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Salesforce.com Vs Force.com

By Ben McCarthy

A question that I get asked almost on a weekly basis is “What exactly is the difference between Salesforce.com Vs Force.com?”, in this article I hope to explain in clear terms what the exact difference is and how and you can utilise each of these for different purposes.

To properly explain the difference between these two products it’s best to roll back a few chapters and understand what Salesforce.com actually is in terms of the Cloud Industry. Salesforce is a SaaS product which as you can see from the diagram below stands for Software-as-a-Service. This concept is  a fundamental of cloud computing and is the means of taking software off of your computer and into the cloud! Dropbox, Google Apps and GoToMeeting are all examples of Saas products.

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However, we have a couple of other cloud products. Force.com is a PaaS  product, which stands for Platform-as-a- Service. This concept is not an out of the box product like GoToMeeting , instead it contains an application or Framework for you to build Apps onto (Can you see where I’m going with this?!).

Lastly we have IaaS which stands for Infrastructure-as-a-Service. This doesn’t concern us too much as what this usually means is that you are renting a physical server somewhere in a warehouse from Rackspace for example.

So…

What makes Salesforce.com SaaS and what makes Force.com PaaS?

Just like GoToMeeting or Google Apps, Salesforce.com is an out of the box solution with their three core products, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. You could go out and buy the Sales Cloud today and starting logging leads, opportunities, running reports etc.

In contrast, you can go out today and buy some Force.com licenses and you would not have an out of the box solution, no access to leads, accounts or opportunities. You would have to build Apps, Tabs, Custom Objects, Workflow Rules all yourself to design the kind of system that you want to use. This is where it gets interesting…

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As some of you very well know, these Force.com features are all available in Salesforce.com right? Well this is because Salesforce.com is built on the Force.com platform seamlessly. When you purchase Salesforce.com Licenses for Sales Cloud, you get all of your normal tabs (Leads, Accounts etc) plus the ability to customise the whole platform using Force.com!

This is one of the reasons why Salesforce make such an effort to create a distinction between Standard and Custom objects in their Certifications as they are two very different kettles of fish of which both have limitations and interact with each other very differently.

So when you are building Custom Objects and adding in Workflows, Approval Processes etc, this is all using Force.com. This is the exact same way that AppExchange partners design apps.  They create them on the Force.com platform, possibly using external web services and then package them up ready for you to download!

There you have it! Those are the differences between Salesforce.com vs Force.com. Let me know if you have any helpful additions to this post or any further questions that I will do my best to answer.

The Author

Ben McCarthy

Ben is the Founder of Salesforce Ben. He also works as a Non-Exec Director & Advisor for various companies within the Salesforce Ecosystem.

Comments:

    Ashish
    April 09, 2015 10:26 pm
    Great explanation! Thanks.
    Shraddha
    April 14, 2015 3:06 pm
    Nicely explained. So if someone wants to start learning Salesforce from implementation team point of view ( not as end user) then learning SAAS - may be admin certification would be the initiation point? Correct or not?
    Ben McCarthy
    April 14, 2015 4:57 pm
    Hi Shraddha, Exactly. Adm is a very good place to start.
    Skyler
    October 09, 2015 10:16 pm
    Nice article. My confusion comes when Salesforce reports their revenue between Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce1 platform and other, and Marketing Cloud but doesn't mention any 'Salesforce' or SaaS revenue. How is the revenue split between SaaS and PaaS? Any clarity would be helpful.
    Ben McCarthy
    October 12, 2015 3:47 pm
    Hi Skyler, Thanks for your comment. I'm not too sure about the specifics but these are all Salesforce products so I presume this will all be grouped under revenue. Thanks, Ben
    Daryl Moon
    October 24, 2015 9:40 pm
    Thanks Ben, that is a well written and very clear explanation. Thanks for that.
    AJ
    October 26, 2015 8:46 am
    If you are in South East Asia/China, you can buy the 'Sales Cloud' which has been 'redeveloped' by partners on the force.com platform for the cost of the platform itself.
    Jose Claramunt
    January 29, 2016 9:23 am
    Hi Ben, As a Jr. Consultant and experienced Admin, I have tried (at least on 3 occasions) to talk to SF about Force.com, since I had (at that time) a bunch of leads that where very interested in creating a custom app using Force.com. To my dismay, every single SF sales agent said no. They should either go for the Pro Edition or Enterprise. In my experience, Force.com is like a Pink Unicorn: it looks amazing, but it doesnt exist. Do you know why SF fails to truly offer this part of their platform (its cheaper and is attractive for SMB's)?
    Ben McCarthy
    January 29, 2016 9:34 am
    Hi Joe, Force.com does very much exist and is a lot cheaper than Sales cloud. You can see the license costs here - http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing-platform.jsp The reason that Salesforce sales people might have been less inclined to offer you Force.com is that its a lot cheaper and therefore less commission for them. However, if they have a need for Sales cloud and custom applications then Enterprise is the best option. Hope this helps, Ben
    Piyush Chandani
    May 22, 2016 11:38 am
    Excellent post!!
    Andy
    September 12, 2016 11:09 pm
    Great post, and thanks for the pricing link. I want to build my own crm on force.com, very specific to my clients industry needs, could i resell those packages while the client only deals with me, not salesforce?
    Chris Valdivia
    November 02, 2016 6:32 pm
    Nice post Ben - thanks! I appreciate the effort it takes to make sense out of some of these somewhat confusing names. Cheers, Chris
    Archita
    January 09, 2017 10:12 am
    Awesome Explanation Ben. Thanks.
    Jenna
    February 15, 2017 9:54 pm
    I would like to get a license for someone on our marketing team. They have no use for the crm side of salesforce, but we have started storing all of our tradeshow information in salesforce using both objects and custom objects. Would a force.com license be the correct one to obtain for them? Thanks!
    Jeudy Molina
    August 07, 2017 10:09 pm
    Thank you for the explanation, now I understand the differences between each other, I still have a question though. Why would I purchase force.com license if salesforce.com offers the same features? is it to restrict access to particular users to the set up menu options? if so, can't I use profiles to restric access instead of purchasing different licenses? Thank you.
    Ben McCarthy
    August 08, 2017 6:35 am
    Hi Jeudy, Force.com licenses are a lot cheaper than Salesforce.com, as they do not include an advanced functionality like quotes, opportunity management, forecasting extra. Force.com just comes with Accounts, Contacts and other basic objects, you are really meant to build your own application within Force.com. You can indeed grant different licenses to different users. Hope this helps, Ben
    Sunil
    January 23, 2018 2:04 am
    Excellent Post :)
    Sunil
    January 23, 2018 2:05 am
    Great post !
    Sumitesh Anand
    September 25, 2018 5:51 am
    I am a user of Force.com but have access to opportunity, quote and other objects. You said only accounts and contacts are standard do do we need to pay extra for these objects?
    Saba
    September 26, 2020 12:01 pm
    Hi Ben, this really cleared some of my confusions. Can you also explain about differences in Sales cloud, Service Cloud & Marketing Cloud in Salesforce. As when I read about these, I see common objects being used in all these. Thanks!
    Prakash
    November 12, 2020 5:28 am
    Hi Ben, Excellent post explaining SF Vs Force.com. I have question. If my client wants a custom apps (not using any standard object) shall I recommend to buy Force.com license. If I do so, what would be the best edition to choose.
    ivan
    March 23, 2021 9:22 pm
    Oh, this was an excellent explanation and article! Just great! Thanks a lot
    Christine Marshall
    March 24, 2021 9:44 am
    Thanks for reading and for the lovely feedback!
    Ankit Sharma
    September 26, 2021 8:27 am
    Thank you for the awesome explanation...
    Donovan Chandler
    February 23, 2022 9:35 pm
    All points in this article where articulated very well. Took me all of two minutes to retain the information I was looking for SaaS vs PaaS, Platform vs Consume. The IaaS bit was the cherry on top. Thank you Ben.
    Kenny
    May 02, 2022 2:14 pm
    Please base on your wealth of knowledge, what service would you advice a beginner to start from, that is very lucrative
    Datacentre Proxies
    December 14, 2023 8:22 am
    You should take part in a contest for one of the highest quality blogs on the net. I'm going to recommend this website!

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