May 21, 2019
12:02 pm
Share
One of the biggest names in the world of CRM is Salesforce, with a client roster that includes some of the biggest brands in the world right alongside the average small business owner.
This popular CRM platform comes with some upfront costs. Salesforce can cost from $25 per user per month, to over $300 — their monthly fee will vary depending on the needs and scale of each business. While you’ll need to collect quotes from the top CRM vendors to learn the price for your operation in particular, the bottom line is that the best CRM platforms are not free.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at Salesforce’s costs to help you figure out if this is the right CRM system for your company.
In This Guide:
- Salesforce Pricing Plans — Salesforce offers multiple services, with four plan tiers for each.
- Salesforce Cost Per User — The CRM’s scalable pricing works on a per-user basis.
- Salesforce Sales Cloud Costs— This platform helps sales teams manage a daily workflow.
- Salesforce Service Cloud Costs— This platform offers a range of customer service tools.
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud Costs— This marketing platform layers on top of other Salesforce clouds.
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud Costs— This platform’s tools help create better online stores.
- Does Salesforce Have a Free Plan?— The short answer is no. Here’s why.
- Top 5 CRM Price Comparison— See how Salesforce costs compare to other leading CRM providers.
- Getting Started With Salesforce — Learn how to get the best price for your operation.
Salesforce Pricing Plans
Salesforce divides its various services into what it calls “clouds.”
- Sales Cloud, from $25, is the company’s basic CRM system; it includes all the basics you need for client management, including client records, lead tracking, deals, notes, and more.
- Marketing Cloud, price available on request, allows you to create one-to-one marketing campaigns.
- Service Cloud, again from $25, allows for online customer service on any device, and the ability to integrate customer service data with client records in other Salesforce clouds.
- Commerce Cloud, price available on request, helps companies build online shopping experiences.
Sales, Marketing, Service, and Commerce are the primary clouds Salesforce offers. Beyond that, the company has a variety of other services, including a development platform for building Salesforce-powered apps, online forums connected to CRM data, and more.
For those just starting out, however, Sales Cloud is the place to start.
For pricing, Salesforce offers a variety of pricing levels. Essentials is for teams of five or less, and applies only to the Sales and Service clouds. As you go up in pricing tiers, Salesforce becomes more customizable and adds higher levels of support.
There’s also Lightning Professional, Lightning Enterprise, and Lightning Unlimited. The Lightning suite of services all use a different user interface than the classic versions of these plan tiers, but offer the basically same features (albeit with a few new productivity tools).
You can read more about the Lightning services here. Ultimately, while the “Lightning” name can be a little confusing, the services it offers are just a mildly revamped version of the services we discuss here, and come with the same benefits and price tags.
Salesforce Typical Pricing (per user, per month):
| Sales Cloud | Service Cloud | Sales & Service Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Essentials | $25 | $25 | — |
| Standout features | -Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity Management -Email Integration (Gmail, Outlook) -Mobile App | -Cross-company collaboration -Customizable Reports -Mobile App | No combo deal available in the Salesforce Essentials tier |
| Lightning Professional | $75 | $75 | $100 |
| Standout features | -Lead Registration -Rules-Based Lead Scoring -Sales Forecasting | -Developer Sandbox -Orders Management -Asset Management | -Developer Sandbox -Asset Management -Team Collaboration Tools |
| Lightning Enterprise | $150 | $150 | $175 |
| Standout features | -Workflow Automation -Approval Automation | -Field Service Tools -Process Automation -AI Tools | -Unlimited Roles and Permissions -Workflow and Approval Automation -Offline Access |
| Lightning Unlimited | $300 | $300 | $325 |
| Standout features | -24/7 Support and Configuration Services | -Unlimited Online Training -24/7 Support | -Unlimited Online Training -24/7 Support |
We left Marketing and Commerce clouds off the table, since their prices are only available on demand. Marketing Cloud comes in four tiers — Email, Mobile, and Web Marketing; Social Media Marketing; Advertising; and B2B Marketing Automation — each of which is available at a set per-month price. In contrast, Commerce Cloud comes in just two versions — Salesforce B2C Commerce and Salesforce B2B Commerce.
See How Much You'll Really Spend on Salesforce or Other CRM Providers.
Salesforce Cost Per User
What you’ll notice from the pricing table above is that Salesforce – like pretty much all CRM platforms – charges on a per user, per month basis. Salesforce Essentials for Sales Cloud, for example, charges $25 per user, per month. There’s a set minimum of five users, but no maximum.
Per-user pricing schemes are typical for business software. It ensures the pricing structure is scalable, so it won’t break the bank for the smallest companies that only need Sales Cloud for a few users, while still charging a fair price for larger companies.
If you need a CRM system for a full five users, you’ll be paying around $1,500 per year for Salesforce. If you’re a small company of 10 users moving up to the Lightning Professional tier, then you’ll be paying about $9,000 per year.
When you’re considering which clouds to pay for, keep in mind the number of current employees as well as how quickly you plan to expand. Keeping the per-user pricing in mind means you’ll always know how much you’ll be paying for Salesforce at any given time.
Salesforce Sales Cloud Costs
The Sales Cloud is the most basic Salesforce software: The main features will allow every employee in a company to easily manage their accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities, all from a single interface. AI-powered tools and customizable templates can further streamline and automate daily chores, cutting down on costs and helping agents focus on what matters.
Each of the four tiers offers more features and functionality than the last. Sales Essentials costs $25 per user, per month; Lightning Professional is $75 per user, per month; Lightning Enterprise is $150 per user, per month; and Lightning Unlimited is $300 per user, per month.
Salesforce Service Cloud Costs
Service Cloud is a key part of Salesforce’s products. It’s a fully functional customer service platform that integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, putting your customer data at the fingertips of all those in your company that need it.
The Community 360 feature, for example, allows customer service agents to see if your clients have looked for help already on your website or filed any support tickets. This helps the agents get a better picture of what’s going on with any given client.
With Service Cloud, Salesforce says you can reach any customer on any device to meet their needs as they arise.
The costs for Service Cloud are the same as for the Sales Cloud. Essentials is $25 per user, per month, Lightning Professional starts at $75 per user, per month, Lightning Enterprise costs $150 per user, per month, and Lightning Unlimited starts at $300 per user, per month.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Costs
Marketing Cloud, Salesforce’s one-to-one marketing platform, integrates with other Salesforce “clouds” for a more complete understanding of your customers’ history.
The idea with Marketing Cloud is to meet your customers wherever they are. You can use Salesforce’s platform to send out marketing emails, advertise to them online, send them mobile alerts, and encourage them to land on your e-commerce pages.
Salesforce says this can all happen at scale, giving your customers a more personalized experience without handcrafting every single message that goes out the proverbial door.
Marketing Cloud’s pricing is a little different from the Sales and Service Clouds, which have standard tiers. Salesforce doesn’t publish any public pricing for Marketing Cloud; instead of pricing tiers, there are packages based on what you want to do. One package, for example, is for email, web, and mobile marketing.
Then there’s a separate one for social media, another for online advertising, and another for business-to-business marketing automation. Each tier offers specialized tools for the needs of each user case.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Costs
Finally, the Commerce Cloud helps businesses build better online buying experiences for their target audience: If it’s a consumer-facing business, the B2C Commerce solution is the best option, and if it sells directly to other businesses, the B2B Commerce cloud is the best tier.
B2C Commerce allows for one-touch payment, customer segmentation, social integrations, mobile-responsive design, merchandising tools, marketing tools, and management features for product, pricing, and catalog. Pricing for the service is customized based on gross merchandise value.
B2B Commerce’s core features include customer and segment catalog entitlements, pricing guided by customer and segment specs, multi-account and contract ordering, multiple payment methods, shipping to multiple locations in a single order, and real-time dashboards and reports. Pricing is again only available through a custom quote, and Salesforce uses order volume to determine their pricing.
Does Salesforce Have a Free Plan?
No, Salesforce does not offer a free plan. The cheapest basic plan is the Sales or Service cloud, either one of which starts at $25/user/month.
A few big names in CRM – Apptivo, Hubspot, and Zoho – do offer free plans, although all of them come with one big caveat: a limited feature set. Apptivo’s free plan only supports a maximum of three users, for instance, compared to Salesforce’s minimum of five.
Cost is not the only issue to consider, of course: You also have to decide whether the CRM platform you pick has the right features, integrations, and storage capacity for your needs. Not all CRM systems are the same, and any free option is unlikely to have all the features you’ll need, particularly if you plan to expand your operation in the future.
There are plenty of great Salesforce alternatives to choose – it isn’t the only name in the game. Here’s a quick pricing breakdown of five popular CRM platforms, including Salesforce.
Top Five CRM Pricing Comparison
| Salesforce | Apptivo | Hubspot | Microsoft Dynamics | Zoho | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  | |
| Free trial | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 15 days |
| Free plan | ✗ | ✔ | ✔ | ✗ | ✔ |
| Standard price range | $25/user – $300/user | $8/user – $20/user | $50/user – $400/user | $80/user – $255/user | $12/user – $100/user |
| Custom price plans available | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✗ | ✔ |
| Pros | -Wide feature set -Frequently updated -Robust support & training | -Cheaper than Salesforce -Offers core features | -Quick learning curve -Offers core features | -Integrates great with Microsoft products -Offers a wide range of features on par with Salesforce’s feature set | -24/5 support even for the free plan -Offers an AI on par with Salesforce’s Einstein AI |
| Cons | -No free plan -Basic plan caps data at 612 MB/user | -Fewer features than Salesforce across all plans | -No email marketing under the free plan -Limited mobile optimization under some plans -More costly than Salesforce | -More costly than Salesforce -No free plan -Limited API, compared to Salesforce’s open API | -No data backups in free plan -Shorter than average trial period |
Getting Started With Salesforce
Any CRM that offers all the features your employees need will quickly pay for itself in the time and resources that it saves every day. The sooner you get started with Salesforce, or whichever CRM you settle on, the faster your team will be able to close deals or address their customers’ needs.
The best way to find a CRM platform that’s right for you is to use our handy Get Quotes button. After filling out a brief questionnaire about your business, you’ll get customized price quotes from a number of CRM platforms to find the right one for your needs.
Ready to Start Streamlining Your Business Today?
By clicking to compare, you’ll receive quotes from various suppliers, tailored to the needs of your business. If you enter into a contract with a provider, we may receive a payment for the introduction. This helps Tech.co to provide free advice and reviews. It carries no additional cost to you, and doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Did you like this article?
Get more delivered to your inbox just like it!
Sorry about that. Try these articles instead!
Ian Paul
Ian is an independent writer based in Israel who has worked as a technology industry reporter and critic for more than ten years. He’s written for PCWorld, Macworld, TechHive, Yahoo, Lifewire, and The Huffington Post. He primarily covers Windows, PC and gaming hardware, video and music streaming services, security software, and browsers.