What is Salesforce: The Complete Guide to 2026

Salesforce is the most used cloud CRM platform in the world: a set of sales, service, marketing, commerce and data applications that run on the same base and share a single customer record. The company behind it, Salesforce, was founded in 1999 in San Francisco, closed fiscal year 2026 with US$41.5 billion in revenue and has led the CRM market for thirteen years in a row, according to IDC.

In practice, the name designates two things. Salesforce is the company. Salesforce is the system that your company hires and operates: the screen on which the salesperson registers the opportunity, the console on which the agent resolves the case, the journey that marketing triggers and, since 2024, the artificial intelligence agents that perform part of this work. This guide explains what Salesforce is, how it works inside, what the products are, how much it costs in 2026, what has changed with Agentforce and who the platform makes sense for.

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform offered as a cloud service by Salesforce, Inc. It brings together sales, service, marketing, commerce, data, and AI agents into a single database and metadata model, so all areas of the company see the same customer.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is CRM software delivered as a service (SaaS). The company does not install anything on its own server: it contracts licenses per user, accesses via the browser or mobile application and receives three updates per year without an upgrade project. All infrastructure, security and product evolution are the responsibility of Salesforce.

CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM stores everything the company knows about each account, contact, lead, opportunity, order and ticket, and organizes the teams' work based on this basis. What sets Salesforce apart from a pretty registry is that it was built from the ground up as a platform: sales, service and marketing applications share the same data model, so a case opened by customer service appears on the sales representative's screen without integration, and a marketing campaign sees the opportunity that the sales representative just created.

Salesforce describes the suite as Customer 360, a single view of the customer. Precision is worth it: Customer 360 is not a product you buy, it is the result of having the right applications running on the same platform, as Salesforce itself explains on the official product page.

Since October 2024, the platform has gained a new layer: the Agentforce, AI agents that read CRM data, reason about an order, and perform tasks within company-defined boundaries. That’s why Salesforce started to market itself as “the #1 agentic CRM.”

How does Salesforce work?

Salesforce works as a multi-tenant platform in the cloud: thousands of companies run the same version of the software, each within its own organization (the “org”), isolated from the others. What your company configures, from fields to automations, is stored as metadata for that org, and applications read this metadata to create screens, rules and reports.

This architecture explains three behaviors that newcomers find strange at first:

• Everything is configurable, almost nothing is “installed”. A new field, approval flow or validation rule is created by the interface, without code. Code (Apex, Lightning Web Components) only enters when the configuration does not reach.
• The version is always the latest. Salesforce publishes three releases per year, Spring, Summer and Winter. Winter ‘27 becomes available to all customers on October 12, 2026. Each release brings hundreds of changes, and part of the job of those who support Salesforce is to read the notes and test what affects the operation.
• Data and permission go together. The sharing model defines, record by record, who sees and who edits. This model applies to people and, now, to AI agents.

In 2026, Salesforce designs the platform in four layers, on a foundation of trust and several AI models. From top to bottom: the Slack as an engagement system (where people talk and trigger work), the Agentforce as a system of agency (the agents who execute), the Customer 360 as a work system (sales, service, marketing and commerce applications) and the Data 360 as a context system (the unified data that powers everything). The trust layer includes the Einstein Trust Layer, which prevents sensitive data from leaving the Salesforce environment when an AI model is triggered. Since 2026 these layers are also accessible from off-screen, through the Salesforce MCP, which connects AI assistants to the platform with user permissions.

For the IT reader, the summary is this: Salesforce is an application platform with its own database, security model, automation engine and API. Products are applications built on top of it. Integrations with ERP, financial and legacy systems go through Salesforce API or at MuleSoft, the integration platform that Salesforce purchased in 2018.

What are Salesforce products?

Salesforce products are divided into applications by area (sales, service, marketing, commerce), data and integration platforms (Data 360, MuleSoft, Tableau), the agent layer (Agentforce), the collaboration tool (Slack) and the development platform. Since the October 2025 Dreamforce, Salesforce has introduced the suite as Agentforce 360 and has renamed the applications with the Agentforce prefix. The old names (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud) remain in the documentation and contracts.

Product (current name)	Previous name	What they do	For whom
Agentforce Sales	Sales Cloud	Leads, accounts, opportunities, pipeline, sales forecast and quotes	Commercial Director, RevOps
Agentforce Service	Service Cloud	Cases, SLAs, knowledge base, agent console, channels (chat, voice, WhatsApp)	Service, CX
Agentforce Marketing	Marketing Cloud	Journeys, email, segmentation, automation and attribution	Marketing
Agentforce Commerce	Commerce Cloud	B2C and B2B stores, catalogue, orders	E-commerce
Agentforce Revenue Operations	Revenue Cloud, successor to CPQ	Catalog, quotation, contract, billing	Complex sales, finance
Agentforce Field Service	Field Service	Scheduling and dispatching field technicians	Field operations
Data 360	Data Cloud	Unifies data from any source into a single profile, with Zero Copy	Data, IT, marketing
Agentforce	Einstein (previous AI)	AI agents that plan and execute tasks in CRM	All areas
MuleSoft	MuleSoft	Systems integration and API management	IT, architecture
Tableau	Tableau	Data analysis and dashboards	Data, management
Slack	Slack	Collaboration, channels linked to CRM records, Claude Tag	Whole company
Salesforce Platform	Lightning Platform, Force.com	Building your own applications, Flow, Apex, Heroku	IT, developers

There are also versions by sector (Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, Education, Public Sector, among others), which are the same applications with a data model and pre-configured processes for the industry, and Net Zero Cloud, for sustainability management.

Two marketplaces complete the ecosystem. O AppExchange, which Salesforce renamed AgentExchange in 2025, brings together third-party applications and agents. And the Trailhead is the free learning platform, used both by those who operate the system and by those who want to become Salesforce developer.

Who is Salesforce?

Salesforce, Inc. is an American software company, headquartered in the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRM. It was founded on March 8, 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff, in a rented apartment in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood, with the proposal to sell sales force automation over the internet, without installed software. Benioff has been chairman and CEO since 2001.

The latest numbers, in the fiscal fourth quarter report published February 25, 2026:

Indicator	Value	Period
Annual revenue	US$41.5 billion (+10% over the previous year)	Fiscal year 2026, ending 01/31/2026
Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO)	US$72 billion (+14%)	31/01/2026
Agentforce and Data 360 annual recurring revenue	Over US$2.9 billion (+200%)	31/01/2026
Annual recurring revenue from Agentforce only	US$800 million (+169%)	31/01/2026

In the CRM market, IDC ranked Salesforce as the #1 supplier for the 13th consecutive year, with a 20.0% share in 2025, in the ranking published in June 2026. The leadership is repeated by application: #1 in sales for the 14th year, in service for the 13th and in marketing for the 7th. In the new agent construction and deployment market, Salesforce came in 2nd place, with 17.5%.

Salesforce claims to have more than 150 thousand customer companies worldwide. In Brazil, the company operates from São Paulo, with a website, support and documentation in Portuguese. The charge, however, is in dollars, a point that weighs on the budget and which we detail below.

How much does Salesforce cost in 2026?

Salesforce is charged per user per month, in dollars, almost always with an annual contract paid in advance. List price varies depending on edition. The table below reproduces the Agentforce Sales pricing page on the Brazilian Salesforce website, consulted in October 2026 (last page update: July 2026).

Edition	List price (per user/month)	Collections	What it adds
Starter Suite	US$ 25	Monthly or annual	Complete and simplified CRM for sales, service, marketing and commerce
Pro Suite	US$100	Annual	More customization and automation, quotes, forecasting, AgentExchange access
Core (Enterprise)	$195	Annual	Advanced Pipeline and Forecasting, APIs, Slack Business+, Tableau Next, 500K Flex Credits per org/year
Advanced (Unlimited)	$395	Annual	Enhanced security, backup, more AI, 1 million Flex Credits per org/year
Max (Agentforce 1 Sales)	US$ 550	Annual	Complete AI suite, Agentforce for sales and Coworker, Slack Enterprise+, 2.75 million Flex Credits per org/year

Service edits follow equivalent logic. On top of the license are add-ons (Agentforce for Sales from US$ 125 per user/month, Revenue Cloud from US$ 200), the Premier Success support plan (30% of the net value of the licenses) and, for AI and Data 360, the consumption of Flex Credits: in Agentforce, around US$ 0.10 per standard share.

List price is not the cost of the project. Implementation, integrations, data migration, training and support add up throughout the contract, and the price in dollars varies with the exchange rate. The complete account, with the AELA contract model and an example of total cost for enterprise operation, is in how much does Salesforce cost in 2026.

Who does Salesforce make sense for?

Salesforce makes more sense for companies where the relationship with the customer goes through several teams, several channels and several systems, and where the cost of not having a single vision is high: forecast that doesn't close, service that doesn't know what sales promised, marketing that doesn't see who is already a customer.

Some signs that the platform is the right path:

• The commercial operation has dozens or hundreds of users, approval processes, territories and revenue forecasts that the board monitors.
• The service works with SLA, multiple channels and needs a complete customer history on the agent's screen.
• There is mandatory integration with ERP, financial, e-commerce or legacy systems, and data needs to flow in both directions.
• The company wants to put AI agents to work on real customer data, with governance, and not in an isolated pilot.
• The business operates in multiple countries or units and needs a single standard with local variations.

Salesforce also serves small businesses, with Starter Suite from US$25 per user and a 30-day free trial. That offering works, but the platform stands out most when the number of users, processes and data justifies a full platform. That is where WeeNow operates.

When Salesforce is not the best choice: small operation with a simple process, which will use 10% of the product; company that first needs an ERP and does not yet have the basics of ordering and billing organized; or project without leadership sponsorship, in which adoption will die within the team. In these cases it is worth reading what is the best CRM before deciding.

What is Agentforce and what has changed in 2025 and 2026?

Agentforce is Salesforce's AI agent platform, launching in October 2024 as a successor to Einstein. An agent receives a trigger (a customer message, a change in record, a scheduled time), chooses a topic, creates a plan with the available actions, consults the CRM data and executes it, within the permissions that the company has defined. The reasoning engine behind this is the Atlas Reasoning Engine.

The sequence of announcements has since changed the design of the entire platform:

• October 2025, Dreamforce. The suite is now called Agentforce 360, and the Data Cloud becomes Data 360. The positioning changes from “CRM with AI” to “agentic CRM”.
• June 2026. Multi-agent orchestration reaches general availability, which allows specialized agents to share a task among themselves, as detailed in the article about multi-agent orchestration in Summer ‘26.
• August 26, 2026, Claudeforce. Salesforce and Anthropic expand the partnership: Salesforce starts to operate within Claude (plugin with 37 sales skills) and Claude becomes the standard model for Agentforce Vibes, Agentforce Coworker and Slackbot. What this changes for those who already use the platform is up for grabs. Claudeforce: What changes for those already using Salesforce?.
• September 15-17, 2026, Dreamforce. Salesforce introduces AIforce, the layer that brings Salesforce data, flows, and rules to any interface, with Claudeforce, Slackforce, and Agentforce Coworker.
• October 12, 2026, Winter '27. The release brings agent skills and plugins, orchestration with third-party agents via the A2A protocol and the Agentforce Contact Center in more than 30 countries.

For the manager, the practical consequence is only one: Salesforce is no longer just the screen on which the team works and has become the database and rules on which agents, inside and outside of Salesforce, take action. This makes data quality, the permissions model and governance leave the IT backlog and enter the business agenda.

Who implements and who supports Salesforce?

Salesforce sells the licenses, offers the support plans (Standard, Premier and Signature) and maintains the platform. Implementation, integration and day-to-day support are carried out by the client company itself, by partner consultancies or by a combination of the two. This is how the ecosystem was designed: Salesforce declares more than 12 thousand partners on AgentExchange.

A typical Salesforce project involves four fronts:

1. Implementation. Understand the real process, design the data model, configure objects, automations and permissions, migrate data and train the team. It ranges from a Quick Start lasting a few weeks to months-long programs in large operations.
2. Integration. Connect Salesforce to ERP, finance, e-commerce and channels such as WhatsApp, via API or MuleSoft, so that the CRM reflects orders, invoicing and inventory without retyping.
3. Support. Absorb three releases per year, respond to calls, evolve configurations and maintain a healthy security model. This is where most companies discover that downtime is costly.
4. Optimization and adoption. Reactivate an underutilized Salesforce, fix configuration that does not reflect the process, and measure adoption by team. It is the most common gateway for those who “bought and don’t use it”.

How to choose who will do this is in how to choose a Salesforce consultancy. WeeNow is an official Salesforce partner working across all four areas, from implementation to support, focusing on enterprise operations. For companies that run TOTVS on ERP, the WeeHub group has the WeePulse on the other side of the integration.

Salesforce Quick Glossary

• Org. A company's Salesforce instance, with its data, metadata, and users.
• Object and record. Object is the “table” (Account, Contact, Opportunity, Case); record is the line. Custom objects are created by the interface.
• Lightning. The current Salesforce interface (successor to Classic) and component framework for screens.
• Flow. The codeless automation engine. Replaced Workflow Rules and Process Builder.
• Apex. The programming language the platform's own, similar to Java, for when Flow doesn't reach it.
• Sandbox. Copy of the org for development and testing, without touching production.
• Release. The three annual updates (Spring, Summer, Winter), identified by the following fiscal year, so Winter '27 comes out in October 2026.
• Flex Credits. The unit of consumption for Agentforce and Data 360, purchased in bundles and charged per action or per usage.
• Einstein Trust Layer. The layer that masks sensitive data and prevents prompts and responses from being retained by AI models.
• SFDC. Historical abbreviation for salesforce.com, still common in jobs, forums, and documentation.

Frequently asked questions about Salesforce

What is Salesforce in one sentence?

Salesforce is the cloud CRM platform from Salesforce, Inc. that brings together sales, service, marketing, commerce, data, and AI agents under a single customer database.

Is Salesforce CRM or ERP?

It's CRM. Salesforce takes care of customer relationships: leads, opportunities, cases, campaigns and orders from a commercial point of view. It does not replace an ERP, which takes care of accounting, tax, inventory and production. The two integrate, usually via API or MuleSoft, so that the order closed in the CRM becomes billing in the ERP.

How much does Salesforce cost?

List price in 2026 ranges from US$25 per user/month for Starter Suite to US$550 for Max (Agentforce 1 Sales), with annual contract and dollar billing. Add-ons, AI consumption, support, implementation and support come on the side. The total cost for an enterprise operation is detailed in our pricing guide.

Is Salesforce for small businesses?

Fits. The Starter Suite, at US$25 per user/month, covers sales, service, marketing and commerce in a single application, with a 30-day free trial. The platform differentiates itself, however, when there is a volume of users, processes and integrations that justify a single base.

What is Agentforce?

It is Salesforce's AI agent platform, launched in October 2024. Agents read CRM data, plan and execute service, sales and marketing tasks within the company's permissions. It is charged per consumption, in Flex Credits or per conversation.

What is the difference between Sales Cloud and Service Cloud?

Sales Cloud (now Agentforce Sales) organizes the commercial process: leads, opportunities, pipeline and forecast. The Service Cloud (Agentforce Service) organizes service: cases, SLAs, knowledge and channels. They run in the same org and share the customer record.

Does Salesforce work in Portuguese and accept payment in reais?

The interface, support and documentation are available in Brazilian Portuguese. The master agreement, however, is priced in US dollars. Official partners can structure quotes in Brazilian reais, as WeeNow does.

Who Implements Salesforce?

The company itself, a consulting partner or both. Salesforce sells licenses and maintains the platform; implementation, integration and ongoing support are handled by the customer and its partners. WeeNow is an official Salesforce partner working from implementation through ongoing support.

What does SFDC mean?

SFDC is short for salesforce.com, the company's original name. It continues to be used in the ecosystem as a synonym for Salesforce.

Sources

1. Salesforce, The History of Salesforce, newsroom.
2. Salesforce, Salesforce Delivers Record Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2026 Results, February 25, 2026.
3. Salesforce, Salesforce Ranked #1 CRM Provider for 13th Consecutive Year, June 4, 2026 (IDC, Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker, April 2026).
4. Salesforce Brazil, Complete Salesforce Product and Software Suite, consulted on October 8, 2026.
5. Salesforce Brazil, Salesforce Sales Pricing, consulted on October 8, 2026.
6. Salesforce Brazil, Salesforce Pricing, consulted on October 8, 2026.
7. Salesforce, Salesforce and Anthropic Announce Claudeforce, August 26, 2026.
8. Salesforce, Salesforce Unveils AIforce, September 15, 2026.
9. Salesforce, Top Innovations in the Winter ‘27 Release, newsroom.
10. Salesforce Brazil, Agentforce: pricing, consulted on October 8, 2026.