Full Copy Sandbox

  • Full sandboxes copy your entire production organization and all of its data, including standard and custom object records, documents, and attachments

Configuration Only Sandbox

  • Copy all of your production organization’s reports, dashboards, price books, products, apps, and customizations under Setup, but exclude all of your organization’s standard and custom object records, documents, and attachments.
  • Creating a configuration-only sandbox can decrease the time it takes to create or refresh a sandbox from several hours to just a few minutes, but it can only include up to 500 MB of data

Developer Sandbox

  • Special configuration-only sandboxes intended for coding and testing by a single developer. They provide an environment in which changes under active development can be isolated until they are ready to be shared.
  • Developer Sandboxes copy all application and configuration information to the sandbox, but are limited to 10 MB of test or sample data

Where Do I Develop?

Developer sandbox Configuration-only sandbox Full copy sandbox
Development
perfect, if extension app
also fine
slower to copy
giving developers access to data may not be ok
Testing
unit tests
apex tests
best for feature test
load standard data for regression
best for production debugging
Testing external integrations
not a good fit
special cases only
use sample or subset data
works well if using external ids
frequently required
external system expects full production data to be present
Staging / UAT
not a good fit
sometimes appropriate if testing against subset of production data is acceptable, e.g. regional
usually required
validation of new apps against production config and data
Sandboxes Available / Edition
EE – 1 sandbox
UE – 1 sandbox
UE – 5 config sandboxes
Note: Can purchase up to 6 config only sandboxes
UE – 1 full sandbox
Note :Can purchase up to 3 full sandboxes
Considerations
Small 10 MB
500 MB storage
Same as production