One of the biggest benefits for nonprofits using Salesforce is the amazing discount we get on state-of-the-art software. The same software used by Fortune 500 companies, at levels of discount usually reserved for their biggest/best customers, without having to actually negotiate for that discount. I think that’s a pretty good deal.
But if you’re a nonprofit leader considering Salesforce for the first time (or considering changes to your implementation), it can sometimes be frustrating trying to figure out the specifics of what you’re budgeting for. If you know you’re going to need logins for 37 employees, you want to know how much you’ll be paying for the 27 logins you’ll need after the 10 donated licenses. [Spoiler alert: $432 * 27 = $11,664/year] (But don’t forget that licenses are not your only cost!)
For several years I’ve been loudly advocating for increased price transparency from Salesforce.org. There have been some horrendous cases of nonprofits overcharged because they didn’t know what they actually needed. And even in the case of organizations that knew what they needed and what the right price was, sometimes it’s been hard just to get things properly provisioned.
📣 I've been loudly advocating for increased price transparency from Salesforce.org
Credit where credit is due: Salesforce.org (SFDO) has made strides to get better. I haven’t heard recent horror stories of overcharges by Account Executives. SFDO reorganized part of their website and published this pricing guide, for one thing. But in my humble opinion, a PDF pricing guide is not the most convenient format. And there are plenty of products left out of the guide, particularly the newest and shiniest things Salesforce has released in the last few years.
So that’s why even after the pricing has gotten more transparent, I’ve continued maintaining the Crowdsourced Salesforce.org Pricing spreadsheet. Even if most of the information is available on Salesforce’s website, this way we can see everything in convenient tabular black and white without fishing around various parts of Salesforce.com and Salesforce.org. Go ahead and bookmark that sheet, you'll probably want to refer to it. And if you have any information to add to it, or questions about what’s there, feel free to tag me in a comment–I really do want to keep it up to date.
✅: Bookmark the Crowdsourced Salesforce.org Pricing Guide 🔖
What I would really like to see someday is a statement from Salesforce along the lines of “any organization qualified for the P10 grant will also be able to purchase any other Salesforce product at a minimum discount of X% off list price.” I know that won’t be able to apply to all products, or that some may take time after release to be added to SFDO’s pricing. But if we knew that was the baseline it would make it so much easier for nonprofit admins to think about all the new toys Salesforce announces.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have made any progress toward getting a guideline like that. If you have ideas for how I could make that wish come true, please get in touch!