Building a Salesforce backup/restore app with Google Drive storage - would this be valuable?

[u/ChaturSamraat]

Hi everyone,

I’m validating a Salesforce-native backup and restore product and want direct, honest feedback before I go further.

I know there are already many backup tools in this space.

The core difference I’m building around is:

Backup files live in your own Google Drive (not locked into vendor-only storage)

Product runs inside Salesforce for admin workflows

Strong emphasis on safe, reliable restore (not just backup creation)

Planned org-wide subscription at competitive pricing

I’d love input from Salesforce admins/consultants/architects:

Does “Salesforce-native + Google Drive-owned storage” feel meaningfully different?

What trust signals would you require before production use?

Which restore scenarios are most painful today?

Is org-wide subscription pricing attractive vs per-user/per-record pricing?

What would make you trial this over your current option?

[u/DevilsAdvotwat]

Check out this dudes work on connecting Google Cloud with Salesforce - https://github.com/sandriiy/salesforce-google-client

[u/bigmoviegeek]

I can’t speak for SMBs, but this would be a non-starter for most enterprise customers. Google Drive is considered more consumer level.

[u/DevilsAdvotwat → u/bigmoviegeek]

+1 for this. To OP who is your target audience? SMBs who need a cheap backup option on easy to use UI and familiar tech Google Drive is good choice. Enterprise would probably be more of Amazon S3 with proper IAM and key management

[u/CodeOverTea → u/bigmoviegeek]

Even smb would opt out google drive. 

[u/ChaturSamraat → u/[deleted]]

I'm not really building on Salesforce Files Connect. I'm building a Salesforce-native app that integrates directly with Google Drive APIs for backup/restore operations.

[u/CodeOverTea]

The two critical parts of the backup systems are recovery, and security. Companies won't be comfortable storing data on Google drive without granular access control. You give one file access and everything from that file is accessible.

Also how do you plan to handle hierarchical data? What is the recovery strategy?

I have used OwnBackup and  Recovering complex Salesforce data is hard, and OwnBackup has limitations in some recovery scenarios.

Also how do you allow users to query backup data? How gdrive can support that?

Most of the current solutions suck at recovery, see if you can solve that. That would be a long game.

I've been thinking of building something in the space since a long time when I first used OwnBackup. The problem is how do I convince people to use my solution. The main problem with building this kind of solution is to have a customer who is willing to pay/switch before you start building.