As many of us do, you now believe that suitable CRM software is essential for any business that wants a chance at survival and success in today’s hyper-competitive market. You have even looked for your options, compare the ones that are most suitable for you, and finally settled on Salesforce as your CRM platform of choice.
After you’ve decided to choose Salesforce CRM, it’s time to decide which Salesforce edition you will get. Again, this is a decision worth some of your time, as it will affect your business shortly.
Comparing Salesforce editions can be quite confusing for some, and you can easily find yourself puzzled, thanks to the many features available for each version.
This is why we are here. We want to help make the process of selecting the Salesforce edition that’s suitable for your business a smooth one. We will try to keep things as simple as possible so that you can reach a decision by the end of this article, so stick around and maybe make a cup of coffee as you should be focused on in the next ten minutes or so.
With that in mind, let’s dive into our Salesforce edition comparison.
What are the different Salesforce Editions?
1- Salesforce Essentials Edition:
This edition is created for small businesses that need to get into CRM quickly and easily. The edition has intuitive walkthroughs and a setup assistant to help companies get started quickly. The UI is intuitive and easy to use, and the administration tools enable users to customize deployment as their business grows.
2- Salesforce Professional Edition:
Created for companies that need a full-featured CRM solution, the Salesforce professional edition features straightforward and easy-to-use tools for administration, integrations, and customization. These tools can make any small to midsize deployment much more straightforward.
3- Salesforce Enterprise Edition:
The Enterprise edition can meet large businesses’ requirements and needs that need something a little more sophisticated. This edition gives users advanced administration and customization tools. As a result, it can support large-scale deployment without adding much complexity to the process. In addition, it offers access to Salesforce APIs that enable users to integrate it easily with their back-office systems.
4- Salesforce Unlimited Edition:
The unlimited edition is created to maximize the success of large enterprises. It allows for more flexibility through the platform for managing and sharing all the information on demand. Of course, this edition comes with all the functionality and features included in the Enterprise edition. It also comes with full mobile access, Premier Support, Unlimited custom apps, increased storage limits, and other advanced features that can benefit your enterprise.
5- Salesforce Developer Edition:
The developer edition offers access to the lightning platform and Salesforce APIs. It allows developers to create and develop new tools, applications, and integrations with other applications and services to extend Salesforce’s functionality. The Developers edition also provides access to some of the Enterprise edition’s features.
Now, it’s time to explore each of them and see what features they offer and the pricing.
Salesforce Editions Comparisons
1st- Salesforce Essentials – $25/user/month billed annually
The Salesforce CRM Lightning Essentials Edition is suitable for startups and small businesses. It can fulfill its basic CRM needs thanks to the basic features it offers. The Lightning Essentials edition can be enough for small businesses to solve their marketing and sales teams’ needs.
It offers the following:
- Contact Management
- Account Management
- Case Management
- Lead Management
- Opportunity Management
- Customizable Sales Process
- Tasks and Event Tracking
- Web-to-lead capture
- Standard Dashboards
- Customizable Reports
- Employees Collaboration through ‘Chatter’
- Salesforce Mobile App
- Supports teams with up to 5 members
- No Campaign Influence
2nd- Salesforce Professional – $75/user/month billed annually
The Professional edition has unlimited users, so your team can have as many members as possible. This edition suits mid-sized businesses with a single sales unit and finite product or service offerings.
Professional edition offers the following:
- Contract Management
- Campaign Management
- Quote and order management
- Case Management
- Integration with Google Apps (Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, etc.)
- Products and Price Books
- Lead Assignment and Routing
- Rules-based scoring
- Process Builder
- Developer Sandbox
- Campaign Influence: 3 campaigns per opportunity
- Web Services API: Additional $25 USD/user/month
The process builder automates your business’s different processes – such as task assignment. In addition, the developer sandbox allows for the development and testing of new functionality in an isolated environment, so it doesn’t affect your production org.
Thoughts on the Limitations of the Salesforce Professional Edition
The professional edition is more flexible than the Essentials edition and more effective, especially in managing customer relationships. However, this edition may not be suitable for some businesses due to certain limitations.
These limitations cannot be avoided unless upgrading to the Enterprise editions, such as the limited number of record types, permission sets, and profiles. With time, these limitations can cause inconvenience, and you may cause you to upgrade.
Another reason you may want to skip the professional edition may be the constraints on process automation. Automation of some processes can be a huge time-saver. Still, the professional edition limits you to building only five strategies with the process builder, which may not be enough depending on your business’s needs.
Due to the constraints, businesses that count on building some complex automation processes should look to higher editions. In addition, the higher versions offer more powerful automation tools such as Workflow Rules, Code-based Apex Triggers, and Approval processes.
A third drawback is an integration limitation that limits your ability to connect the system with other solutions.
You should take some time to think about those limitations and whether they can restrict you or affect your businesses because if they are going to limit your effectiveness, you should probably consider opting for a higher edition such as the enterprise or unlimited editions, which we are going to talk about right now.
3rd- Salesforce Enterprise – $150/user/month billed annually
The professional and enterprise editions are similar in functions and features, so choosing between them is difficult. However, we can still make this easy for you.
You choose the enterprise edition if you:
- Different sales groups or teams with various products, customers, and sales processes
- Lead-generation team (or service team) that relies on call scripts
- A specific security model that has refined user access control
- Plan for data migration into
- Specific workflows in place already that you want to automate
- Approval steps in effect that you need to automate
- Integrate with other software systems
- You need advanced reporting features
Salesforce Enterprise edition gives you all the features of the professional edition plus:
- Advanced Forecasting
- Advanced Reporting
- Team Selling
- Opportunity Splits
- Enterprise territory management
- Campaign Influence 5 campaigns per opportunity
- Unlimited customizable profiles and page layouts
- Unlimited roles and permissions
- 1 Partial Sandbox included per org
- Full sandbox available for purchase
However, you should know that to get the best out of the Enterprise edition, and you must have some experience and skills. You may find it helpful to hire a Salesforce consulting team and a sysadmin to maintain the system and get the best results out of it.
4th- Salesforce Unlimited – $300/user/month billed annually
Salesforce unlimited edition is created for large businesses with many users. It gives businesses the ultimate functionality, support, and customizability.
Choosing between the unlimited and Enterprise editions may also be quite tricky – even though not quite as delicate as picking between enterprise and professional – but we are also going to make it easier for you with this simple comparison:
| Category/Edition | Enterprise Edition | Unlimited Edition |
| No. of Validation Rules | 100 | 500 |
| No. of Custom fields per object | 500 | 800 |
| No. of custom objects | 200 | 2000 |
| No. of Salesforce Lightning Apps | 25 | Unlimited |
With the Salesforce unlimited edition, you get access to:
- 24/7 Toll-free support
- Access to Salesforce’s premier knowledge database
- Multiple Developer Pro Sandboxes
- Custom Code Development
A Note on Salesforce Unlimited Edition:
The unlimited edition offers the best of what Salesforce has to offer. This means you get quite a large number of features and extensive functionality. However, this complete functionality comes at a hefty price, and you should be entirely sure that you will be able to get your money’s worth.
This means that you should use most or all of the unlimited edition features. Otherwise, we recommend taking a second look at the other editions.
5th- Salesforce Developer – Free for all
This is Salesforce’s free edition and is meant more for developers. Therefore, it has limited numbers of data and users because it is intended to test users.
The Developer edition is used for 4 main reasons:
- Trailhead
First, this is their free online learning tool.
- Development and Testing
Second, this isolates new applications’ development and testing when users don’t have a sandbox.
- ISVs
Used by Independent Software vendors to create managed packages. These managed packages are later released as applications on the AppExchange
- Developer Previews
When Salesforce CRM releases a new functionality or feature, it is often released to the developer edition first to test it and practice it to fix bugs or problems before being released to the public.
For you to make the right decision, you need to understand your business. What are its needs for now? How do you expect these needs to change in the future? How far do you expect your business to go, and how big do you expect to grow? What kind of functionality does your business need from the software? And what features?
We hope you enjoyed this article. If so, you might enjoy these resources:
- Top 8 Salesforce Alternatives | CRM Comparison
- 13 Best CRM Software for Real Estate to Find
- Best Free Chatbot Tools to Boost your Business
- Best CRM Software Solutions for Startups
So now you know Salesforce editions comparison, so choose the one that fits your business needs.
