4 Salesforce Editions: How to Choose. You wish you had Salesforce. You want Salesforce CRM. You've got to have Salesforce CRM. But wait, Salesforce CRM comes in different shapes and sizes. What's right for you? Which Salesforce Edition will you choose, and remember, how you answer this question will mean a significant price difference. Hopefully, we can help drive that decision with this Salesforce Edition Comparison.
Any new system of almost any kind can be intimidating at first glance. But, like learning any new skill, become familiar with it, and the complexity starts to fade. This is true for Salesforce as well.
Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management system designed for sales teams that increases team coordination and communication. It uses AI and automation and is wildly customizable to fit just about any business need or desire. It's probably the best business tool since the invention of the typewriter.
4 Salesforce Editions: How to Choose? But Salesforce is not a monolith software suite. It is offered in four different editions, all sharing the core system, then adding another level of capability.
What Exactly Are The Four Different Salesforce Editions?
The 4 Sales Cloud editions address specific sales needs of small and mid-sized businesses and large enterprises. Keep in mind that there are no clear dividing lines between these groups, but there is some overlap, so as a small business, you may need some of the features usually adopted by a mid-sized company.
- Essentials
- Professional
- Enterprise
- Unlimited
Let's dive into the different features and costs of each.
Salesforce Essentials.
$25 user/month billed annually.
Essentials offer a simple set of features for basic sales needs:
- Lead management
- Account, contact, and opportunity management.
- Sales tasks and event management.
- Sales reporting with configurable reports and dashboards.
- Employee collaboration using Chatter (the Salesforce chat feature)
- Mobile access to Salesforce CRM with Salesforce 1 Mobile app.
- Sales process automation with the Process Builder
The Essentials edition is not available to mid-sized or large businesses. It does not include the ability to customize the solution with code. It also does not offer sales automation capabilities. Salesforce third-party systems integrations are also not possible.
Salesforce Professional.
$75 user/month billed annually.
Professional offers specific CRM functionality for managing products, price books, quotes, orders, and contracts. The Professional edition's default features include the same features as Essentials, plus:
- Rule-based lead scoring.
- Contract management.
- Products and Price Books.
- Quote and order management.
- Lightning Sync (this will synchronize contacts and calendar events between Microsoft Exchange-connected device and Salesforce).
- Sales forecasting.
- A developer sandbox is used for developing and testing new functionality in a different environment with no impact on the production environment.
Functional limitations of the Professional edition do not offer the opportunity to customize with additional code or automate sales-related processes. While Salesforce integrations with third-party systems are possible, there is an additional per-user/month fee of $25.
Salesforce Enterprise.
$150 user/month billed annually.
All the capabilities of the Professional edition plus:
- Workflow and approval automation.
- Opportunity Teams enable collaboration.
- Opportunity Splits to share revenue from an opportunity between the sales team members.
- Enterprise Territory Management.
- Advanced reporting features.
- Unlimited automation capabilities with Process Builder.
- Unlimited automation capabilities with Flow Builder.
- An Unlimited number of user profiles and page layouts.
- An unlimited number of user roles and permissions.
- The unlimited number of record types per object.
- Lightning Platform to build and manage applications with point-and-click tools.
- APIs for integrating Salesforce with third-party systems.
- 100 developer sandboxes for developing and testing new features.
The Enterprise edition features customization capabilities and Lightning, including 25 Lightning apps built on the Lightning Platform. This makes using Salesforce solutions more straightforward for different user groups, such as sales reps and managers.
Salesforce Unlimited.
$300 user/month billed annually.
The Unlimited edition has all the capabilities for process automation, customization with Apex code, and integration via APIs available in the Enterprise edition. The big difference from the Enterprise edition is access to Salesforce support and training services:
- 24/7 toll-free support.
- Access to premier success resources
- Access to configuration services from a certified, dedicated Salesforce administrator.
- One-on-one coaching sessions with a Salesforce consultant.
- Developer support.
- Ability to create as many as 2,000 custom objects.
- 2oo report types.
- 500 validation rules.
As you can see, The Unlimited edition is genuinely “unlimited.”
How To Upgrade Your Salesforce Edition?
As flexible as Salesforce is, in any edition, there may come a point when your business outgrows your current edition. Time for an upgrade. How do you do that? Easy! Contact your Salesforce consultant and start an in-depth analysis of your current status and what additional functionality you require. Salesforce is your tool, and the company wants it to work for you, regardless of your current edition. Your monthly/user fee will only increase to the fee for the next level when you move up. And there's no need to wait for the annual renewal; you can upgrade anytime.
Top CRM Pricing Comparison
Dynamics CRM. Business software by Microsoft. It's a customer relationship management software that helps businesses manage their customer database, generate new leads, engage with their customers, and resolve customer service issues. Dynamics CRM is the closest competitor of Salesforce since they access similar applications and features to transfer sales from manual to automated modes. And the pricing system is almost identical to the Salesforce cost breakdown: annual billings based on the user per month.
Oracle Engagement Cloud. This platform offers applications that assist in automating user interfaces. It also has a pricing breakdown of monthly payments for each user, as Salesforce does, and targets large organizations. The price varies from $65 to $300 per user.
Insightly. Besides the basic features for automation, Insightly also provides features for project management, offering an opportunity to extend all possibilities. It is affordable but has a limited range of features. The price starts at $5 to $100 per user/month.
Zoho CRM. Provides sales automation features for small and medium-sized companies, offering integration with applications to integrate the tools used by any department, like HR or finance. The pricing starts at $12 annually and increases to $45 monthly for the full-featured plan.
Now That You Know.
The choice, of course, is yours. But so many analysts prefer Salesforce in any edition to the competition that the odds are you'll end up liking and using it over its competition. Not convinced? Talk to Rely Services.
For over 20 years, Rely Services has helped clients realize success. And doing that by providing impeccable advice and services. We know Salesforce inside out, and our Certified Salesforce Consultants can explain the advantages of each of the 4 Salesforce editions. Contact Rely Services today for a detailed discussion.
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