DOES SALESFORCE HAVE A FREE VERSION?
Organizations leveraging Salesforce for enterprise-level administration, data backup and recovery, and security are always eager to learn of new cost-saving solutions. Companies around the globe are constantly expanding, creating new challenges around their IT infrastructure and escalating needs for automation. Because of this, those familiar with Salesforce have looked for ways to decrease their overhead costs while still leveraging the platform’s features. The big question is, does a free version of Salesforce exist? Salesforce proudly provides a comprehensive suite of products with multiple editions for businesses of all sizes and industries. The standard editions include Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited. These products range in prices from $25 to $300 per user, per month. However, Salesforce also offers supplemental free versions of the product to help clients save costs and maximize performance. The Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) provides a no-cost, off-the-shelf solution for nonprofits to manage high-volume donations, grant tracking, memberships, and volunteering. The NPSP is free and offers a multidimensional approach to managing donor and volunteer relationships. NPSP also includes the SalesforceT Database, with embedded best practices for nonprofit customer relationship management (CRM). In addition to the Nonprofit Success Pack, Salesforce also provides a data-only platform called Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Platform is a built-in, no-cost version of Salesforce and is designed for developers to quickly build custom applications and manage customer data. Unlike other Salesforce editions, Salesforce Platform does not include a large sate of additional features. However, businesses looking to develop custom Salesforce applications or customize existing editions can leverage Salesforce Platform and save money. Salesforce also offers a free version of Sales Cloud exclusively geared toward sales teams. Sales Cloud Free is limited to 5 sales reps per instance, and offers the same licenses and features as Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited tiers of Sales Cloud. Sales Cloud Free also comes with up to 20GB of storage, and outside of the license restriction, each edition includes the same features and capabilities. Overall, Salesforce does provide a free version of their product suite. While the editions are limited in features and come with restrictions on implementation and usage, the free versions are still useful and can save customers significant costs in procurement and deployment. Companies who want to utilize the full Salesforce suite will need to leverage the standard editions at their disposal, but those with limited budgets can certainly leverage the no-cost versions to deliver needed functionality.
Topics:
