Salesforce Sales Cloud

What is Salesforce Sales Cloud?

Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s CRM for sales teams. It manages leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities, and adds forecasting, quoting and automation as you move up its editions. Salesforce sells it as a ladder: a Free Suite for up to two users, Starter and Pro Suites for small businesses (which also include service, marketing and commerce tools), and Core, Advanced and Max editions for larger sales organisations.

Its strength is how far it can be customised and automated. That flexibility is also its cost: higher editions are billed annually and priced well above most small-business CRMs.

Who should use Salesforce?

• Business size: the Free, Starter and Pro Suites are aimed at small businesses; Core, Advanced and Max target established sales organisations.
• Team type: teams with multi-step sales processes, quoting, territories or forecasting needs that off-the-shelf CRMs cannot model.
• Technical experience: the deeper editions reward having someone who owns configuration. Without that, much of what you pay for goes unused.
• Budget: the jump from Starter Suite ($25) to Pro Suite ($100) and Core ($195) per user per month is large. Model your year-two cost before choosing.

Features and capabilities

Starter Suite: the core CRM

Salesforce’s pricing page lists lead, account, contact and opportunity management, built-in sales flows and lead routing, automatic syncing of emails, events and contacts, and email marketing with analytics in Starter Suite. For a small team this covers day-to-day pipeline work.

Pro Suite: customisation, quoting and forecasting

Pro Suite adds greater customisation and automation, sales quoting and forecasting, and access to AgentExchange. This is the edition to compare against other CRMs’ “professional” tiers.

Core, Advanced and Max: bundled AI, Slack and analytics

Core includes Slack Business+, Tableau Next, Momentum and the Premier Success plan. Advanced adds enhanced security, more AI and expanded data capacity. Max includes Agentforce for Sales and Agentforce Coworker, plus Spiff, Sales Planning, Maps and Slack Enterprise+. On lower editions, Agentforce for Sales is an add-on listed from $125 per user per month.

Salesforce pricing

Salesforce Sales Cloud ranges from a Free Suite for up to 2 users to $550 per user per month. Starter Suite costs $25 per user per month; every edition above it is billed annually.

Edition	Price per user/month	Billing
Free Suite	$0	Up to 2 users, no expiry if you log in at least every 60 days
Starter Suite	$25	Monthly or annually
Pro Suite	$100	Annually
Core	$195	Annually
Advanced	$395	Annually
Max	$550	Annually; contact sales

Salesforce’s trial page offers a 30-day free trial of Starter Suite with no credit card required. The Free Suite includes up to 100 marketing emails per month.

Ease of use and implementation

SoftPilot has not tested Salesforce hands-on; this section is based on Salesforce’s published plans.

• Start small: the Free Suite and 30-day Starter trial let a team test the core CRM with real data at no cost.
• Plan the upgrade path: the value of Pro Suite and above comes from configuration (custom fields, automation, quoting). Budget time or partner help for that work.
• Annual commitment: everything above Starter Suite is billed annually, so trial thoroughly before upgrading.

Salesforce compared with close alternatives

CRM	Free plan	Entry paid price	Mid tier price
Salesforce	Yes, 2 users	$25/user/mo	Pro Suite $100/user/mo, annual
HubSpot	Yes, 2 users	From $7/seat/mo (promo; $20 regular)	Sales Hub Pro from $90/seat/mo + $1,500 onboarding
Zoho CRM	Yes, 3 users	$14/user/mo, annual	Professional $23/user/mo, annual

Should you shortlist Salesforce?

Shortlist Salesforce if your sales process is complex, you expect to need quoting, forecasting and heavy automation, and you can dedicate someone to administering the system.

Look elsewhere if you want a CRM a small team can run without an admin (consider Pipedrive or HubSpot), or if annual billing at $100+ per user is out of reach (consider Zoho CRM or Freshsales).

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