CRM Software Review Salesforce.com

Products and Pricing

Salesforce.com only delivers on-demand CRM software in a hosted model – there is not an option for an on-premise or locally installed application. The company uses a shared services multi-tenant hosting model for database sharing among customers. The multi-tenant model means that although your data is logically separate from other Salesforce.com clients it is also part of a consolidated and shared multi-tenant data repository. While shared services is generally acceptable for small business customers, larger enterprises sometimes reject a shared data repository due to privacy and security concerns.

Salesforce.com groups their CRM software solutions into a series of versions or 'editions'. Each edition is priced differently but all editions follow the company's 'per user per month' subscription pricing model. Each successive step up through the different editions provides a broader set of business functionality, improved customization capabilities and wider access to the broader sForce and third party software offerings. Salesforce.com is often criticized for the inherent and aggressively promoted 'up-sell' that exists in this model. While there is some validity to this assertion, there is also an element of Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware). It is important with Salesforce.com to ensure you understand the totality of your business and technology requirements (both current and future) before making a purchase decision on which software edition is appropriate. The Salesforce.com multi-tiered structure is in contrast to other leading SaaS vendors such as NetSuite or Aplicor who tend to price their products in a less piecemeal manner.

A summary of the software product editions is provided below.

Each of the customer relationship management software editions is highlighted below:

Group Edition: The most basic offering is the Group Edition (formerly called Team Edition) which is priced at approximately $99 per user per year. This version provides basic sales force automation functionality for contact management and sale opportunity tracking. The SFA product also includes Salesforce.com's partnership with Google for AdWords and a “web-to-lead” tool which permits web site enquiries to be automatically transferred into the SFA product. Integration and other SForce functionality at not available with Group Edition.

Professional Edition: The company's most popular offering is the Professional Edition and is priced at approximately $65 per user per month. Professional Edition is a significant step up from Group Edition and delivers commonly needed functionality to support lead management, contact management, activity management, opportunity tracking and sales forecasting. In addition to the basic sales force automation functions there is also the addition of a basic Case Management (help desk or customer support) solution. This includes tracking of customer incidents and a “solutions” knowledgebase. Surprisingly, this version of the CRM software does not offer industry standard marketing functionality. As is typical with the Salesforce.com pricing model, marketing capabilities can be added for an additional per user per month fee. Other notable absences from this edition are workflow automation, self service customer interaction and integration support through the Force.com web services API.

Enterprise Edition: Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition is priced at approximately $125 per user per month. This edition includes much more functionality and bridges most of the critical gaps found in the professional edition. The marketing solution is included and supports basic campaign management. Software functionality to support email based campaigns is still fairly limited without the addition of one of the company’s popular partners such as Elouqa. These third party software solutions however can add a significant cost to the overall solution price. There are many useful features added in this edition such as territory management, workflow rules, self service capability and web services API for system integration. There are however still some notable gaps such as Mobile access (PDA / Blackberry), which is again available for an additional fee of about $50 per user per month.

Unlimited Edition: The company's Unlimited Edition is priced at about $199 per user per month. This edition includes almost all that the company has to offer. This edition includes full access to the Force.com solution from AppExchange. The primary items missing from the “unlimited” edition are Partner Relationship Management (PRM), a Customer Portal and Content Management.

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