Salesforce pricing has two layers. The edition sets which features your org can switch on, and licenses decide what each person or system may use inside it. Every user holds exactly one user license, such as a full Sales Cloud seat, a Platform seat, an Integration seat or an Experience Cloud seat for someone outside your company. Permission set licenses and feature licenses then add capabilities on top. Most over-buying happens when every person gets the biggest seat by default.
Editions: the ceiling for the whole org
An edition is a package of features, limits and support applied to your org. It answers questions such as whether you get advanced forecasting, how many sandboxes come included, and which security and AI features are available without an add-on. You pick an edition per product, so a company can run Sales Cloud and Service Cloud at different tiers in the same org.
The names changed recently. On September 3, 2026, Salesforce announced Core, Advanced and Max editions to replace the legacy Enterprise, Unlimited and Agentforce 1 editions for new purchases. Salesforce says all three tiers bundle Agentforce capabilities, Slack, embedded analytics and a Premier Success Plan, with a larger allocation of Flex Credits at each step up. For smaller teams, Starter Suite and Pro Suite still combine sales, service and marketing basics in one package. Customers already on Enterprise or Unlimited keep those editions, but you should expect renewals and additional seats to be quoted against the new structure, so ask your account executive how your contract will be mapped.
The four kinds of license you will see
Open Setup and search for Company Information, and you will find your licenses listed in separate groups. Knowing what each group means makes a renewal quote much easier to read.
| License kind | What it controls | How many per user | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| User license | The baseline set of objects and features a person or system can reach | Exactly one | Salesforce (full CRM), Salesforce Platform, Salesforce Integration, Experience Cloud licenses |
| Permission set license | Extra capabilities beyond what the user license supports, switched on through a permission set | Zero or more | Licenses for industry clouds, CPQ or specific add-on products |
| Feature license | Access to a specific feature that is not granted by the user license alone | Zero or more | Service Cloud User, Knowledge User, Marketing User |
| Usage-based entitlement | A pool the org consumes, measured by volume rather than by person | Org-wide | Login pools for portals, storage, credits for AI and data services |
Salesforce Help describes permission set licenses as a way to entitle users to features their user license does not include, and notes that a user can hold any number of them. Holding the license is not enough on its own, though. An admin still has to assign a permission set that uses it, which is why orgs often show permission set licenses marked as assigned to people who never received the matching permissions.
Choosing the right user license for each person
The user license is where most of the money sits, so match it to the work each group does rather than to their job title.
- Full CRM licenses for people who work opportunities, forecasts or cases every day.
- Salesforce Platform licenses for staff who use custom apps and shared account and contact data but never touch opportunities or cases.
- A Salesforce Integration license for every system that connects over the API, each as its own user.
- Experience Cloud licenses for customers, partners, agents or members who log in from outside your company.
- No license at all for people who are only tracked in Salesforce and never sign in.
Platform licenses are the most overlooked option. Salesforce positions them for users who need custom apps without full access to standard CRM objects; standard opportunities and cases are not available on them. Operations, finance or compliance staff who work in custom objects and look up accounts are often a good fit. Test this in a sandbox before buying, because a single requirement that depends on a standard object the license excludes can rule it out.
Integration licenses solve a different problem. Salesforce has provisioned Enterprise, Unlimited and Performance Edition orgs with five Salesforce Integration user licenses at no additional cost, and paired them with the Minimum Access – API Only Integrations profile. Using them keeps middleware and connected tools off full seats and stops an integration from breaking when an employee leaves. If you are buying on the new editions, confirm how many come with your contract.
Licenses for people outside your company
Customers, dealers, brokers and independent agents should not hold internal licenses. Experience Cloud licenses come in tiers that differ in which objects are available and how records can be shared, and each can be bought for named members or as a pool of logins. Our portal planning guide covers the tiers and the member-versus-login choice in detail.
A payments company we worked with gave 60+ independent agents self-service through an Experience Cloud portal, where they search merchants, submit applications and track status. Treating those agents as an external audience, rather than as internal users, is what made a portal the right shape for the problem.
How to avoid over-buying
Salesforce licensing rewards preparation. A few hours of analysis before a renewal or a new purchase usually tells you more than a sales conversation will.
- Build a user list by role with what each role does in Salesforce, not just how many people are on the team.
- Check the last login date for every active user and freeze or deactivate accounts nobody has used in months.
- Reconcile permission set licenses and feature licenses against the permission sets actually assigned.
- Move system connections onto Integration licenses and remove any employee logins they used to run on.
- Price Platform and Experience Cloud options for groups who only read records or work in custom objects.
- Ask which features the higher edition adds that you will configure in the next twelve months, and skip the upgrade if the answer is none.
- Buy for the users who will go live in phase one, then add seats when later teams are ready to start.
That last point matters on new implementations. Seats bought for a team that goes live nine months later are paid for while they wait, and plans often change in between. Agree a phased license schedule with your account executive that follows the rollout plan.
Contract points to pin down
Contract terms matter as much as the license mix. Before you commit, get clear written answers on the following, and keep them with the order form:
- Which edition each product is on, and what happens to it at renewal under the current edition structure.
- Whether seats can be reduced at renewal or only added.
- Which permission set and feature licenses are included in the edition and which are separate line items.
- How usage-based entitlements such as Flex Credits, storage and portal logins are measured, and what happens if you exceed them.
- How many sandboxes of each type you receive, since that affects how your partner can test and release.
A Salesforce partner cannot sell you licenses in place of Salesforce, but an experienced one can map roles to license types, spot what is unused, and test assumptions in a sandbox. That work is usually part of a health check or the discovery phase of an implementation.
