Database and performance

[ACE]

We are using a single board in the office, so that all members of the board have access to all the information on the cards as a database (previous work). Right now we are not archiving any cards and obviously the number of cards on the board keeps growing. I would like to know if this is incorrect and we should archive the cards. I understand that even if they are archived they still exist and have access to that information, since we do not want it to ever disappear. The question is whether Trello's performance is affected by a huge number of "active" cards on the board and whether archiving them alters in any way the way in which the information on them can be accessed. I imagine that the boards are not designed to hold thousands of active cards. But it is a question that I have not yet resolved and I am afraid of making a mistake with the archiving. Thanks.

[Rasmus Wulff Jensen · Accepted solution]

A board can hold thousands of cards, but operation of them tend to become slower and slower. At a point Trello (roughly ~4000 cards) will show your a warning that you should begin reducing number of visible cards. 

Archiving is one option, but the drawback is visual representation of these card (just one big list).

Another option (what we do) is we make an archive board per year (Archive 2023, Archive 2024, Archive 2025...) And move cards to these boards once a month (All our done cards are in Month labeled lists (example "Done - Feb. 2025) and we move the entire list to the Archive board

This approach make the main board only contain planned and in progress work keeping to performance good at all time

Warning: If you do this make sure all members on the main board is also on the archive board. Else the cards loose information on who worked on them

[ACE]

Thank you very much @Rasmus Wulff Jensen.
That's what I initially planned, the use of several boards.
The problem I found with that is that for all members to be able to access those boards (database) they must be paying members. I know it's not a big financial investment but it's a small company and we have to adjust as much as possible. That's why I wondered if archiving the cards was an option. As I suspected and you confirmed, archived cards lose some ease in their search. I think that global search is not the best achievement of humanity...
I will continue studying the viability of this. Greetings.