Salesforce User License

While making myself prepared for Salesforce Administration Certification (ADM 201), I came to know that Salesforce is having many license types and it makes me confused. So I though of keeping notes of different license types as I study/understand them.

Salesforce’s User Licenses are used to give access to the data. The license type determines which profiles and permission sets are available to the user.

To view a list of active user licenses in your Salesforce org, click Setup | Company Profile | Company Information. You will find something like below –

Below are the Salesforce User Licenses –

Let me put descriptions about few commonly used User Licenses below –

  • Salesforce – It provides full access to standard CRM, custom apps/AppExchange Apps.
  • Salesforce Platform – It provides full access to Custom Apps and core objects (Accounts, Contacts etc.). But it will not provide any access to standard CRM (so no Opportunities, no Forecasting).
  • Force.com – One App – It provided access to one custom app and read only access to core objects(Accounts, Contacts etc.)
  • Knowledge Only User – It provides access to Salesforce Knowledge apps only.
  • Chatter Free – It provides access to Chatter to the people within the organisation without Chatter license. So no additional cost is required.
  • Chatter External – It allows customers to use Chatter group. No additional cost is required.
  • Chatter Only – It provides access to Chatter to the people within the organisation without Chatter license + access to accounts and contacts. Additional cost is involved here.

Note: Click here to understand –

  • Guest User – For each Guest User license, you can develop one public website for your organization using Force.com Sites.  Websites created using Force.com Sites are hosted on saleforce.com’s servers.
  • Authenticated Website – Platform portal users have this license and it allows users unlimited login to the platform portal to access customer support information.
Feature License: 
Feature license allows users to access additional feature(s) which is not included with his/her user license.  
To check what are the feature licenses are available un your Salesforce org, you can click Setup | Company Profile | Company Information. You will find something like below –
In order to enable a feature license for a user, do – 
  • Click on Setup | Manage Users | Users
  • Click on the user name
  • On the User Detail Page, select the checkbox next to the feature license you want to enable for that user.
Hope this will help you to prepare yourself for the certification as well as understand different licenses available in Salesforce. Please provide your comments. Thanks.