Software is changing. Your Salesforce bill only goes up.
AI has called the per-user pricing model into question. The big vendors know it, and they are raising prices elsewhere. Meanwhile, building your own CRM has never been faster. It is a good time to run the numbers.
In 30 seconds
If AI agents do part of the work, companies need fewer licenses. The per-user business model is at risk.
Salesforce is responding by raising prices, bundling AI into pricier editions and charging for consumption.
Most companies pay for far more than they use, and the cost grows with every renewal.
Switching CRMs is a big decision, but today it takes weeks and sales never stop.
With AI, writing software is no longer the hard part. The hard part is knowing exactly what to build. That is where our experience comes in.
AI has made enterprise software nervous
For twenty years, the enterprise software business has been simple: charge a license for every person who uses it, every month, forever. More employees, more revenue.
AI breaks that logic. If an agent writes the emails, updates the opportunities and prepares the reports, a company needs fewer people in front of the tool. Fewer people means fewer licenses. Investors have figured this out, and so have the vendors.
The answer has not been lower prices. It has been finding revenue elsewhere: new editions with AI built in and a higher price tag, consumption credits, add-ons and increases at every renewal.
What has already happened with Salesforce.
This is not a prediction. These changes are already in the contracts.
Dec 31, 2025
End of support for Workflow Rules and Process Builder
The old automations lose support. Many orgs have to rebuild them in Flow, paying for partner hours just to stay where they were.
Sep 3, 2026
Core, Advanced and Max join the price list
Salesforce launches three new editions with Agentforce included: €195, €395 and €550 per user per month at list price. Enterprise and Unlimited no longer appear on its pricing page. Core costs 11% more than Enterprise at $175.
Every month
AI is paid by consumption
Agentforce runs on Flex Credits: each action uses 20 credits and 100,000 credits cost €500. The new editions include a yearly pool per org. What you don't use expires, and what you use beyond it is billed monthly. A new cost that is hard to forecast.
Your renewal
The increase arrives with the Order Form
If you don't give notice within the period set in your contract, it renews automatically, at whatever price is agreed at that point. In August 2025 Salesforce raised Enterprise and Unlimited list prices by 6% on average. And the next notice window is a year away.
You pay for a platform built for every company in the world. Your team uses a small part of it.
You pay for a lot you do not use
In the orgs we audit, the day-to-day work fits into accounts, contacts, opportunities, activities, a few custom objects and a handful of automations. A typical org has 42 custom objects and uses 9. It has 87 active Flows and 14 do something useful.
But the bill does not care. You pay for every license, including the one for the person who logs in once a month to look at a dashboard. You pay for every cloud and every add-on bought at some renewal and still never used.
It is not one line on the bill. It is five, all growing at once.
01
Per-user licenses
Every new hire is one more license. The ones who leave do not always get removed.
02
Clouds and add-ons
CPQ, portals, marketing, AI. Every new need is a new product with its own price.
03
Partner and admin
Every change goes through someone certified. A new field can mean a quote and three weeks.
04
Consumption
AI credits, storage and API calls. You pay extra once you go over the limit.
05
Renewals
All of the above, with an increase, every year. What is expensive today will be more expensive in three years.
Switching is scary. It is easier than it looks.
Leaving Salesforce is a big decision, and it is normal to be wary. It holds your customers, your history and the way your team works. That is why so many companies keep putting it off, renewal after renewal.
The reality is that today it takes weeks, not months, and sales never stop. We audit your org, build the new CRM in parallel, migrate your data with its full history and validate it with your team before switching anything off. Salesforce keeps running until the last day.
What has really changed: building is no longer the hard part.
AI has made writing software much faster. That has moved the value somewhere else: knowing exactly what needs to be built, and how to move from one system to another without breaking anything.
Before
Building was the expensive part
A custom CRM meant six months of development, a large team and a fragile result. Recommending Salesforce was the sensible choice.
Now
Understanding is what makes the difference
The code takes days. What decides whether the project succeeds is knowing your case inside out: what your team uses, what is surplus, how your data is modeled and what cannot be lost along the way.
What AI does not know about your company
Which parts of your org are in use and which are leftovers from projects five years ago.
How your data fits together: accounts, opportunities, quotes, orders and their full history.
Who can see what, and why that visibility rule exists.
Which automations keep the day-to-day running and which need to be redesigned.
How to migrate without losing a single record while the team keeps selling.
You do not learn this from a prompt. You learn it after years inside real Salesforce orgs. That is what we bring to the table on every project.
Why this year and not next.
Every year that goes by, the bill gets higher and the org gets harder to move.
The new editions cost more than the old ones, and Salesforce hasn't said how long you'll be able to renew on Enterprise or Unlimited. Ask in writing before your notice deadline.
If you still have Workflow Rules or Process Builder, you will pay to rebuild them anyway. Better to do it once, in something you own.
A project takes 5 to 8 weeks. If you start three months before your notice deadline, you have time to spare.
With a one-time payment, what you stop paying in licenses is savings from year one.
Frequently asked questions
Pricing, editions and risk, in short.
Why is Salesforce raising its prices?
Because AI threatens the per-user pricing model: if agents do part of the work, fewer licenses are needed. Salesforce is making up for it with new, more expensive editions (Core, Advanced and Max), consumption credits for AI and increases at renewal.
What are Salesforce Core, Advanced and Max?
They are the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud editions Salesforce announced on 3 September 2026. They cost €195, €395 and €550 per user per month at list price, billed annually, and include Agentforce, Slack and a yearly pool of Flex Credits per org (500,000, 1 million and 2.75 million). Enterprise and Unlimited are no longer on the price list, although Salesforce keeps the price for existing customers. Core costs 11% more than Enterprise.
Does the end of Workflow Rules and Process Builder affect me?
If your org still uses them, yes. Support ended on 31 December 2025: they keep running, but Salesforce no longer fixes their bugs, so moving them to Flow is advisable. It's partner work you pay for to stay where you are, which makes it a good moment to decide whether to rebuild it in Salesforce or in a CRM you own.
Is it risky to leave Salesforce?
The risk lies in doing it in a rush or without knowing the org. With an upfront audit, the new CRM built in parallel and a migration validated object by object, the risk is low: Salesforce keeps running until your team signs off.
With AI, can't anyone build a CRM?
AI writes code fast, but it does not know what to build or how to migrate years of data without breaking relationships, permissions or automations. A CRM holds up a company's sales and customer data. What makes the difference is experience with the use case and with Salesforce, and that is what 2Q Technologies brings.