Salesforce Backup and Restore Solutions

Imagine losing critical Salesforce customer records, transaction histories, or revenue data in the blink of an eye. Maybe they were mistakenly overwritten or deleted. Perhaps there was an outage or a cyberattack. Now think about all the missed opportunities, eroded customer trust, and major financial setbacks you’re likely to experience. 

23% of Salesforce customers mistakenly assume Salesforce automatically provides backup as part of their service agreement

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If you have strong backup and restore capabilities, you don’t have to worry about this. However, many organizations don’t. According to ESG research, one-third of organizations think their SaaS application data doesn’t need to be backed up – and 23% of Salesforce customers rely solely on Salesforce for data backup and protection. They mistakenly assume Salesforce automatically provides this as part of their core service agreement. 

The truth is, Salesforce is only responsible for keeping their platform up and running. Like many SaaS vendors, they use a shared responsibility model. This means they’re not responsible for protecting or backing up customers’ data.

The number of Salesforce users a single organization has can easily range from dozens to hundreds of people, or more. With so many users, there are bound to be complications that impact data integrity and safety. Some of the most common include:

• Intentionally malicious end-user actions  
• Accidental data modifications  
• Mass data update or import replacing correct values with incorrect ones
• Value modification caused by a trigger or a workflow rule
• Natural disasters
• Power outages

This makes the need for effective backup and restore all the more critical – and exacerbates the challenges inherent in Salesforce data protection.

Challenges

• The multitude of relationships and dependencies between Salesforce data pieces makes it significantly harder to back up and restore without losing or corrupting all of these connections.
• The sheer volume of information in an average Salesforce environment is a significant issue because much of it is often stored in different parts of the system, making it difficult to gather, back up, and restore correctly.
• Much thought must be put into proper backup scheduling. Attempting to backup the entire system at once during work hours is bound to throttle it and introduce a lot of lag and other inconveniences to Salesforce users.
• Salesforce also has limitations regarding how many times a single source can perform an API call per day. This is a tricky issue to work around.
• It can be difficult to restore the system’s state at a specific moment in time without interrupting existing dependencies or metadata. Third-party backup and recovery solutions should address this issue, and also help with scheduling, automation, multifaceted security, regulatory compliance, and granular recovery.

Data and metadata

The distinction between Salesforce data and metadata is crucial. While regular data represents values stored in the object storage, metadata refers to various aspects of configuration, such as layouts, rules, custom fields, reports, and practically any other custom element that can be added to Salesforce outside of the traditional forms of information. Metadata helps ensure that backed up data is readily accessible and easy to retrieve. 

The frequent interactions between data and metadata make both vital for proper system restoration. At the same time, metadata is often stored separately from regular data, which means that a backup solution must know metadata’s storage location and effectively copy and link it to regular data in order to perform a complete system backup. Neglecting metadata backups can lead to longer recovery times and potential data inconsistencies and loss during restoration.

Choosing the right Salesforce backup and restore solution for your organization is critical – and we’ll get to that in a few minutes. However, even the best solution won’t ensure data protection for organizations that don’t follow best practices. 

Make sure to include the following practices in your backup and restore strategy.  

Setting RTO and RPO

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are critical components of Salesforce disaster recovery. RPO is about the frequency of backups. It answers the question: “How much data can we afford to lose?” RTO means the maximum acceptable time that an application or system can be down after a failure takes place. The longer it takes, the greater the potential impact on brand, productivity, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

For example, an RPO of one hour means that, in the event of a disruption, you can afford to lose no more than one hour’s worth of Salesforce data. An RTO of one hour means your business operations need to return to normal functionality within an hour after a disaster. 

Because Salesforce data is so critical, make sure to set aggressive – but realistic – RTO and RPO targets.

Establishing data retention policies

Ensure your data retention policies align with your storage limitations, business needs, and potential regulatory requirements. Different data types have different guidelines, storage durations, and other possible parameters. You must remain compliant with various regulatory frameworks while tracking storage costs, which can accelerate with certain solutions, and maintaining up-to-date backup copies of Salesforce data.

Monitoring and setting up alerts

Monitoring the regular activity of your backup system is incredibly important. A correctly configured alert system is necessary to ensure that each possible error or mistake is resolved or mitigated as swiftly as possible. A proper monitoring system should have access to several different methods of alerting, such as emails, SMS, and application notifications. Detailed monitoring can also be used to keep track of a system’s overall health.

Frequent testing for both backup and restore processes

Backup and recovery processes should be tested frequently to ensure their operational state and the absence of errors. Finding and solving issues during backup testing is clearly preferable to finding errors during an emergency. It gives you the confidence that your system can effectively restore itself if necessary – that and a sudden error in the data restoration process does not blindside you.

Integration with different tools in the same infrastructure

Gone are the days when a backup solution worked in isolation from the rest of the organization’s infrastructure. Modern backup solutions commonly integrate with other systems and solutions, such as CRM, BI and ERP software. This opens up many advantages for customers, such as workflow automation, data management improvements, and AI-based decision making.

Salesforce offers several options to help customers backup and restore their data. 

• Data backup capabilities
  • Export a Report – a basic export tool that offers data export via the reports interface.
  • Export Backup Data – another simple exporting solution generates CSV files on a monthly or weekly basis.
  • Export Data – data exporting performed using Data Loader (Salesforce’s built-in bulk import/export tool); offers more granular control over the backup process but requires many manual steps and can take significant time to set up.
  • Salesforce Backup – a native data recovery service, capable of moderately complex backup and restore operations (all previous methods could only create copies but not restore them). It is not included in the base Salesforce package and is priced separately.
• Metadata backup capabilities
  • Sandbox Creation/Refreshing – the entire metadata set is copied each time a new sandbox is created or refreshed.
  • Ant Migration Tool (retired) – a relatively advanced tool that can be used to migrate settings and metadata from one Salesforce org to another; retired in Spring 2024, but still operational. 
  • Change Sets – a basic migration tool that assists with settings migration from one Salesforce org to another; does not include actual data, only includes modifications made in the Setup menu.

Unfortunately, none of these tools are extensive or versatile enough to be viable Salesforce backup solutions. Even their latest native backup tool, Salesforce Backup, is not feature-rich enough to accommodate many situations and use cases that an average Salesforce business user might need regularly. That’s why most organizations choose third-party solutions. 

Selection methodology

There are multiple backup and recovery solutions for Salesforce on the market. The goal in this ebook is to highlight the most effective solutions while also showcasing a variety of software. Vendor descriptions include the following:

• AppExchange ratings, when available
• Benefits, disadvantages, key features
• Pricing
• An author’s personal opinion

Customer ratings

One may think testing each solution directly is the only true way to assess its capabilities. And yet, this kind of approach is challenging in a B2B industry – be it for monetary or infrastructure reasons or for the sheer time commitment it would take. As such, public customer reviews remain one of the best ways to understand how the software is perceived to perform.

Salesforce AppExchange provides overviews of many Salesforce backup and restore solutions, along with verified customer reviews. Because the reviews are focused on Salesforce, as opposed to backup for other applications, the ratings below focus on AppExchange. 

Benefits, shortcomings, key features

Based on AppExchange, G2 and other customer reviews, we highlight a variety of user experiences and product capabilities. At the same time, not all solutions have an established following of customers who leave user reviews online. In these cases, “benefits” and “advantages” are replaced with a “key features” section that showcases the software’s capabilities gathered from the vendor’s website and other sources, when possible.

Pricing

The price of software is one of its most important metrics. We attempt to present a detailed overview of the software’s pricing approach when possible.

Unfortunately, it is relatively common for B2B software vendors not  to publish their official pricing info anywhere with open access. In that case, we include other relevant information such as how their  pricing structure works regarding tiers, features, etc.

An author’s personal opinion

The last section in our methodology offers a more subjective view about the software in question, including an author’s perception of the solution’s capabilities based on customer reviews. It may also include previously unmentioned features or a brief recap of all the information presented. 

This section covers 11 backup and restore solutions. The list is split into two categories: solutions designed exclusively for Salesforce, and those that also support other environments. Vendors are prioritized in order of Salesforce AppExchange customer review rankings, which are on a scale of 1-5, where available.

Solutions Exclusively for Salesforce	Solutions for Multiple Vendors, including Salesforce
• GRAX: 5  • Flosum: 4.97 • Odaseva: 4.97 • AutoRABIT (not on AppExchange) • Gearset  (not on AppExchange)	• Own Company: 4.97   • Veeam Backup: 4.95 • Spanning: 4.73 • CloudAlly: 4.64 • AvePoint (not on AppExchange) • Keepit (not on AppExchange)

GRAX

GRAX is a robust Salesforce data backup and recovery platform that puts great effort into creating a safe and secure environment for customers’ Salesforce data. Data ownership is an essential emphasis for GRAX, allowing clients to store data using their cloud environments and greatly enhancing security in the process. GRAX can also be easily deployed on one of the cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS, or across on-premises environments. It is a powerful and flexible backup and recovery solution emphasizing data security and regulatory compliance for all its users, as well as strong reporting, archiving, and data reuse.  

Customer ratings:

• AppExchange: 5 out of 5

Benefits:

• Extensive backup and recovery with complete integrity and accuracy.
• High-frequency backups of data, metadata, files and attachments can be performed weekly, daily, or continuously.
• Robust data governance offers precise control over data history down to the field level.
• Support for many regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, DORA and APRA, by maintaining detailed data trails and more.
• Deep integration with Salesforce also enables more sophisticated use cases, such as data reuse for analytics or machine learning purposes.

Disadvantages

• No metadata restore

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• GRAX has a dedicated pricing web page that offers basic information about pricing tiers:
  • “Weekly Plan”
  • “Daily Plan”
  • “Continuous Plan”
• The most significant difference between the tiers is backup frequency – once a week, once a day, or as often as possible.
• More details about pricing can be obtained at its pricing web page or by requesting a personalized quote.

An author’s personal opinion on GRAX:

GRAX is a strong solution for Salesforce data lifecycle management with extensive data and metadata backup and recovery capabilities, along with archival, data reuse, and more. Backups are stored and accessible 24/7 on the customer’s own cloud instance, be it GCP, Azure, AWS, or any other alternative. It can provide point-in-time restore capabilities, data seeding, granular historical restoration, and auditing with compliance for global regulatory frameworks. GRAX is known for comprehensive backup automation, overall ease of use, and simple reuse for BI, AI, reporting and more in the customer’s chosen applications. Standard customer support is on a 9-to-5 ET schedule, which might impact the response times. GRAX also offers 24/7/365 premium support. 

Flosum

Flosum combines comprehensive data control with high levels of security and features such as bring-your-own-key (BYOK), data seeding, and compliance assistance. Flosum provides extensive backup and restoration – full, incremental, and selective backups on one hand and full, point-in-time, and selective restores on the other. Delivering fast RTOs is one of Flosum’s primary goals.

Customer ratings:

• AppExchange: 4.97 out of 5

Benefits:

• High level of integration with Salesforce.
• Extensive DevOps capabilities, such as Environment Variables and others.
• Flosum is a highly adaptable and versatile platform that can easily follow any change in existing workflows.

Disadvantages:

• A moderately steep learning curve for all users willing to get the most out of Flosum’s capabilities (there are multiple customer reviews on G2 citing the complexity of interacting with highly specific features and capabilities).
• A separate price tag for the data migration feature.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Flosum does not offer any pricing information on its website.

An author’s personal opinion on Flosum:

Flosum is a versatile data management platform that combines DevOps capabilities with Salesforce backup and recovery. It is security-heavy, with extensive encryption and BYOK support. One of Flosum’s biggest self-proclaimed goals is to enable the lowest possible RTOs, and the solution’s feature set seems to be up for the challenge. It can be difficult to learn, and its licensing model requires features such as data migration to be priced separately. However, it is still a strong option.

Odaseva

Odaseva provides many capabilities and features to protect and secure customers’ information. These include data compliance policies and auditing, a data archival feature set, extensive data security with a Zero Trust approach, and complex backup and recovery feature sets with automation, recovery plans, and more. Other features include high-frequency backups, granular data restoration options, and real-time backup and recovery process monitoring.

Customer ratings:

• AppExchange: 4.97 out of 5

Benefits:

• Many features for a case-specific backup solution.
• Backup tasks can be completely automated; there are plenty of customization capabilities.
• Manual backup tasks are also effective, with many customization options.

Disadvantages:

• Using Odaseva to its full potential requires a lot of effort and knowledge.
• Its relatively small knowledge base does not offer much in terms of helpful articles or materials.
• There is a slight learning curve that each user has to go through before conducting even the most basic backup jobs.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Odaseva’s pricing information is not available on its website. 
• Contacting the company is the only way to obtain pricing information.

An author’s personal opinion on Odaseva:

Odaseva is an impressive backup and recovery solution with capabilities that are suitable for Salesforce. It includes exceptional data security with a Zero Trust approach, extensive support for compliance and regulatory frameworks, and many backup-related features, be it automation, high-frequency backups, etc. It is not the most user-friendly solution on the market, and its built-in knowledge base is relatively lackluster. Still, the overall feature set is strong.

AutoRABIT

AutoRABIT targets Salesforce users, including those looking for a safe and secure DevOps environment. It supports a variety of regulatory frameworks with ease, such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and ISO 27001. In addition to typical backup and recovery capabilities, AutoRABIT can also provide sandbox management, static code analysis, and automated release management, to name a few DevOp capabilities. It is an interesting platform with a highly specific audience that combines Salesforce data protection with flexible compliance capabilities.

Customer ratings:

• Isn’t listed on AppExchange. Refer to other review sites for more information.  

Benefits:

• Simple and convenient integration with existing Salesforce infrastructures.
• Extensive automation capabilities for backup tasks and other operations.
• DevOps capabilities, for those who require them.

Disadvantages:

• A moderately steep learning curve; it might take a while before a newcomer with no prior experience can perform most of the tasks.
• The customer support response time is inconsistent.
• Using the solution by many people simultaneously leads to slowdowns and other inconveniences.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• AutoRABIT does not offer any pricing information on its website.

An author’s personal opinion on AutoRABIT:

AutoRABIT is a DevOps environment with Salesforce backup and recovery capabilities, and it manages to do all tasks with competence. It supports several compliance frameworks while providing features for backup and recovery tasks of Salesforce data and metadata. It is also an advantageous DevSecOps environment with static code analysis, sandbox management, and many other capabilities. It does take some time to learn all of its capabilities, and the solution does not handle a large number of simultaneous connections well. However, the overall package is still extremely useful in various situations.

Gearset

Gearset is another example of a Salesforce backup solution explicitly built for DevOps purposes. It offers extensive backup and recovery capabilities that cover both data and metadata, the ability to recover metadata with record speed when necessary, and even the capability to create backups at a fast pace (once per hour for up to ten objects at a time). Other capabilities include customizable data restoration with granular restore, compliance with multiple major regulatory frameworks, and an extensive system of monitoring and alerting tools.

Customer ratings:

• Isn’t listed on AppExchange. Refer to other review sites for more information.  

Benefits:

• Extremely convenient data sharing between different Salesforce orgs.
• Relatively easy setup process for most, if not all, integrations of Gearset with other software.
• The general ease of use across different tasks makes Gearset stand out.  

Disadvantages:

• A relatively high cost that scales upwards extremely fast and becomes surprisingly high for medium-sized and large businesses.
• The solution has a somewhat steep learning curve due to the way the logic works behind some of its features.
• A limited community behind the solution makes finding help outside the software’s customer support difficult.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Gearset’s pricing model is complex and extensive, with many categories targeting different platform elements.
• The Salesforce backup capabilities of Gearset are split into three pricing tiers:
  • “Starter” – $2.5 per month per single Salesforce user, starts from 100 users; can offer automated daily backups, unlimited storage, advanced data (and metadata) restoration tools, auditing, and more.
  • “Teams” – $3.25 per month per single Salesforce user, starts from 100 users; can offer two high-frequency backup jobs, adds backup search capabilities, metadata change monitoring, and several other capabilities on top of everything the “Starter” package offers.
  • “Enterprise” – the most extensive offering from Gearset with no public pricing attached to it, adds features such as SAML, account CSM, BYOK, account onboarding manager, etc.
• There is also separate (non-public) pricing for Salesforce data archival.
• More information about Gearset’s pricing model can be found here.

An author’s personal opinion on Gearset:

Gearset is one of the market leaders in DevOps solutions, and its overall capabilities in terms of Salesforce backups are also strong. It is a fast and convenient platform for extensive backup and recovery operations, supporting frequent backups alongside other features. It can monitor Salesforce backups in detail, and its alerting capabilities help ensure no issue or event escapes the administrator’s notice. At the same time, its general operational logic takes some time to get used to, and the overall price of the software would make it somewhat expensive by this market’s standards.

Own Company  

Own Company, previously known as OwnBackup, is one of the most well-known vendors in the SaaS backup market, supporting Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and ServiceNow. Its Own Recover solution can provide extensive archival and backup and recovery features, including the ability to compare data copies to look for inconsistencies. Other capabilities include backup automation, granular scheduling, and proactive data monitoring, making it an excellent solution for SaaS backup.

Customer ratings:

• Salesforce AppExchange: 4.97 out of 5

Benefits:

• A user-friendly interface simplifies interacting with different elements of Own.
• Extensive automation can reduce potential damage from human error or other issues that might disrupt the company’s data.
• Support for multiple regulatory frameworks, such as ISO 27001 and GDPR, when necessary.

Disadvantages:

• Complex and multi-faceted recovery processes require a lot of configuration beforehand.
• The overall recovery speed is relatively low, and recovering large data volumes takes a long time.
• A complicated pricing model consists of multiple segments, each with its own nuances and minimum order pricing values.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Own’s licensing model is separated into three groups based on the supported solution – Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or ServiceNow. 
• Each group has four sub-groups that are included in Own’s overall package:
  • Secure
  • Recover
  • Accelerate
  • Archive
• Own Recover for Salesforce tiers are priced as follows:
  • “Essential” starts at $2.9 per month per user (billed annually), has a minimum contract size of $375 per month, and introduces many basic features – automated backups, data restore capabilities, comparison tools, etc.
  • “Unlimited” starts at $3.65 per month per user (billed annually), has a minimum contract size of $500 per month, and adds features on top of the “Essential” package, such as data export, data search, intelligent alerts, and metadata restoration capabilities.
  • “Governance Plus” starts at $6.65 per month per user (billed annually), with a starting contract size of $1,000. It has the most extensive feature set of the three tiers and can support blockchain verification, BYOK, sandbox anonymization, and more.
• More information about Own’s pricing can be found on this pricing page.

An author’s personal opinion on OwnBackup:

Own Recover capabilities are relatively self-explanatory – they revolve around backup and recovery tasks within the Salesforce environment. Own can proactively monitor backups, automate them, and offer other convenient capabilities to its users. It is not the most user-friendly software on the market, and it struggles with large-scale restoration processes. Its pricing model is confusing, as well, which might scare away potential clientele.

Veeam Backup for Salesforce

Veeam is often considered one of the top backup and recovery solutions on the market. It is a versatile and robust data management platform that supports different storage types for hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Salesforce support is one of Veeam’s capabilities. It can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise to back up and recover data using API access. It supports multiple recovery options for Salesforce data while providing other valuable capabilities, such as granular scheduling and backup target flexibility.

Customer ratings:

• Salesforce AppExchange: 4.95 out of 5

Benefits:

• Positive customer support experience mentioned by many verified user reviews.
• Relatively simple first-time configuration process.
• A large selection of features for different environments that can be used for free, primarily suitable for microbusinesses or testing purposes.

Disadvantages:

• The moderately rigid user interface and an abundance of features and capabilities make the software somewhat overwhelming to less experienced users.
• The overall price of Veeam is noted as relatively high by the market’s standards.
• Both monitoring and reporting capabilities are lackluster across the board.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Veeam offers no pricing information on its website.
• A dedicated pricing calculator webpage on Veeam’s website enables potential customers to generate personalized quote requests with relative ease.

An author’s personal opinion on Veeam:

Veeam is a well-known name in the overall backup and recovery software market. Veeam is fast and versatile, supports many different platforms and data sources, and can be set up without too much of an issue. On the other hand, it is also well-known for its high price and somewhat basic reporting capabilities. The UX of the software is also questionable as the high number of features and capabilities makes the overall software somewhat overwhelming to work with.

Spanning

Spanning is a comprehensive data protection solution with an impressive feature set for various SaaS applications. It supports Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce. It is fast and scalable and can comply with regulatory frameworks such as GDPR or HIPAA, if necessary. It can offer fast data restoration, strong backup automation capabilities, and even metadata comparison features for end-user self-service.

Customer ratings:

• Salesforce AppExchange: 4.73 out of 5 

Benefits:

• Extensive backup automation with multiple supported backup types.
• Simple integration with Salesforce that allows for backup tracking and other capabilities.
• A relatively straightforward first-time setup process.

Disadvantages:

• The inability to customize backup frequency.
• Manual backups are somewhat inconsistent with their timing.
• The quality of customer support seems to have gotten worse in recent years (multiple customer reviews on Capterra and G2 mention that both the support quality and the general licensing model transparency has degraded significantly after Spanning’s acquisition by Kaseya). ^[1]

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• Spanning does not provide any pricing information on its website.
• Requesting a personalized quote seems the only way to gain such information.

An author’s personal opinion on Spanning:

Spanning is an excellent example of a general SaaS application backup software category that also supports Salesforce environments. It can be helpful to both MSPs and businesses, and its combination of speed and scalability is more than enough for it to remain competitive. Its backup automation capabilities can be a valuable feature, and the ability to integrate with Salesforce with minimal effort is just as advantageous. It also has its fair share of issues, with limited customization in some places and generally low customer support quality.

CloudAlly

CloudAlly is a relatively simple data backup solution that supports several SaaS platforms and applications, such as Microsoft 365, Dropbox, G Suite, and Salesforce. Its data recovery speed is one of CloudAlly’s primary selling points, but it can also offer point-in-time restoration, backup automation, and extensive encryption. The ability to support different regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, makes CloudAlly valuable for businesses that must adhere to these regulations, and features such as sandbox seeding and data comparison make data management easier.

Customer ratings:

• Salesforce AppExchange:  4.64 out of 5

Benefits:

• Strong cost-efficiency.
• The user interface as a whole is easy to work in; navigating from one feature to another is a straightforward process.
• A short and simple first-time configuration process can be performed by people with any skill level.

Disadvantages:

• Restoration capabilities can be surprisingly challenging to master.
• The overall search engine is rigid and does not offer much in terms of search criteria.
• A lack of a dashboard that showcases the combination of different parameters and other information about the software.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• CloudAlly’s Salesforce backup capabilities cost $3 per month per user or $30 per year for one user if paid upfront. It can offer unlimited storage, backup automation, manual backups, point-in-time restore, sandbox seeding, metadata backup, and many others.
• More information about CloudAlly’s pricing can be found on their pricing web page.

An author’s personal opinion on CloudAlly:

CloudAlly is a comprehensive data protection platform. Although it doesn’t offer unique capabilities, it is more than competent – with multiple backup and restore types, metadata backup support, backup automation, sandbox seeding support, export to CSV, and even relationship restore. Not all of its capabilities are equally simple and easy to master, and the lack of a dashboard does make it more difficult to manage complex environments.   

AvePoint

AvePoint provides various SaaS solutions and applications. In addition to backup and recovery, it also offers infrastructure management, content migration, and regulatory compliance capabilities. AvePoint’s Salesforce offering uses highly customizable automated backups performed frequently to ensure security for both data and metadata. It can also restore information with a high degree of granularity. Other capabilities include extensive data security measures, multi-tenant management capabilities, and FedRAMP authorization for companies that work in the public sector.

Customer ratings:

• Isn’t listed on AppExchange. Refer to other review sites for more information.  

Benefits:

• Strong capabilities in terms of Salesforce backups, including granular restoration.
• Compliance with several key regulatory frameworks.
• Extensive record management and data analysis capabilities.

Disadvantages:

• Relatively high price for its combination of features and capabilities.
• Limited report customization.
• AvePoint’s user interface is not easy to work with, and tends to cause confusion (based on multiple G2 reviews). ^[2]

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• No pricing information could be obtained on AvePoint’s official website.

An author’s personal opinion on AvePoint:

AvePoint is in a relatively uncomfortable position regarding SaaS application backups. On the one hand, its feature set is impressive, with extensive data analysis, granular backup and recovery, adherence to multiple compliance frameworks, and so on. On the other hand, most medium-sized and large businesses need even more versatility from their backup solutions, and customers report that AvePoint’s pricing approach makes it very difficult for most small businesses to afford its services.

Keepit

Keepit is a relatively small-scale backup solution. It works with multiple SaaS applications, including Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace. It can offer blockchain-based encryption, rapid restoration, granular search, backup automation, and storing multiple backup copies in separate locations. It would struggle a lot in large and complex environments. Still, its overall targeting towards small and middle-sized businesses makes it evident that the solution knows its limitations and tries to play to its strengths.

Customer ratings:

• Isn’t listed on AppExchange. Refer to other review sites for more information.  

Benefits:

• A simple web-based user interface.
• Easy document sharing with plenty of security options.
• The first-time setup process is quick and does require special skills.

Disadvantages:

• Does not support compliance with significant certification standards; ISO 27001 certification is still not available.
• While helpful, the dashboard can be relatively slow at times.
• Some software updates seem to have introduced new problems instead of solving existing ones.

Pricing (at the time of writing):

• The Keepit website offers basic information about its licensing model, comprised of four tiers:
  • “Identity Basics” – standard offering covers Role Assignments, Users, Admin Units, and Groups while offering SSO support, MFA support, and one year of data retention.
  • “Business Essentials” – the least expensive paid version of Keepit with all the features mentioned above plus an audit log.
  • “Enterprise Unlimited” – Removes the one-year limitation on data retention while also providing 24/7 support, full access to the API, and more.
  • “Governance Plus” – The most feature-rich offering combines everything mentioned above plus regulatory letters and amendments, as well as adjusted DPA (Data Processing Agreement).
• Actual pricing is available by requesting a personalized quote.

An author’s personal opinion on Keepit:

Keepit combines data security capabilities with the flexibility of backup and recovery tasks in the form of automation, granular search, and other capabilities. Its user interface is relatively easy to work with, and the initial setup process is straightforward. However, it does come at the cost of a slow-working dashboard, a lack of support for some significant compliance frameworks, and a prolonged pattern of software updates introducing more issues into the solution.

___

^{[1] Sources: https://www.capterra.com/p/135223/Spanning-Backup/reviews/6054094/
https://www.capterra.com/p/135223/Spanning-Backup/reviews/2246153/
https://www.capterra.com/p/135223/Spanning-Backup/reviews/3618705/}

^{[2] Sources: https://www.g2.com/products/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup/reviews/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup-review-9491788
https://www.g2.com/products/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup/reviews/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup-review-9495908
https://www.g2.com/products/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup/reviews/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup-review-9427276
https://www.g2.com/products/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup/reviews/avepoint-multi-saas-cloud-backup-review-9491261}

Having an effective Salesforce backup and restore strategy and solution is critical for business continuity – and business success. Customers can’t assume Salesforce will protect their data or ensure it’s always readily accessible, even if they use Salesforce’s own backup tools. There are too many inherent complexities for the platform to effectively handle. That’s why even Salesforce’s own AppExchange site includes third-party backup and recovery solutions.

There are clearly a number of effective solutions on the market. Some organizations prefer solutions that exclusively support Salesforce. They believe these vendors’ sole focus on Salesforce enables more expertise in delivering reliable, comprehensive backup and recovery. They also are hesitant to rely on one backup solution for multiple applications. Spreading backups across multiple specialized vendors can help mitigate risks associated with consolidated solutions’ single point of failure and increased attack surfaces.  

Keepit is a good choice for consolidated backup software that also works with applications such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It is fast, versatile, and has a robust data security feature set, even if it struggles with large-scale environments. Veeam, on the other hand, offers many features and capabilities, supports dozens of different environment types, and has a strong reputation as a reliable backup solution for many purposes.

In the specialized category, GRAX is one of the best-ranked Salesforce backup and recovery solutions, offering comprehensive capabilities such as data lifecycle management, granular backup and restore, security, compliance, data reuse, and more, at what customers say is a good price point. 

In the end, choosing a solution comes down to what best suits your organization’s specific needs and budget. Whatever you select, make sure to underpin it with best practices to ensure full Salesforce data protection and accurate data recovery.