Core Product – Licenses
Salesforce offers a variety of licensing models, each with specific permissions and limitations. Selecting the appropriate model is crucial, as it directly determines what actions a user can perform within the Salesforce platform.
At its core, Salesforce offers five different license types:
Essentials (ES)
- Designed for small businesses with basic CRM needs (up to 10 users).
- Includes lead, account, contact management, task tracking, and basic reporting.
- Affordable option with limited customization.
Professional (PE)
- Suitable for growing businesses needing more features than Essentials.
- Offers features like mass email, workflow automation, and lead scoring.
- Provides more customization options and integrations.
Enterprise (EE)
- Aimed at larger businesses with complex needs and advanced customization.
- Includes custom objects, page layouts, APIs, and advanced reporting.
- Offers greater flexibility and scalability.
Developer (DE)
- Similar features as enterprise edition
- Designed for develoers
Unlimited (UE)
- Most comprehensive edition with access to all platform features.
- Ideal for large enterprises with sophisticated requirements.
- Provides premier support and sandbox environments.
Chatter External
- Chatter External licenses are Salesforce licenses designed for users who are not part of your company’s email domain. These users are often customers who are invited to specific Chatter groups to collaborate and share information within those groups.
- Chatter External licenses are a valuable tool for extending collaboration beyond your organization’s boundaries. By carefully managing external user access and leveraging the features of Chatter, you can enhance customer engagement and improve overall communication.
Chatter Free
- Chatter Free licenses are designed for users who don’t have full Salesforce licenses but still need access to Chatter for basic collaboration.
- Chatter Free licenses offer a cost-effective way to extend Chatter collaboration to a broader audience within your organization. By understanding the limitations and benefits of this license type, you can effectively leverage it to enhance communication and productivity
Chatter Only
- Chatter Only licenses, also known as Chatter Plus licenses, are designed for users who need more access to Salesforce than what a Chatter Free license provides, but don’t require a full Salesforce license
- Chatter Only licenses provide a balance between the simplicity of Chatter Free licenses and the full functionality of Salesforce licenses. By understanding the specific needs of your users, you can determine if a Chatter Only license is the right fit for them.
Salesforce
- This is the most common license, providing full access to Salesforce CRM features, including sales, service, marketing, and platform capabilities.
- Users with this license can create, edit, and delete records, run reports, and customize the Salesforce interface.
Lightning Platform Plus
- The Lightning Platform Plus license in Salesforce is designed for users who need a more robust platform for building custom apps and integrations than what the Lightning Platform Starter license offers.
- You can create up to 110 custom objects, allowing for more complex data modeling and business processes
- The license includes additional API calls and Salesforce Connect capabilities, enabling seamless integration with external systems and data sources.
- You can leverage advanced automation tools like Flow and Process Builder to streamline workflows and improve productivity.
- Overall, the Lightning Platform Plus license is a powerful tool for developers and administrators who need to build and customize Salesforce applications to meet the specific needs of their organization.
Lightning Platform Starter
- The Lightning Platform Starter license in Salesforce is a basic license that provides access to the Salesforce platform for building custom apps and integrations. It’s ideal for small teams and developers who are just starting out with Salesforce.
- You can create up to 10 custom objects, which may limit the complexity of your apps.
- You can integrate with external systems and data sources using web services APIs and Salesforce Connect
- You have access to a limited set of standard Salesforce objects and features.
- Overall, the Lightning Platform Starter license is a good starting point for developers and teams who want to build custom apps on the Salesforce platform without the need for a full Salesforce license.
External Identity
- An External Identity license in Salesforce is primarily used for managing external users, such as customers, partners, or other external stakeholders. It enables you to provide secure access to your Salesforce platform and data to these external users.
- Allows you to create self-service portals where external users can register, log in, and access specific parts of your Salesforce platform.
- Enables you to control access to specific Salesforce data and features for external users.
- Provides a seamless login experience for external users, allowing them to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials.
- Overall, an External Identity license helps you extend the reach of your Salesforce platform to external users, enabling better collaboration and customer engagement.
External App
- An External App license in Salesforce allows you to build and deploy custom digital experiences for your external users, such as customers, partners, or employees who are not part of your internal Salesforce org. These experiences can be in the form of portals, communities, or custom applications.
Customer Community
Partner Community
Employee Community
Permission Set Based
Chatter Ansers User
Flow User
Knowledge User
Chat User
Marketing User
Offline User
Salesforce CRM Content User
Service Cloud User
Site dot com Contributor
Site dot com Publisher
Login Based Licenses (Usage-Based Entitlements)
- Salesforce offers a usage-based licensing (also commonly referred to as “login-based licenses” for products such as Salesforce communities and External Apps) model as an alternative to purchasing a named license for each and every user in the org.
- With usage-based entitlements, a company purchases lump-sum credits for a number of logins per month for their users or for a number of transactions per month.