Ways to Reduce Salesforce License
Cost - Understand your Options

We’ve commonly observed many Salesforce projects failing because of incorrect licenses or people having a lack of understanding due to which they end up paying way more than was required. All of this is because they don’t know how to optimize their licenses.

There are companies that make the mistake of purchasing an expensive Salesforce license and end up not being able to utilize it to its full extent. What they don’t know is that the first step is to evaluate the need they have for Salesforce and then choose a suitable license according to their need and budget instead of simply going for the enterprise edition.

But help is at hand.

Different Salesforce licenses are available for different usage levels and use cases. Each has its pros and cons depending on your intended goals at the time.

Thankfully, there’s also no license lock-in, and you can always upgrade to a higher license and Salesforce Edition depending on your changing requirements as a growing business.

STEP FOR CHOOSING THE RIGHT LICENSES

We’ve also seen many organizations struggling with overspending on Salesforce license costs and helped them optimize it and reduce their expense. The best approach is to start small and grow progressively.

With almost a decade-long experience, we know all the important points that are to be taken into consideration when choosing the license and recommend the same to our customers, so they won’t end up spending more than they need to.

So we’re here to share some helpful tips with you that will help you make a wise choice while choosing a Salesforce license while optimizing the costs involved.

1. PICK A LICENSE BASED ON YOUR NEEDS

Although “the more, the better” sounds good generally, this isn’t applicable to Salesforce license pricing.

Many users blindly purchase Salesforce Enterprise Edition so they can derive full access to the standard CRM and AppExchange apps. Even though the license allows them to access any standard or custom application without any restriction, they fail to utilize all features for which they paid such a hefty amount.

If you’re new to Salesforce, don’t go all out. Start with a smaller number of licenses, because implementations can take time.

So, it makes sense to start with an honest assessment of your requirements along with some foresight. This prevents you from overpaying for a license you won’t fully utilize while preventing any bottlenecks in operations.

You can also choose from a mix of different license types for different team members and departments depending on specific requirements.

2. TRY A MODULAR APPROACH

A more modular approach to licensing is to add more licenses as implementations for new departments and team members are rolled out. Salesforce offers a flexible Salesforce License Pricing scheme that you can choose If you don’t wish to have it all at once.

Doing this lets team members in relevant business functions access necessary premium capabilities. It also brings down upfront license costs immediately and leaves room for expenses you may actually need, like customization.

You can start by choosing the minimum basic package and scale it up with add-ons as you need.

3. UNDERSTAND LICENSE TIERS

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Once you’ve understood your license and business needs, you should read up on license tiers offered by Salesforce for each cloud and the capabilities offered by each. Teams can then weigh trade-offs depending on their budgets and choose the right license for themselves.

As an example, we’ve listed out the different license tiers of the Salesforce Sales Cloud and the features they offer.

For every Salesforce product, there can be different types of licenses that you can avail. For example, there are four editions for Sales Cloud:

Essentials ($25):

Provides access to all-in-one sales and support app.

Professional ($75):

Provides access to all features of Essentials edition along with Lead registration and Rules-based lead scoring and collaborative forecasting.

Enterprise ($150):

Provides access to all features of Professional edition along with Workflow and Approval Automation.

Unlimited ($300):

Provides access to all features of Enterprise edition along with 24/7 Support.

You can also choose the platform edition if your business follows a uniques sales method and needs to build custom processes from scratch.

Companies can reduce license costs by subscribing to Platform licenses too.

The cost of Salesforce Enterprise licenses is around $1,800 per year per license and Platform licenses cost $300 per user license per year.

Choosing a Platform license thus may help businesses save $1,500 per license every year in certain situations.

Platform Starter ($25):

To build custom apps for effective service, sales, and marketing productivity, with access to 10 custom objects.

Platform Plus ($100):

To extend Salesforce to every employee, department, and to transform development for everyone, with access to 110 custom objects.

For more, you can check information on license tiers of more Salesforce products.→

4. MANAGE USERS PROACTIVELY

Whichever license you purchase, you’ll still get only one user to log in with one license. You also cannot share the login credentials with others. But you can circumvent this limitation with “License Reduction”.

All you have to do is log a case with “License Reduction” in the subject field. When a user is deactivated, you can follow it up.

This way, you don’t have to keep re-assigning the license to other users. This technique helps organizations with a large number of licenses to reduce Salesforce licensing costs over time.

Over to You

It’s pretty evident that it’s definitely not a cakewalk to understand Salesforce License Pricing. Nevertheless, you can always prevent extra licensing expenses by following some smart tips.

Salesforce has many other products besides just the Sales Cloud and Platform like the Marketing Cloud, Pardot, and Experience Cloud among several others.

Speak to us to ask which license is right for you.

For any more guidance on how you can save some extra bucks on Salesforce while getting the functionalities you need, reach out to our certified Salesforce experts.

Or just reach out to me, Rohit, for a consultation call.

About the Author

Rohit Bhalla

l COO @ 360 Degree Cloud

I live, eat, and breathe Salesforce

Salesforce Certified Veteran

Strategist of ISV & OEM Apps, Salesforce Solution Consultant

Experienced Business Process Implementation Expert | 8years, 500+ Implementations

Salesforce Evangelist, Speaker at multiple Salesforce and Product Events

Upcoming Author of “11 Blunders of Bleeding Money with Salesforce Partners”

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Ways to Reduce Salesforce License
Cost - Understand your Options