Understanding Salesforce License Types

Knowing which Salesforce license type or the support your company needs it not always a clear-cut decision. Salesforce offers many products, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Force.com, Communities, and more, all of which can be useful in different areas of your business. Salesforce is continually updating their services to make them better, but it can be difficult to keep up with the modifications. In the paragraphs that follow, I will go over the current editions and features of Service Cloud, Chatter, and Force.com license types to help you understand the differences between them and so you can decide what is right for your business. For differences between Sales Cloud license types, visit our Sales Cloud License Types blog post.

Salesforce License Types for Service Cloud

Service Cloud is Salesforce’s customer service platform that is most commonly used by companies who care about providing great support to their clients and call centers. Service Cloud allows you to interact with your clients in the cloud, and it helps you manage customer cases and provide solutions to your client’s questions. Service Cloud comes in Professional Edition ($65.00/user per month) and Enterprise Edition ($135.00/user per month).

Professional Edition offers basic functionality and is best for smaller sized support companies. Professional edition includes access to an agent console, case tracking, solutions, web and email capture, and auto-assignment and escalation rules. Enterprise Edition is the more popular edition as it provides advanced functionality and gives you access to knowledge base, service contracts, entitlements, and field service management. Enterprise edition allows you to customize and automate your Service Cloud, as well as provides API so you can integrate it with other systems.

Salesforce Chatter Licenses

Salesforce Chatter is a communication platform that lives in Salesforce and comes with all Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Force.com licenses. Chatter licenses allow users to communicate efficiently using Chatter, but do not provide the full range of access to Salesforce functionality that the other licenses provide. There are two variations of Chatter licenses, and they can be added to any Enterprise or Performance edition instance.

Chatter Free Edition allows non-Salesforce users to post status updates, follow their coworkers, share files, and collaborate with colleagues. It includes access to the Chatter desktop client, Chatter feeds, file sharing, Chatter Groups, invitations, profiles, and status updates.

Chatter Plus Edition costs $15.00/user per month per user. It gives access to all the Chatter Free features and also has read only access to accounts and contacts, supports one custom app, and supports up to ten custom objects. Chatter Plus also gives users access to calendar and events, content, reports and dashboards, and tasks and activities. Chatter Plus is a great way to expand the use of Salesforce in your organization to new departments outside of business development and customer service.

Force.com Licenses

Force.com licenses can be purchased when you have at least one Enterprise or Performance Sales or Service Cloud license, and in the right situation, can be a great way to save your company money. The Force.com platform includes all of the back-end functionality of Enterprise and Performance editions, including integration with other programs, automated workflow, custom objects and apps, Chatter, and Apex code, but Force.com has limited access to the standard CRM objects. CRM objects such as cases, solutions, campaigns, leads, opportunities, products, contracts, and forecasts are not accessible with any Force.com edition. Force.com also provides open API and is a great alternative to buying additional Enterprise licenses when the user only needs full access to accounts, contacts, custom apps, and custom objects, and does not need to access leads or opportunities.

The Force.com Enterprise App Edition costs $25.00/user per month and supports full access to accounts and contacts as well as 10 custom apps, 10 custom tabs, and up to 10 custom objects. This edition is ideal for many small and midsize companies. The Force.com App Bundle Edition costs $80.00/user per month and gives users 10 custom apps, 25 custom tabs, and up to 200 custom objects. The Force.com Performance Edition costs $150/user per month and gives users an unlimited number of custom apps and custom tabs, and up to 2000 custom objects.