Salesforce Pricing: In-Depth Guide to CRM Costs 2025

Salesforce pricing starts at $25 per user, per month for its Starter Suite, a CRM bundle featuring sales, marketing, customer service, and commerce features for small businesses. Beyond that, Salesforce offers a variety of industry-specific “clouds,” like the Sales Cloud and the Marketing Cloud, which offer more advanced features for a higher price.

Overall, Salesforce pricing is a bit more expensive than the industry average, with other more affordable CRMs like HubSpot and Zoho offering platforms for as little as $14-15 per user, per month. Plus, Salesforce doesn’t offer a free plan like either of those platforms, which can be an obstacle for small businesses.

In this guide, we’ll explain how much it costs to use Salesforce, one of the best CRMs available, including a look at a variety of clouds and other platforms, so you can make the best decision 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

Salesforce CRM Pricing: At a Glance

Salesforce pricing can get a bit confusing, but once we break it down a bit, you should have a clear picture of your options when it comes to the popular CRM.

First off, we’ll highlight some of the business size and industry-specific options you’ll have to choose from, then we’ll go into depth on what kind of pricing plans are available in each one.

• Salesforce Suite – An all-in-one suite of CRM features that includes sales, service, marketing, and commerce functionality, aimed at small businesses.
• Salesforce Sales Cloud – The company’s sales CRM system, which includes all the basics you need for client management, including client records, lead tracking, deals, notes, and more.
• Salesforce Service Cloud – A customer service CRM that allows for online support on any device, and the ability to integrate customer service data with client records in other Salesforce clouds.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud– The marketing CRM from Salesforce that can help you reach customers. Comes with a lot of different versions and editions, so be clear what you want before you buy.

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.

Which Salesforce Plan Is Right For Me?

For those just starting out, the Salesforce Starter Suite 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 it offers functionality for sales, service, marketing, and commerce industries, so you you

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 Suite pricing
• Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing
• Salesforce Service Cloud pricing
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud 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 Suite Cost?

Salesforce Suite is the CRM’s small business offering, which provides access to an all-in-one hub for sales, service, marketing, and commerce functionality. There are two Suite plans to choose from, here’s how much they cost.

• Starter Suite – $25 per user, per month
• Pro Suite – $100 per user, per month

Simply put, if you aren’t a large corporation with advanced sales, marketing, and customer service needs, the Suite plans will be your best bet. They provide a lot of broad functionality across a range of industries, so you don’t have to pick and choose what you’ll need it for.

Check out our Salesforce review for more information

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

Salesforce Suite features

As we mentioned, Salesforce Suite plans offers features across industries, including sales, marketing, customer service, and commerce. The Starter Suite plan, which costs $25 per user, per month, allows a lot of functionality for all four, including customizable sales dashboards, integrated email support, marketing campaign analytics, and order summaries.

The Pro Suite plan from Salesforce, which costs $100 per user, per month, adds some extra features for the price, including custom objects, custom apps, omnichannel routing for service, and sales forecast management.

How Much Does Salesforce Sales Cloud cost?

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the most popular option from the CRM, which is obvious given the name. Beyond the two Suite plans, which are recommended for businesses looking for a sales CRM that aren’t at the enterprise level, Salesforce offers three dedicated Sales Cloud plans to choose from.

• Enterprise – $175 per user, per month
• Unlimited – $350 per user, per month
• Agentforce 1 Sales – $550 per user, per month

Compared to the rest of the top CRM for sales, Salesforce is definitely on the more expensive side. In addition to the Suite plans being a tad more expensive that other small business options, the Sales Cloud services are very much enterprise-facing solutions, which mean they’re going to cost a pretty penny. For more affordable option, Zoho CRM was our top pick for CRM for sales.

Check out our Zoho CRM vs Salesforce guide to learn more

The Agentforce AI chatbot from Salesforce can help you use the platform more effectively. Source: Salesforce

Salesforce Sales Cloud features

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. Agentforce 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 sales engagement and conversation intelligence for free, which provides tools to drive action and scale coaching with actionable insights.

Finally, the Agentforce 1 Sales plan is really only designed for larger businesses that want to take full advantage of the Agentforce system, the service from Salesforce that allows businesses to employ AI agents at every stage of the sales funnel.

How Much Does Salesforce Service Cloud Cost?

Salesforce Service Cloud is quite similar to the Sales Cloud, although it offers tools for managing your businesses customer service needs rather than sales efforts. The pricing is quite similar as well, with the company advising small operations to go with either of the Suite plans to get started.

After that, Salesforce offers three different dedicated Service Cloud plans, which have the identical costs and names as the Sales Cloud, albeit with a different feature set.

• Enterprise – $175 per user, per month
• Unlimited – $350 per user, per month
• Agentforce 1 Service – $550 per user, per month

Like the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud is a bit more expensive than other CRMs on the market, but that’s because it’s aimed at larger businesses with advanced needs, like AI agents. For a more affordable option, our top pick for CRM for customer service was Zendesk.

Check out our Zendesk vs Salesforce guide to learn more

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

For basic customer service functionality, the Starter Suite and Pro Suite plans are still going to be where you want to stay, but for advanced features, the Service Cloud options have a lot to offer.

The Enterprise plan, for example, unlocks features like workflow automation, self-service help centers, and work order management. On top of that, this plan allows you access to the Agentforce for Service platform for an additional fee, which provides users with a conversational, predictive chatbot that can help accomplish tasks on the system.

The biggest addition for the Unlimited plan is the service catalog feature, which automate and manage common service requests with a catalog builder that can be sent to end-users across multiple channels. You’ll also get some features built-in that cost extra on Enterprise, including Einstein bots and Premier Success Plan.

Finally, the Agentforce 1 Service plan, as you can guess from the name, offers the Agentforce Campaigns platform completely built in at no additional cost. You’ll also be able to connect to Slack at no additional cost, and it provides users with feedback management tools for business.

How Much Does Salesforce Marketing Cloud Cost?

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is noticeably different from the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud pricing. For one, it doesn’t adhere to the standard per user model, instead opting for a simple per month cost. Because of that, the cost is a lot higher but keep in mind that, when you account for users, it could be comparable to the other clouds.

Again, the Starter Suite and Pro Suite plans are recommended for marketing if you’re a smaller business, but if you need a bit more advanced marketing functionality, there are two Marketing Cloud editions that you can choose from.

• Growth – $1,500 per month
• Advanced – $3,250 per month

Like the rest of Salesforce platforms, the cost is decidedly prohibitive, which is why it’s recommended for larger businesses with advanced marketing needs. These are specifically AI-powered CRM solutions, so you’ll be able to save a lot of time if you have the budget to afford it.

If it’s too expensive, there are other options out there. HubSpot was our top choice for marketing CRMs, largely due to the fact that it has a free plan that can get you started at no cost for small businesses.

Check out our guide to the top CRM for marketing for more options

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

Salesforce Marketing Cloud features

If you’re looking for basic marketing features, you’re better off just sticking with the Starter Suite or Pro Suite plans, as they have all the email marketing, campaign builder, and reporting features you’ll need to get the job done. If you need something more, though, Marketing Cloud offers some features that can really supercharge your campaigns.

For one, the Growth Edition of Marketing Cloud unlocks a lot of AI functionality, including Agentforce Campaigns, which can build a campaign, draft a brief, and generate an email for you from a single prompt. You’ll also get opportunity influence and reporting, which can help you understand how your campaigns are impacting other parts of your business, like sales.

The Advanced Edition costs quite a bit more, but it does add a lot of predictive features that can give you a better understanding of where your business is going. This edition adds predictive scoring and predictive engagement frequency, so you can get a clear picture of what leads are the best to follow and engage with.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud add-ons

Marketing is a complicated industry, and Salesforce understands that, which is why it offers a whole bevy of alternative Marketing Cloud solutions that you can use to more granularly improve your campaigns.

Here’s a list of some of the other marketing platforms you can use from Salesforce and how much they cost:

• Marketing Engagement – starts at $2,500 per month
• Account Engagement – starts at $1,250 per month
• Personalization – starts at $108,000 per month
• Marketing Intelligence – starts at $3,000 per month
• Customer Loyalty Solutions – starts at $20,000 per month
• Small Business Marketing – starts at $1,500 per month

Suffice to say, there are a lot of options when it comes to marketing with Salesforce, and we’ll be the first to admit that they are all quite expensive.

Does Salesforce Have a Free Plan?

No, Salesforce does not offer a free plan. The cheapest basic plan is the Starter Suite, which starts at $25/user/month. There is also a 30-day free trial that allows you to test the platform before you make a financial commitment.

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.

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 Starter Suite, 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 its more advanced plans.

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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