Last year Salesforce.com introduced SalesforceIQ (formerly RelateIQ) targeted at individuals and small businesses. This product replaced the company’s basic Group Edition, which was offered at $25 per user per month, but was viewed as a bit cumbersome and hard to use for small businesses. SalesforceIQ is a completely different product that offers basic functionality and a nicer user interface than the previous Group Edition; but like its predecessor, it is still limited to up to five users. With a completely different design and user interface it will be interesting to learn how customers can migrate to a more robust product edition should they wish to in the future?

Interestingly enough the company has also increased the price of the Sales Edition to $75 per user per month and its Enterprise Edition to $150 per user per month. These editions are now referred to as Lightning Professional and Lightning Enterprise Editions — Go Figure.

New Sales Cloud Lightning Editions pricing chart courtesy of Liz Herbert’s Blog | Forrester.com

This price increase is a bit surprising due to the increased competition from competitive solutions like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Commence CRM, both of which offer similar functionality at a substantially lower cost. Perhaps Salesforce.com knows something others do not.