Salesforce Price In 2019 – Uncovering The Hidden Cost
Salesforce or SF or SFDC is a cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform through which enterprises can focus on customer service, analytics, marketing automation, and application development in every part of the company that interacts with a customer including sales, marketing, services, and many more.
Salesforce helps you stay connected with your customers, partners, prospects, and many more. It is the number one CRM platform that enables businesses to sell, service, and market the products or services like never before. It is the customer success platform which helps you to connect to your customer in a whole new way. Sales Cloud allows to use customer care services you need like to choose a deal, collaborate, and sell as a team, manage contacts, track opportunities from the first contact to the final handshake.
So, you can even run your entire business with just your handy device (phone or tablet). Due to these embedded technologies, Salesforce is known as the world’s leading cloud ecosystem and the employer-customer success platform.
Salesforce Sales Cloud costs $25 per user per month and can exceed up to $300, which vary as per the need of the business and its services to the user. If the scale of business is small, then depending upon the usage per user, pricing will be less. On the other hand, if the business is at wide-scale, then the pricing will be high. Keep in mind that CRM platforms are not free. You have to invest a few bucks (or maybe more) in that to attain revenues for the company. As per the services provided by Salesforce (called Clouds) pricing range is mentioned below: –
Salesforce Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud are the primary cloud services of Salesforce. Other than these, Salesforce offers a variety of more services like Community Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, and IoT Cloud. Among these, Sales Cloud is the right place to start.
Salesforce provides several crucial platforms for CRM solutions which pricing depends upon the usage. The price of these platforms is billed on an annual basis. Salesforce Essentials is out-of-the-box CRM for up to 10 users. Lightning Professional is a complete CRM for the team of any size. Lightning Experience is deeply customizable sales CRM for the business. Lightning Unlimited provides unlimited CRM power and support to the paid users. For business solutions, “Lightning Enterprise” is the most popular solution. Basic functionality, along with its availability of all these platforms, is given below: –
| Editions and Features | Salesforce Essentials $25/user/month | Lightning Professional $75/user/month | Lightning Enterprise $150/user/month | Lightning unlimited $300/user/month |
| Find and manage better leads | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Manage customer and sales details | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Sell from anywhere on any device | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Forecast sales more accurately | No | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Configure, price, quote, and bill | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Get real-time sales insights | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Collaborate across your company | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Extend Salesforce to your partners | No | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-sell and upsell more easily | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customize and automate processes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Connect sales info to any app | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Get the most out of Salesforce | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Harness the power of Einstein Artificial Intelligence | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Per user per month | $25 |
| Per five users per year | $1,500 |
| Being a small company, if you’re moving to Lightning Professional tier, then you have to pay $9,000 per year for ten users |
| Sales Essentials | $25 per user per month |
| Lightning Professional | $75 per user per month |
| Lightning Enterprise | $150 per user per month |
| Lightning Unlimited | $300 per user per month |
No, Salesforce does not offer any free plan. The most inexpensive and basic plan is the Salesforce Sales or Salesforce Service Cloud, which starts from $25 per user per month.
CRM has numerous hidden features available. Once you have bought a CRM solution for your organization, the next step is to customize it as per your business requirement. Such customization of the platform may include hidden fees or expenses. We have found several features which are crucial and have included hidden cost at the same time. Below uncovers the hidden cost of some features: –
1). Data and File Storage
The most expensive and most important part of the Salesforce system is Data and File storage. The platform comes up with a limit of 1GB data storage and 10 GB file storage per organization; and additional 20MB for Professional and Enterprise plans or 120MB for Performance and Unlimited. Thus, total data and file storage will be 100MB storage per user.
Apart from this, additional storage can be purchased from Salesforce, which is available in blocks of 50MB or 500MB with the cost of $125 per month for 500MB of extra data storage. Whereas, file storage can be bought for $5 per month for 1GB. Remember, this is not a one-time payment. Now, you might have realized that data storage cost far more than purchasing your license.
2). Salesforce Support Cost
The basic support offered by Salesforce in their basic plan includes submission of the online case, 12/5 support through phone, and two-business day response time. An alternative to this licensing service, the premium plan includes 24/7 customer support, faster responses, and expanded Salesforce training course access. To avail this solution, you need to pay an additional 20% of your license list price in case of the purchase of Professional or Enterprise Editions.
3). CRM Access through mobile devices
Salesforce CRM provides a free mobile-based service called Mobile Lite. This solution offers restricted functionality and excludes some essential features like access to custom objects, configuration customization, etc. If you are interested in purchasing the complete version of Salesforce Mobile Lite, then you can avail this free for Unlimited Edition customers, but for Professional and Enterprise plans, the additional upgrade cost of $50 per user per month will have to be paid.
4). API call limits
API call limit determines the total number of times the system transaction (send and receive information) has done from external data resources. In case of Salesforce, if the users go beyond the maximum number of allowed calls, then they have only two options- either adding more user licenses or upgrading all users to the most expensive Salesforce Performance Edition.
5). Offline Access
The ability to access information through Salesforce CRM is when the system goes offline. It is really important to have all the information with you every time because you should always to be prepared for any kind of system error. Salesforce CRM provides a service called briefcase, which offers an online and offline edition of the CRM services, which is free for Enterprise and the customers with the Unlimited plan. For the people using Salesforce Professional, the additional payment of $25 per user per month need to be paid.
| S.No. | Edition | Platforms | Price (per user, per month) |
| 1 | Small Business | Sales and customer support | $25 |
| 2 | Sales + Service | Combo features of Sales and Service Editions | Essentials – $25 (for up to 10 users) Professional – $100 (for any size team) Enterprise – $175 (customizable) Unlimited – $325 (unlimited sales and CRM service) |
| 3 | Platform | Lightning Platform, mysalesforce, Console, and Sandbox | Lightning Platform Starter – $25 Lightning Platform Plus – $100 Lightning Platform Unlimited – (as per customization) |
| 4 | Engagement | Heroku, Starter Bundle | Heroku basic – Free Hobby – $7/dyno Starter Bundle – (as per customization) |
| 5 | Integration | MuleSoft Anypoint Platforms | Gold – (as per customization) Platinum – (as per customization) Titanium – (as per customization) |
| 6 | Analytics | Einstein Predictions, Einstein Analytics Plus | Einstein Predictions – $75 Einstein Analytics Plus – (as per customization) |
| 7 | Financial Services | Financial Services Cloud, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate Editions | Financial Services Cloud Professional – $150 Financial Services Cloud Enterprise – $300 Financial Services Cloud Unlimited – $450 |
| 8 | Health Cloud | Health Cloud Enterprise and Ultimate Editions | Health Cloud Enterprise – $300 Health Cloud Unlimited – $450 |
| 9 | Communities | Self-Service and Partner Communications | Self-Service – $5 per member or $2 per login Partner Relationship Management – $25 per member or $10 per login Lighting External Apps Plus – $35 per member or $15 per login |
| 10 | Enablement | myTrailhead | myTrailhead – $5 per user |
| 11 | Productivity | Quip Business and Quip Enterprise | Enterprise – $25 per user Quip for Salesforce – as per customization |
| 12 | Success Plans | Standard and Premium Support | Standard – Included in all licenses Premier –20% net Premier+ -30% net Priority – as per customization |
| 13 | Advisory Services | Architects, Expeditions, and Experience Design | Salesforce Architects – as per customization Expeditions – as per customization Experience Design – as per customization |
The price of $25 per user per month sounds pretty cheap for an organization. The pricing varies because of the cost of additional services. The organization may choose different editions as per the services required to them, and the pricing will also vary accordingly. So, you may choose as many additional options as you need. Another benefit is that integration with other Salesforce cloud services is free.
Bear in mind that customization and implementation are taught tasks. And so, many users have to learn Salesforce or hire the Salesforce expert who would do those things. Therefore, while planning Salesforce pricing, keep in mind that probably you’ll have to spend some money on Salesforce implementation. To the word, the price ranges from $5,000 to over $80,000. There are many reasons why the price is so high. The most influential one is complexity. As for the others, here they are:
| Standard | Premier and Premier+ | Signature |
| Included in all licenses | Contact for pricing | Contact for pricing |
| Automatically included with all Salesforce products | Get all the benefits of the Standard Success Plan PLUS | Get all the benefits of the Standard Success Plan PLUS |
| GUIDANCE | GUIDANCE | GUIDANCE |
| Success Communities Guided Journeys | Success Management Premier Accelerators Interactive Webinars Circles of Success Interactive events | Signature Accelerators CUSTOMIZABLE OPTIONS Expanded success management coverage Success Engineers Tailored Release Strategy Technical Health Reviews |
| PRODUCT SUPPORT | PRODUCT SUPPORT | PRODUCT SUPPORT |
| 12/5/365 online case submission Response in two business days | 24/7 toll-free phone support Chat support 1-hour initial response for critical issues Developer support | Designated Primary Engineer Advanced developer and develoyment support Proacive recommendations and monitoring 15-minute initial response to critical cases ISV partner case coordination |
| TRAINING | PREMIER+ | TRAINING |
| Trailhead | Configuration Services | Customized training plans |
The organization with just five users of Salesforce has to invest up to thousands of dollars per month. Therefore, it is mandatory to ask deep questions regarding additional fees and decide which features are important for the organization to have before investing in any of the annual license plans. Otherwise, you will risk getting stuck with the solution that is expensive and difficult to adjust to your needs. It is better to take initial training on the use of Salesforce so that there remains no doubt in the use of CRM. Happy Reading!
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