Licenses
Salesforce licencing, without the maze.
A primer for DACH Mittelstand buyers. Which licences you actually need, what the editions mean, and the traps that turn a clean rollout into a renegotiation.
01 / Landscape
The licences you'll actually face.
Eight licences come up in nearly every DACH Mittelstand engagement we run. Click any to see the pricing model and the trap that catches buyers most often.
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Sales Cloud
The core CRM for sales teams.
Pricing model
Per user / month. Editions: Starter Suite, Pro Suite, Enterprise, Unlimited.
What to watch
Edition choice depends on pipeline complexity, not the brochure.
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Service Cloud
Customer service: case management, omni-channel routing, knowledge base.
Pricing model
Per user / month, with add-ons for Field Service and Einstein.
What to watch
Right edition hinges on which channels, Field Service needs, and AI use.
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Data Cloud
Salesforce's customer-data platform.
Pricing model
Consumption-based via Data Service Credits (ingestion, identity resolution, segmentation, activation). Storage priced separately per TB.
What to watch
The most-mispriced product in the catalogue. Easy to overspend 10x.
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Agentforce
Conversational and autonomous AI agents on top of your Salesforce data.
Pricing model
Three models: Flex Credits (per-action consumption), conversation-based, or per-user licence. Flex Credits is the recommended default for new deployments.
What to watch
Consumption balloons fast without disciplined topic and action design.
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Marketing Cloud
Email, journeys, audiences across multiple SKUs.
Pricing model
Two main families: Marketing Cloud Engagement (B2C) and Account Engagement / Pardot (B2B). Account Engagement tiers: Growth, Plus, Advanced, Premium.
What to watch
Sizing depends on contact counts, send volume, and which engine you actually need.
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Experience Cloud
Authenticated portals and customer or partner communities.
Pricing model
Per login or per member.
What to watch
Choosing the wrong model can double a portal's effective cost.
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CPQ
Configure, price, quote. Layered on Sales Cloud.
Pricing model
Per user / month, in addition to Sales Cloud.
What to watch
Worth it for genuine pricing complexity. A tax otherwise.
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Platform
Custom application licences without the full CRM.
Pricing model
Per user / month, cheaper than Sales or Service.
What to watch
Apparent savings disappear once you add the standard objects you actually need.
02 / Traps
Where it usually goes wrong.
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Over-buying
What it costs
30-40% of licence spend wasted
What's right
For most Mittelstand teams, Enterprise plus targeted add-ons beats Unlimited.
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Under-buying
What it costs
Renegotiation under pressure
What's right
Match the edition to your 18-month plan, not your founding-year budget.
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Customising on the wrong edition
What it costs
Remediation, sometimes a full rebuild
What's right
Validate that the edition supports your customisation roadmap before you sign.
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Consumption surprise
What it costs
10x projection in one quarter
What's right
Discipline at design time: bounded DMOs, scoped agent actions, observability from day one.
03 / How we help
License sizing, before you sign.
Licensing is part of every engagement we scope. Before we propose technical work, we map the licence stack the work actually requires, and tell you if your current position is wrong for it.
If the right answer is a smaller licence footprint, we say so. If it's bigger, we tell you why and what it buys.
Next
Strategic Salesforce delivery, where it matters most.
Let's build together.
