What happens to Salesforce data when the contract ends, and what to do before it does

What happens to Salesforce data when the contract ends?

The answer is set by your contract, not by a universal rule: after termination or non-renewal, the company's access ends on the date the agreement says, and the data is retained, returned or deleted only on the terms in the master subscription agreement and any data processing addendum. The notice date for non-renewal is therefore the real deadline, because the org is queryable only until access ends.

For a CRM consultant, that makes the weeks before expiry the moment that matters. After that, a complete export is the only copy of years of accounts, opportunities, activities and cases that the company may hold.

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Each company should read its own order form, subscription agreement and any addendum, and ask Salesforce or its reseller about retention windows in writing. The vendor's terms are not summarized here because they differ by contract and change over time.

Which three paths do owners actually have?

An owner who is not renewing can pay to keep the org alive, export everything to storage the company controls, or let the data go. Each path trades cost against optionality.

Which path is available depends on the contract. Ask in writing, before the notice date, what the vendor offers after termination and for how long.

Why does the non-renewal notice date matter more than the end date?

Most subscription agreements require notice a set period before renewal, so the notice date decides whether the company has a choice at all. A missed notice can auto-renew the contract; a notice sent without an export plan can leave the company with a short window to pull data it never inventoried.

Put both dates on the project plan:

1. The last date to send non-renewal notice under the agreement.
2. The date access ends.
3. The date the company wants its export validated, which should be well before access ends.
4. Any retention or deletion date the vendor states for post-termination data.

If the company is moving CRMs rather than shutting down, the Salesforce to HubSpot migration page covers what history tends to get left behind, and CRM cleanup before migration explains what not to purge.

What should be exported before access ends?

A defensible export captures objects, relationships and files, not only the tabs people look at daily. Ask the admin for this list and check it against the object manager.

• Accounts, contacts and leads, including converted and merged records
• Opportunities with stage history and closed-lost reasons
• Activities: tasks, events, logged calls and emails
• Cases with comments and resolution fields
• Notes, attachments and files linked to records
• Custom objects and the metadata that explains their fields
• Reports and dashboards the leadership team relies on, as definitions
• Users, roles and owner fields, so records can be tied to who did the work

Keep record IDs in every file. They are what lets someone rebuild the links between an opportunity, its contact and its activity trail later.

Why does this matter for data licensing?

CRM history is the kind of record AI buyers look for because it shows real work with outcomes: how a deal moved through stages, what was said, and whether it closed or was lost. The company decides whether any licensing makes sense, and nothing is binding until it agrees price and terms and signs. Rights are reviewed first: customer contracts, privacy notices and employee policies all matter, and consumer personal data without a licensing basis is a red flag.

A complete export keeps that option open. A deleted org closes it. The legal and contracts data page explains why decision records with outcomes carry weight with buyers.

How should a consultant raise it with the owner?

Raise it while the org is still queryable, and keep it to one question about the records, not a pitch.

The introduction email builder can draft an owner-approved version. You never export, upload or describe the records yourself; you only share basic fit information.

What do partners earn, and what are the limits?

Partners earn 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects from the referred company's licensing deals, capped at $100,000 per referred company. The reward is payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee, and no reward is guaranteed. It is a share of SourceX's fee and is never deducted from what the company receives.

The company must have 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), several years of documented operations and the right to license the records. A short-lived org, a Salesforce instance mostly holding consumer data, or a company whose clients own the records will not fit. See who qualifies for the full baseline. Closed or downsized companies can still qualify if the data exists, as explained in does a company that downsized still qualify.

Next step

If a client is about to let a Salesforce contract lapse, confirm the export first, then register as a partner and make the introduction. For a company winding down more broadly, read how to wind down a company without losing its records and the office closure checklist.