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Which Salesforce Edition is Right for You?

Which Salesforce Edition is Right for You?

So you are looking for a new CRM for your company, and have been eyeing Salesforce. You know that it is heavily touted as the world’s #1 CRM, but when it comes to knowing which Salesforce Edition and which clouds to buy it can be pretty overwhelming.

This article is going to focus on the question of “which edition?” for Sales Cloud. After all, this is Salesforce and it only makes sense to start with the bread and butter of the CRM. The other Salesforce Clouds, such as Marketing and Service. are a topic for another day. A quick note, all editions available now are for Lightning only. For those familiar with Salesforce Classic, it is being phased out with the complete migration taking place fall of 2019.

So without further ado, let’s jump into the breakdown:

Salesforce Essentials

The Essentials edition is best for small companies that need basic CRM software with standard features.

As the most basic version of Salesforce available, this version of Salesforce gives you what you would expect, the basic functionalities and features to run a small business, and not much else.  

You can store, manage, search, and analyze data but won’t have access to the extreme flexibility that it provides.

For small businesses, this can be an added benefit. By keeping the package small and light, it needs little attention or maintenance, since most small companies don’t have a dedicated IT or CRM admin anyway. To let you know just how small we are talking about, Essentials limits the number of users to 5.

What you get:

  • Account, contact, opportunity and lead management
  • Basic automation
  • Cloud/mobile functionality
  • Trailhead – Salesforce’s interactive training

Salesforce Professional

Professional is ideal for mid-sized companies with finite product or service offerings and a single sales unit. Most growing businesses will look to Professional as their answer, especially as it is the least expensive option that allows for unlimited users.

Professional builds upon the features of Essentials, give you more robust functionality, customization and integration options, while still remaining easy to use. To get the most out fo this edition though you will need to have someone with Salesforce admin experience available to spend time with the system.

What you get:

Everything in Essentials, plus:

  • Increased automation, including validation rules, sales paths, lead routing and tracking and account insights.
  • Lead management with various lists and campaigns
  • Dedicated access to the Salesforce mobile app for iPhone and Android.
  • Customizable tabs within the record pages.

 

Salesforce Enterprise

Enterprise, as you would also expect, is for medium to large businesses with larger sales and marketing teams. These businesses likely need custom functions, access to an API, automation, the ability to send emails, and various 3rd party integrations.      

Salesforce Enterprise meets the need of complex businesses with large scale deployments. It has full flexibility and customization and has options for sales, marketers, and executives alike.

What you get:

All the features of Professional Edition plus:

  • Automated lead workflows
  • Action Plans with tasks, categories/hierarchies
  • Email Marketing – Send marketing emails from Salesforce.
  • API connections with Salesforce
  • Custom Dashboards
  • Privacy settings for individual users

If you are going for Enterprise, you will likely require an experienced Salesforce Admin to keep the system running smoothly. While this admin work can be outsourced to an outside consultant, it is often a good idea to have someone on staff for the quick fixes and everyday tweaks.

Salesforce Unlimited

This is for the big-time players. If you don’t know if you qualify, then you probably don’t. Unlimited edition is best for large companies with thousands of users. With Unlimited, you get 24/7 toll-free support, access to the premium knowledge database, developer support that facilitates custom code development and multiple Developer Pro Sandboxes for development and testing of new functionalities.

Companies with Unlimited generally require a large number of custom applications, multiple sandboxes, or have unique business needs.

What you get:

No limits on functionality or customization, and everything in Enterprise, plus:

  • Instant access to Salesforce Support
  • Unlimited custom tabs
  • Larger storage limits
  • Unlimited custom applications
  • Multiple Sandboxes for development testing

So there you have it. In the end, the best option for you and your business depends on your needs, both short term and long term.  Finally, for a quick pricing guide, and a detailed breakdown of each and every feature in each edition, take a look here.

 

-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team

 


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Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?

 

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Why SaaS Companies Don’t Post Prices

Why SaaS Companies Don’t Post Prices

For anyone who has looked around our site, or shopped for any software solution (ex. Salesforce) in recent years, this post is for you. The question of whether or not to post prices has come up a ton in this industry, with varying viewpoints on the benefits and drawbacks.

By and large, most software and SaaS companies keep their pricing sheets gated, and only available at the discretion of a sales rep. While this can certainly be frustrating for potential buyers, especially when all you really want to learn at that moment is the price and not to talk to someone about value and benefits, there are a number of reasons leading to this practice.

 

In this article, we will look at some of these reasons, and using our own first-hand knowledge, hopefully shed a little more light on why it can be for the benefit of both the selling company and the client to not have prices posted outright.

The relationship of software quality to price isn’t always 1 to 1

  • More expensive isn’t always the best solution for your company. Maybe you don’t need the top of the line option – or when you get partway into a demo, you realize it has tons of features you don’t need and don’t want to pay for.
  • Conversely – just because something is affordable to purchase up front, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work as well as advertised.
  • Buying software isn’t like buying everyday items, like food or clothes, where it is pretty easy to estimate how much quality you get for your price. With software, it really does take thorough vetting of a product to determine if it will really meet your needs – and you can easily discount the right decision too early if it seems either “too cheap” or “too pricey” from the outset

Posted prices can scare away buyers who would actually save money in the long run

  • Poor software, that costs less up front, might require more investment long term just to maintain. A few years later when you have grown too big for the product, you have to buy a more expensive version anyway – effectively spending more over that time span than if you had gone with a more expensive option to begin with.
  • How much you should spend on a software solution is a complex calculation, and involves much more than what your budget is, and how much does X product cost. You need to factor in things like, how much money am I losing by not having a better product, and if my processes were X% more efficient, how much more money could I be making? When you start doing advanced calculations, often times higher priced software options turn out to be the better option because they pay for themselves quickly, and after that its all profit.
  • Finally, companies shopping for software are often buying something they have never purchased before. As a consequence, they may not have a particularly concrete idea of what the solution should look like, let alone how much it should cost. In these situations, sticker shock can push businesses onto the wrong product.

 

The price isn’t fixed!

  • What’s the real price? “Well, it depends”. If you have heard this before and want to pull your hair out, know that the feeling is shared by many, but that doesn’t make it less true.
  • For many SaaS and software companies, their products are not one size fits all, or even available as Out of the Box packages. They are designed to be customized and tweaked. Yes, this is a built-in cost, but it also means that you get a solution that is tailored to your business.
  • Then, of course, there is always the fact that Sales just might change the price, depending on the situation. Trying to make their quarterly goals, you just might get a discount if you sign right away. Or maybe additional options and features are thrown in to sweeten the deal. Simply put, posted pricing gives Salespeople less wiggle room to get the deal done.  

Too transparent pricing leads to competitors undercutting you

  • Isn’t this a good thing? Competition leading to the best possible product, for the lowest possible price? … Not always
  • When a product is all about man-hours, and expertise, competition undercutting prices can dehumanize the people who built the software. This could potentially have a huge ripple effect in the company if they are forced to cut the price of their products, leading to decreased profits, resource turnover and a whole host of other issues.
  • This can also put excessive pressure on the software builders to make the product “cost-effective” – leading to corners being cut. And do you really want all of your hard earned business data being housed on a system that is less than thoroughly vetted?

 

On the other side, there are a number of arguments for more transparent pricing that are equally valid, ex. Pricing pages can quickly weed out unqualified buyers, or they increase trust. While these are both true, they can also lead to some of the negative effects discussed above.

No matter how you slice it, there is no clear cut best answer for whether or not software companies should post their prices. There are benefits to both sides of the coin, and in the end, it’s up to each individual company, knowing their target markets, their business model and their history to determine what will yield the best results for both themselves and their customers.

 

-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team


Want to get started with Salesforce?

Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?

Contact us