The situation with Salesforce licenses is quite difficult as there are many types, which can get confusing. Further complications are related to the fact that apart user licenses, you can purchase feature licenses, or permission set licenses.
The wrong choice of license can affect the work process of the whole organization. Therefore, it is essential to manage Salesforce licenses accurately to get the most out of your investment.
A user license determines a set of Salesforce features which user has access to. Salesforce’s different user licenses give users different access to your data. (The license type determines which profiles and permission sets are available to the user).
If you would like to enable specific Salesforce functionality for your users, you must choose one user license for each user. To enable additional functionality, you can assign permission set licenses and feature licenses to your users or purchase usage-based entitlements for your organization. The list of active user licenses in your Salesforce org, can be viewed in Setup | Company Information.
In the article below we are going to explain the major features of user licenses.
Standard User Licenses
A license determines the set of features that the user can access. Each user should have exactly one user license. User permissions are assigned to a user for data access through a profile and optionally one or more permission sets.
Edition Comparison chart would help to see the differences and choose the most suitable for you.
Force.com
No need for standard CRM functionality? Want to create social and mobile apps using Lightning tools? Turn your attention to the one of Force.com user license types that suits you most. Licenses starting at 15 USD/user/month for a single app, and going up to 50-75 USD for the Enterprise and Unlimited Editions. Enterprise or Unlimited Editions that include CRM functions as well will cost 125 USD - 250 USD per user per month.
At the moment SFDC offers App Cloud Build apps connected to your CRM solution, it allows also to create apps that connect to Salesforce. App Cloud could combine both features of Force.com and Heroku. Pricing depends on the package you will choose: from 25 USD per month per user up to 4000 USD per company per month and more. For more details, you can review Salesforce App Cloud comparison chart.
Force.com is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) product; it contains a platform for you to build applications. Force.com enables you to customize the applications, business logic and User Interface.With Force.com, every app your users build is instantly mobile.
In the next article, we are going to cover specific aspects of Chatter, User Licenses, Service Cloud User, and Communities User Licenses. Don't miss the most interesting of Salesforce® world. Follow JET BI.