Salesforce.com only provides their service as a hosted application –
there is no option for on-premise software. Salesforce.com also uses a
multi-tenant hosting configuration with regard to database sharing
between customers. This means that although your data is logically
separate from other Salesforce.com clients it is also part of a shared
multi-tenant data store. While not a significant issue for most small
business customers, larger enterprises often reject a shared data
technology strategy for a variety of reasons, but not limited to
security and ease of customization.
Salesforce.com offer their services packaged in a series of
“editions”. Each edition has varying prices but all editions follow
Salesforce.com’s “per user per month” subscription pricing model. As one
would expect with a multi-tiered pricing structure, the more expensive
the edition, the broader the set of functionality combined with greater
customization opportunities and the wider the access to the broader
Salesforce.com Force and third party solution offerings. Salesforce.com
is often criticized for the inherent “up-sell” that exists in this
model. When evaluating Salesforce.com, it is important to visualize the
total scope of your requirements (both current and future) before making
a decision on which edition is appropriate. The Salesforce.com
multitiered structure is in contrast to other leading SaaS vendors such
as NetSuite or Aplicor who tend to price their products in a manner that
is more inclusive of all functions.
Salesforce.com Group Edition:
Salesforce.com’s entry-level offering is the Group Edition
(formerly Team Edition) which is priced at approximately $99 per user
per year. This base level solution provides fundamental sales
functionality for contact management and opportunity tracking. The
solution also includes Salesforce.com’s partnership with Google for
AdWords and a “web-to-lead” tool to facilitate the creation of web site
leads directly in Salesforce.com. Integration and other ‘Force’
functionality are not available with this edition.
Salesforce.com Professional Edition:
Salesforce.com’s most popular offering is the Professional Edition
and is priced at approximately $65 per user per month. A significant
step up from the Group Edition, Professional Edition provides
functionality for lead management, account and contact management,
activity management, opportunity tracking and forecasting. In addition
to the basic sales force automation functions there is also the addition
of a fundamental Case Management (help desk or customer support)
solution which includes tracking of customer requests and a “solutions”
knowledgebase. It’s interesting to note that this version offers no
Marketing functionality. As is typical with the Salesforce.com pricing
model, marketing capabilities can be added for an additional per user
per month fee. Other notable absences from this edition are workflow,
self service customer portal and integration support through the
Force.com web services API.
Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition:
Salesforce.com’s Enterprise Edition is priced at approximately
$125 per user per month. This edition includes considerably more
functionality which bridges most of the critical gaps found in the
professional edition. The marketing solution is included and supports
basic campaign management. The ability to send email based campaigns is
still very limited without the addition of one of Salesforce.com’s email
partners such as Elouqa and can add a significant expense to the
overall cost per user. Some of the notable features added in this
edition are territory management, workflows, self service portal and web
services API for integration. There are however still some significant
gaps such as Mobile access (PDA / Blackberry), which again is available
for an additional fee of $50 per user per month.
Salesforce.com Unlimited Edition:
Salesforce.com’s Unlimited Edition is priced at approximately $199
per user per month. This edition includes nearly all that
Salesforce.com has to offer plus full access to the Force.com solution
from the AppExchange. The primary items missing from the “unlimited”
edition are Partner Relationship Management (PRM), Customer Portal and
Content Management.
