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Spring '19: Increased storage limits could save you money

We know about the Salesforce release schedule... updates come out three times each year and are automatically applied to their multi-tenant environment. And for those of us trying to keep up, each release comes with literally hundreds of pages of release notes and, hopefully, at least a couple of features that we're genuinely excited to share with our users.

 The Spring '19 release includes a change that *could* lower the total cost of your subscription!

 Storage in Salesforce comes in two flavors, data storage and file storage. I'm focused here on data storage, because 
  • that's where I've seen orgs push (or exceed) the standard limits
  • the standard data storage limits are changing 
  • additional data storage on the platform is EXPENSIVE! One additional GB of data storage can run $3,000 per year! I worked with one small org whose incremental storage charges were a pretty hefty percent of their base license costs! (Archived Tasks were the culprit, but that's for another post.)
Let's back up... data storage is comprised of everything except your files, documents, knowledge articles and such. So all your leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, etc, go into your data storage. And the standard allotment of data storage has not been all that generous. Until now, you got the greater of 20 MB per standard-license user or 1 GB. So an org with 100 users gets 2 GB (100 * 20 MB); an org with 50 users (or less) gets 1 GB. Over time, if you don't purge data, you can hit these limits pretty easily.

 Your Salesforce admin can check how much storage you have, how much you're using and what objects are consuming storage. From Setup, search for Storage Usage. (Note that the Limit shown includes any additional storage you're paying for.)

 If your Percent Used is relatively low (less than 60% or so), you probably haven't been paying for additional storage. If it's pretty high, you probably want to check. Again, your admin can go to Setup and use Checkout to see your Installed Products. If those products include Data Storage, then you're paying for more than the standard amounts. How much storage are you buying, and how much are you paying?

 The amount of data storage you're buying is on that Installed Products page within Checkout. Check the Product and the Quantity. If I see 'Data Storage (500 MB)' and a quantity of 3, I'm paying for an additional 1.5 GB. How much am I paying? Click on the associated order (there could be multiple Data Storage entries in your list of Installed Products; you'd repeat these steps for each and add the results). On the order, again look for the Data Storage entry. Multiply the quantity by the monthly price. That's your additional monthly storage charge. Three units at $125 per month each has me paying $375 per month, $4500 per year!

 So what's changing? Starting in March (so a little after the Spring '19 rollout scheduled for early February), orgs' standard data storage is increasing from 1 GB to 10 GB! If you have 5,000+ users, you already have 10 GB or more. But that's not most of us ;) If you have fewer than 5,000 users and you're paying for storage, then once these changes take effect, you should check those limits and dial back your additional storage. In the example mentioned above, my standard 1 GB will become 10 GB, WAY above the 2.5 GB I had.

 So I'll cancel that additional storage once I see my storage limit bumped! If I can't cancel immediately, then at least at the next renewal. And if I'm renewing right now, I'll see about changing the term of that storage product so that I only pay for it until this change takes effect.

 You'll have to consider what storage you're using and what your new limits will be. But I expect most orgs paying for additional data storage will be able to reduce, if not eliminate, that surcharge.

 Safe Harbor: the change described and the timing are per the Spring 19 Release Notes. And, as Salesforce continually reminds us, we should make buying decisions based on features that are currently available.
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