Salesforce Pricing: How Much Does Salesforce Cost in 2025?

Salesforce pricing starts at $25 per user, per month for its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud platforms, as well as the small business Starter Suite plan that offers marketing, sales, service, and commerce in one service. The Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, starts at $1,250 per month. The dramatic difference between the two is typical of most CRM pricing structures, so don’t let it put you off.

That said, Salesforce pricing is so expansive and sometimes confusing, but we’re here to help. We’ll explain how much Salesforce costs in this guide, but you can also get a direct price quote from Salesforce to see the price for your exact business needs.

The most popular Salesforce platform is the Sales Cloud, which is why we’ve outlined its pricing in the table below, but you can keep scrolling to learn about all the other Salesforce pricing options for your business.

In This Guide:

• Salesforce CRM Pricing Plans: At a Glance
• Salesforce CRM Pricing Plans: In-Depth
• Does Salesforce Have a Free Plan?
• Salesforce Pricing Add-Ons
• Salesforce Cost Per User
• Top CRM Price Comparison
• How We Test CRM Software
• Getting Started With Salesforce

When it comes to determining the best price your business can get for Salesforce, or any software, the most important thing is to understand which pricing plan is sufficient for your exact business needs so you’re not overpaying for features you won’t use.

That’s why we’ve created our unique quote matching tool – it takes seconds to fill out but can save your business time and money. We’ve helped thousands of businesses find the right services and products. Fill in a few quick questions about your business and we’ll match you to the best solution.

Salesforce CRM Pricing Plans: At a Glance

Sales, Marketing, and Service 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. Here’s a simple breakdown of each service’s features and costs:

• Salesforce Sales Cloud – 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. Its prices start from $25 per month.
• Salesforce Service Cloud – allows for online customer service on any device, and the ability to integrate customer service data with client records in other Salesforce clouds. Its prices also start from $25 per month.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement – allows you to create one-to-one marketing campaigns, and its prices start from $1,250 per month.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Formerly Pardot) – is a marketing automation platform that can streamline a lot of your marketing. Prices for the service start from $1,250 per month.
• Salesforce Quip – is a collaboration platform that helps ease the transition to remote work. Its prices start from $100 per month.

To help you fully understand all this pricing, we tested out the Starter Suite, which includes core tools included in all of the Salesforce plans, including the updated interface that took effect in July 2024.

Keep scrolling to work out for yourself which Salesforce price plan might best meet your needs. We’ll look at Salesforce’s costs for each tier and product. We’ll also help you decide if Salesforce is the right CRM system for your company, or if an alternative might offer you better value.

Which Salesforce Plan Is Right For Me?

For those just starting out, the Sales Cloud Starter package is the place to start. At just $25 per user, per month, its pricing will fall in the remit of most small businesses, and its file and storage limits are generous enough to accommodate ventures with relatively simple CRM processes.

For pricing, Salesforce offers a wide variety of pricing levels. Essentials is for teams of five or fewer 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 Salesforce Lightning Professional, Lightning Enterprise, and Lightning Unlimited. The Lightning suite of services all use a cleaner user interface than the classic versions of these plan tiers and enhanced productivity tools, so businesses should definitely look into the platforms when considering Salesforce.

If you want to keep costs below $25 per user, per month, we’d recommend considering other providers like Pipedrive or HubSpot. Learn about how they compare to Salesforce in-depth in our alternatives section.

Salesforce Pricing Plans: In Depth

Salesforce divides its various services into what it calls “clouds.” Unsure about what service your business might need? Tired of the ambiguous pricing models of business software? We get it – comparing the different pricing plans is confusing and it can be extremely costly should you get it wrong.

To learn the ins and outs of Salesforce pricing plans – and their respective features – read on, or jump to different plans using the links below:

• Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing
• Salesforce Service Cloud pricing
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing
• Salesforce Marketing Account Engagement pricing
• Salesforce Quip pricing

If you want to save time, you can join the dozens of other businesses that have used our quote-finding form and get matched to a pricing plan much quicker this way.

How much does Salesforce Sales Cloud cost?

Salesforce Sales Cloud offers four different pricing plans, with each offering more features and functionality than the last. Sales Essentials costs $25 per user, per month; Lightning Professional is $80 per user, per month; Lightning Enterprise is $165 per user, per month; Lightning Unlimited is $330 per user, per month; and Lightning Unlimited+ is $500 per user, per month.

The Essentials plan is definitely reserved for smaller companies that don’t need a lot of advanced functionality, but still want to take advantage of Salesforce analytics, which are available at every price point.

We were able to create and thoroughly customize sales dashboards in the analytics tab of Salesforce. Source: Tech.co testing

As is often the case, the closest competitor to Salesforce Sales Cloud is the HubSpot Sales Hub, which offers many of the same features at a slightly lower price (starting at $23 per user per month). You are required to have at least two users though, so starting price is actually a minimum of $45 per month.

Salesforce is a good option, but it isn’t the best CRM for sales, our research shows. That honor goes to Zoho CRM, which offers lots of features but at a reasonable price point that won’t scare off smaller businesses. Salesforce does, however, offer some of the most robust sales dashboards on the market.

Salesforce Sales Cloud features

The Sales Cloud is the most popular 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. These basic features are available in the Essentials plan, but you won’t get much else when it comes to advanced features.

To unlock sales forecasting, for example, you’ll have to pay a bit more with the Professional plan. Additionally, this plan allows users to access the Salesforce mobile app while offline, so you can still perform tasks and stay up-to-date, even without a connection.

If you’re looking for a CRM that can automate workflows and processes, the Enterprise plan is going to be your best bet, as these features are unlocked at this tier. You also get advanced pipeline management, allowing you to track more key metrics, recognize changes, and de-risk deals for your sales business. Einstein AI features are also available with this plan, but only as add-ons, so you’ll have to pay a bit extra.

The Unlimited plan is where you can unlock the built-in AI features for free, which provide in-depth lead and opportunity scoring, as well as insights into customer interactions and deal health at your business.

Finally, the Unlimited+ plan is really only designed for larger businesses, as it unlocks the Slack integration with Salesforce for no additional cost, as well as additional knowledge and FAQ guides to help with customer support.

Check out our Salesforce review for more information

How much does Salesforce Service Cloud cost?

The costs for Service Cloud are the same as for the Sales Cloud. Essentials is $25 per user, per month, Lightning Professional starts at $80 per user, per month, Lightning Enterprise costs $165 per user, per month, Lightning Unlimited starts at $330 per user, per month, and Lightning Unlimited+ costs $500 per user, per month.

Like the Sales Cloud, the Essentials plan is aimed at smaller businesses interested in getting started with Salesforce but not financially equipped to utilize the advanced features. Fortunately, Salesforce allows for easy scaling, with each plan providing more features that build your service business up.

While Salesforce Service Cloud is a respectable option when it comes to customer support platforms, our research showed that Zendesk is actually the better option, depending on your needs. It’s more affordable, easier to use, and allows support across virtually every channel you can imagine, whereas Salesforce is missing some, like phone support.

Read our full Salesforce vs Zendesk comparison for more information 

Salesforce offers great service functionality too, with each case providing us with plenty of information to help a customer. Source: Tech.co testing

Salesforce Service Cloud features

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. Essentially, Service Cloud allows you to reach any customer on any device to meet their needs as they arise.

The Starter plan is quite basic for Service Cloud, allowing only for basic case, tasks, and knowledge management features, along with opportunity tracking and customizable reporting. For omni-channel routing, which can help teams with customers across the online spectrum, you’ll have to pay more with the Professional plan.

The availability of Einstein AI features is reserved to the Enterprise, Unlimited, and Unlimited+ plans only. Additionally, the functionality will cost extra, running businesses an additional $50 per month for advanced analytics and smart service features.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce also offers a Marketing Cloud, which is made up of a wide range of different platforms, each with their own set of pricing plans. For the average business, there are two platforms that our research shows are the best fit for you: the Marketing Cloud Engagement platform and the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement platform.

As for the difference between the two platforms, Marketing Cloud Engagement is intended for B2C businesses whereas Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is intended for B2B businesses. The difference in the max number of contacts per plan is the key indicator here because Marketing Cloud Account Engagement has a lot fewer contacts allocated to customers as B2B businesses have less need for a huge library of customer details.

Salesforce updates its platform regularly, and not just the Sales Cloud. The Marketing Cloud also got a little love in the Summer ’24 update, adding AI-based recommendations and personalized content to customers via the Einstein Personalization. It will help you to create a more custom-built experience for your users in real time.

Read on for the pricing information about each of these two Marketing Cloud platforms.

How much does Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement cost?

Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing is a little more expensive than the Sales and Service Clouds. It offers three distinct plans: Professional, Corporate, and Enterprise. The Pro plan costs $1,250 per month, and the Corporate plan rounds it out at $4,200 per month. The Enterprise plan requires you to contact Salesforce to get a quote.

In our research, we found that Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement platform isn’t the best CRM for marketing, particularly if you’re worried about price. It’s very expensive and outside of extensive data visualizations, doesn’t offer as much as our top pick, HubSpot Marketing Hub. With this robust option, you’ll be able to take care of all your marketing needs from a single hub, including email, social, content, and paid. It’s also quite expensive, but at least you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Salesforce allowed us to customize the platform with custom fields to add to each category. Source: Tech.co testing

Marketing Cloud Engagement features

The Marketing Cloud Engagement platform is Salesforce’s one-to-one marketing platform, which integrates with other Salesforce “clouds” for a more complete understanding of your customers’ history.

The idea with Marketing Cloud Engagement 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.

For the best AI-powered results, you’ll need to subscribe to the Corporate or Enterprise plans, as the Pro plan does not have AI functionality built in. With these features, you can supercharge your marketing campaign with smart insights to reach and convert customers.

How much does Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Formerly Pardot) cost?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement comes in four plans — Growth, starting at $1,250 per month; Plus, starting at $2,500 per month; Advanced, starting at $4,000 per month; and Premium, starting at $15,000 per month. All four plans cover up to 10,000 contacts at this base price — except for Premium which allows for 75,000 and are differentiated mainly by the features each offers.

If Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement sounds right for you, or you just want to check out whether it will work for your specific business needs, then you can join the thousands other businesses we helped to get set up with the platform.

You can check out the pricing table below to see a few main differences, though you’ll need to head over to our dedicated Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement pricing guide to get the full breakdown.

The Salesforce Guidance Center was available at a single click, providing us with helpful tips and full-on guides directly in the platform. Source: Tech.co testing

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement features

Formerly known as Salesforce Pardot and now referred to as the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement platform, this service streamlines a marketing team’s daily and long-term tasks, from automating all the simple chores to sending custom alerts that can jog agents’ memories to ensure they follow up on all of their clients’ needs.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers an impressive range of features in four main marketing categories: lead generation, thanks to tools covering lead tracking, email, social media, landing pages, and A/B testing; lead management, due to custom-designed engagement and nurturing programs; sales alignment, with tools including customer activity tracking, campaigns, and CRM integration; and, finally, ROI reporting, with metrics tracking tools that cover the whole sales funnel.

You’ll need to grab the Advanced or Premium plans if you’re interested in using artificial intelligence to improve your business. These plans come with Einstein AI built in, so you can reach out to your leads at the perfect moment to ensure a sale is as likely as possible.

How much does Salesforce Quip cost?

If your team has gone remote, you might be in need of some kind of collaboration platform. With Salesforce Quip, you can connect with your team in a meaningful way alongside your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service tasks, while keeping within the Salesforce suite.

Salesforce Quip costs $100 per user, per month on top of other Salesforce plans, and allows for activities including document and spreadsheet sharing, real time updates on team progress, mobile optimization for business on the go, and team messaging to stay in touch easily and effectively.

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 CRM – 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.

The Salesforce Home dashboard is a customizable hub that hosted all of the important information we needed for our sales and service business. Source: Tech.co testing

Salesforce Pricing Add-Ons

Depending on your particular business needs, you might need a bit of added functionality beyond the standard Salesforce experience. Fortunately, the CRM is equipped with a massive library of add-ons that can enable all kinds of business actions.

These add-ons, however, will cost a bit extra. That means that, in addition to paying the Salesforce pricing per user model, you’ll also have to pay a monthly fee per user to include these add-ons.

• Sales Planning ($70/user/month) – This feature enables you to segment your customers, allocate your quote, carve your sales territories, and more.
• CPQ ($105/user/month) – This cloud-based tool helps you optimize sales processes by providing accurate pricing for product configurations. You can also upgrade to CPQ+ for $210/user/month.
• Salesforce Contracts ($70/user/month) – This add-on enables you to manage the entire lifecycle of customer contracts within the Salesforce interface.
• Revenue intelligence ($308/user/month) – This advanced integration offers AI-driven insights to help businesses identify risks and revenue gaps.
• Journey Builder ($1,750/month) – This advanced marketing tool can be used to deliver cross-channel personalized experiences at every step of the customer lifestyle.
• Developer API Access ($1,400/user/month) – If you want to make custom changes to your intelligence platform, you’re able to unlock developer-friendly APIs for greater innovation.
• Einstein for Service ($75/user/month) – If you use Salesforce’s Service Cloud, and want to make the most of the provider’s AI capabilities, you’re able to unlock Einstein for Service without opting for a premium plan.

We only listed a limited selection of add-ons here, but you can refer to Salesforce’s full list of add-ons here. The list is extensive, ranging from sales planning for the Sales Cloud to feedback management for the Service Cloud. What’s more, with the price of add-ons reaching $46,000 per month, make sure your budget can handle all these apps before committing.

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. Sales Cloud and Service Cloud both charge on this per user basis.

For marketing, however, the available plans from Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement both offer standard monthly rate for a set number of marketing contacts. You won’t be charge by the user, but the prices are substantially more expensive than the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud options for that reason.

We were able to email leads directly from Salesforce, but we did have to connect our Gmail or Outlook account beforehand. Source: Tech.co testing

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.

Annoyed by complicated pricing models? Compare the cost of Salesforce plans in a minute or two with our free quotes tool.

Alternatives to Salesforce CRM

While Salesforce is an undeniably popular choice when it comes to CRM, it’s not ideal for everyone. In fact, given the higher price and the robust nature of the platform, Salesforce can be a bit intimidating for certain businesses. Fortunately, the CRM market is packed with amazing platforms that can get the job done.

Here are some of our top picks for CRM alternatives to Salesforce that can handle marketing, sales, customer service, and small businesses:

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