operations—begins degrading system performance.

Salesforce Data Archiving Best Practices

Once you've identified that your org needs archiving, implementing it effectively requires a strategic approach. Based on successful enterprise implementations, here are the key practices:

Define clear archiving policies. Establish criteria for what data should be archived based on age, status, and business relevance. For example, you might archive Opportunities that have been closed for more than two years, or Cases that haven't been updated in 18 months. Document these policies as part of your data governance framework so stakeholders understand what data lives where.

Start with high-volume objects. Focus archiving efforts on objects with millions of records first—typically Opportunities, Cases, Leads, or custom transaction objects. These deliver the most immediate performance improvement. A single archiving project on your highest-volume object can reduce total record count by 40-60%.

Preserve data relationships. Ensure your archiving strategy maintains referential integrity. Archived parent records should include related child records to preserve context. If you archive an Account, include its associated Contacts, Opportunities, and Cases so you maintain a complete historical picture.

Plan for accessibility. Historical data still has value for compliance, analytics, and customer service escalations. Your data archiving strategy should allow authorized users to search and restore archived records when needed—without requiring admin intervention for every request. Look for solutions that integrate archived data views directly into Salesforce.

Test restore processes regularly. Don't assume archiving is working correctly without verification. Regularly test that archived data can be restored accurately and quickly. The best archiving strategy includes proven recoverability—otherwise, you're just deleting data with extra steps.

Archive metadata alongside data. Changes to your Salesforce configuration over time can impact data restoration. Archive metadata (custom objects, fields, validation rules) along with data records to ensure future restores work correctly even if your org structure evolves.

Automate with scheduled policies. Manual archiving projects provide one-time relief, but data volume returns quickly. Implement automated archiving policies that run on a schedule—weekly or monthly—to continuously maintain optimal org performance as new data accumulates.

When to Consider Data Archiving

If you're experiencing two or more of the symptoms described above, you're likely at the point where Salesforce data archiving can meaningfully improve performance. Here's why archiving works:

It removes the weight without losing the data. Archiving moves historical records out of your production org while maintaining full accessibility when needed. This means:

• Reports query smaller, more relevant datasets
• Search indexes only scan active records
• Page loads only process current relational data
• API calls process fewer records
• Overall system performance improves

It's strategic, not destructive. Unlike deletion, archiving preserves data for compliance, auditing, and historical analysis. You're not losing information—you're optimizing where it lives based on how frequently it's accessed.

It scales with your growth. As your business grows and generates more data, archiving becomes an ongoing process rather than a one-time cleanup. Establishing archiving policies early prevents future performance problems and ensures your Salesforce investment continues delivering value at scale.

It supports compliance requirements. Many regulations require you to retain data for specific periods but don't require it to remain in production systems. Archiving satisfies retention requirements while improving operational performance—meeting both regulatory and business needs.

Taking Action: Building Your Data Archiving Strategy

If you recognize these symptoms in your org, here's how to move forward:

1. Measure your baseline. Document current performance metrics: report run times, search response times, API usage percentages, and page load times. This gives you objective data to measure improvement and build the business case for archiving.
2. Identify your highest-volume objects. Run reports to see record counts on standard and custom objects. Focus on objects with millions of records, particularly those with time-based relevance (like Opportunities, Cases, or custom transaction objects). Query the Setup → Storage Usage page to see which objects consume the most data and file storage.
3. Define what "active" means for your business. How old does an Opportunity need to be before it's purely historical? What about Cases or custom objects? These business definitions drive your archiving criteria. Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure archiving policies align with operational needs.
4. Evaluate archiving tools and solutions. Native Salesforce capabilities offer limited archiving options. Assess whether you need third-party data archiving tools that provide advanced features like automated policies, searchable archives, granular restore capabilities, and compliance-ready audit trails.
5. Pilot with one high-impact object. Start your archiving program with a single object that will deliver measurable results. This proves the value, builds organizational confidence, and lets you refine processes before scaling to additional objects.
6. Test performance improvements. After archiving, re-run your baseline measurements. You should see measurable improvements in report times, search responsiveness, API consumption, and overall system performance. Document these wins to justify expanded archiving efforts.
7. Establish ongoing governance. Archiving isn't a one-time project. Create a governance model that defines ongoing archiving schedules, restoration request processes, compliance verification, and regular performance reviews.

Frequently Asked Questions About Salesforce Data Archiving

When should you archive Salesforce data?

Archive Salesforce data when you notice performance degradation, are approaching storage limits, or have historical records older than 1-2 years that are no longer accessed in daily operations but must be retained for compliance or business continuity.

What's the difference between data backup vs archiving?

Backup creates copies of all data for disaster recovery purposes, while archiving moves inactive historical data to separate storage to improve performance. Both are essential—backups protect against data loss, corruption, and ransomware, while archiving optimizes system performance and reduces costs.

Does archiving delete data from Salesforce?

Data archiving removes records from your production org but preserves them in secure, long-term storage with full accessibility for compliance, audits, analytics, and restoration when needed. It's fundamentally different from deletion, which permanently removes data.

Can archived data be restored to Salesforce?

Yes, properly implemented archiving solutions allow you to restore archived records individually, in bulk, or as complete datasets depending on business needs. The best solutions enable self-service search and preview of archived data with admin-controlled restoration.

How much does Salesforce data archiving improve performance?

Performance improvements vary based on data volume and archiving scope, but organizations commonly see 40-60% reductions in report runtime, 50-70% decreases in API consumption for backups and integrations, and measurable improvements in search and page load times.

What data should never be archived?

Avoid archiving data that's still actively referenced in business processes, required for real-time reporting, linked to automation workflows, or subject to frequent user access. Focus archiving on historical, closed, or inactive records that retain business or compliance value but don't impact daily operations.

The Bottom Line

Salesforce performance issues rarely appear overnight. They accumulate gradually as your data grows from thousands to millions of records. By recognizing these five warning signs early—and understanding that most CRM data becomes irrelevant within a year—you can address performance problems proactively rather than reactively.

The question isn't whether your data will eventually slow down your org. With continued business growth, it will. The question is whether you'll recognize the symptoms early enough to maintain optimal performance for your users—and whether you'll implement a data archiving strategy that scales with your success.

Organizations that treat archiving as a core component of their Salesforce data management strategy—rather than an afterthought when performance becomes critical—maintain faster systems, lower costs, and better user experiences as they scale.

Does your Salesforce org show these warning signs? Learn how Odaseva Data Archiving helps enterprises maintain peak performance while preserving data for compliance and analysis. Get a demo