Tag Archives: Platform License

Web Application Development

How to Reduce Salesforce Licenses Cost

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Motivation:

  • You are using Salesforce for your daily work. It works very well but the cost is too expensive.
  • You want to find  a way to reduce Salesforce licenses cost.

Suggestions:

1. Salesforce cost depends on a selected Edition and number of user licenses.

2. An edition is selected based on features that an ORG needs.

For example, an ORG that needs the API and Flows feature for custom development has to choose Professional or Enterprise edition.

The number Flows are very limited for Professional edition (5 flows).

However the max number of flows of the Enterprise edition is 2000 that may be too many for a small business too.

This may be Salesforce intention that they want customers to use Enterprise edition.

3. A license price depends on the selected edition. For example, an ORG needs to  pay $150 /user/month for the Enterprise edition.

4. A User License may be Salesforce License or Salesforce Platform License. A Profile defines permissions. A Profile with login is attached to one User License (except the case that the Profile is used for Community portal users).

5. Assume that an ORG may use 13 User Licenses: 5 System Administrators (5 Salesforce Licenses) and 8 Platform Users (8 Salesforce Platform Licenses).

In order to reduce the cost the ORG may consider some strategies below.

  • The ORG may use shared account for all the employees who have the same responsibilities (tasks) if possible.
  • The ORG may retain only 2 Salesforce licenses: One is for API access and development, and the other is for administrative tasks.
  • The ORG may change appropriate licenses from Salesforce license to Platform license if they do not use the built-in Leads, Opportunities, Forecasts, Cases, and Solutions.
  • The ORG should disable all unused accounts.
  • The ORG may develop Community portal for some user types and move all these users from Platform license to Community license.
  • If you are using Salesforce development platform then try moving your custom development features to another cheaper development platform, such as Zoho Creator.
  • If you are using Salesforce CRM as is then try moving your business workflows and data to another cheaper provider, such as EspoCRM.