This blog post was originally published on Dec 15. 2017 and was updated on Jan 14, 2020.

Congratulations! You’ve decided to implement Salesforce. We understand that the process can be a bit overwhelming. As Salesforce Consultants one of the questions that we get all the time is: “Does my company need the Enterprise Edition or will Professional Edition be enough?” 

Here are the key differences to consider between Salesforce Professional Edition vs Enterprise Edition. 

Salesforce Professional Edition vs Enterprise Edition (PE vs EE) – The Key Differences

Workflows

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Can send outbound messages as well as automate email alerts, tasks, and field updates based on your organization’s processes

Process Builder

• PE: Limited – Allows up to 5 total processes, whether active or inactive
• EE: Helps easily automate business processes by providing a powerful and user-friendly visual representation of your process as you build it

Visual Flow

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: (Unlike process builder or workflows) Allows the capability of iterating through records and the ability to create an interactive user interface that lets you automate business processes by building flows and distributing them to the right users or systems without the need to write code

Approval Process

• PE: Unavailable 
• EE: An automated process to approve records in Salesforce

Apex Code Development

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Allows developers to write custom Apex code to further customize and build on top of their existing Salesforce instance, including the ability to develop custom applications and integrate external applications

API

• PE: Unavailable unless purchased separately for additional cost
• EE: Integrate with third-party applications and communicate data with API, like Data Loader (as mentioned below), which is our personal favorite 

Data Loader (API)

• PE: Unavailable – Alternative is Import Data Wizard, and is limited to Accounts, Contacts, Leads and Solutions; Dataloader.io is also an alternative, and limits exports to 1,000 records
• EE: Insert, update, upsert, delete, or export Salesforce records

Partial Copy Sandbox

• PE: Unavailable 
• EE: Can be used for quality assurance tasks, such as user acceptance testing, integration testing, and training

Developer Sandboxes

• PE: Limited to 10 Developer sandboxes
• EE: Includes up to 25 Developer sandboxes – a copy of your production org’s configuration used for development and testing in an isolated environment 

Log in As

• PE: Unavailable 
• EE: System Administrators can log in as any user in their organization allowing them to troubleshoot issues or test new functionality without asking internal end-users to grant login access

Custom Profiles

• PE: Up to 2 custom profiles, which results in a lot of standard profiles that cannot be edited 
• EE: Up to 1,500 custom profiles

Permission Sets

• PE: Up to 10 Permission Sets
• EE: Up to 1,000 Permission Sets, which allows for more granular control of data amongst users

List Views

• PE: Views limited to “All” or “Just me”
• EE: Create custom list views, such as “Visible to certain groups of users”, “All”, or “Just me”

Service Cloud Console

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Designed for a fast-moving support environment, useful when working on multiple cases; Find and update records on one page, view cases and their related account and contact records in a single tab, and even change your page view to fit your needs – For example, the split view lets you see your full list of cases on the left side of the screen as well as the case record you’re currently working on

Live Chat

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Use web-based chat to offer real-time support to customers; Quickly connect customers to agents by adding chat buttons on your web pages and sending automatic chat invitations to customers as they look through your website

Salesforce Knowledge

• PE: Unavailable
• EE:  Your Salesforce knowledge base is built from knowledge articles, which are documents of information; Articles can include information on the process, FAQs, and more

Salesforce Communities

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Communities is a portal for self-service for partners, distributors, and customers to connect them to everything they need, including account information, help articles and FAQs, and even live Service agents.

Custom Objects 

• PE: No more than 100 custom fields allowed
• EE: Up to 500 custom fields can be created per custom object, which allows you to store more information that’s unique to your organization

Record Types

• PE: Limited to only three
• EE: Record types allow you to define different sets of picklist values for both standard and custom picklists

Opportunity Teams

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Allow collaboration of Salesforce users, and in turn Opportunity Splits can be enabled, to share revenue and forecasts amongst the team on a sales opportunity

Territory Management 

• PE: Unavailable 
• EE: An account sharing system that grants access to accounts based on the characteristics of the accounts

Account Assignment Rules

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Automatically move accounts and their associated opportunities and cases into territories based on criteria that you set

Validation Rules

• PE: 20 validation rules
• EE: 100 validation rules

Custom Report Types

• PE: Limited to 50 custom report types
• EE: Up to 200 custom report types

Joined Reports

• PE: Unavailable 
• EE: Create and view different types of information in a single report while using multiple report types

Report Formulas

• PE: Limits to 5 report formulas 
• EE: Unlimited formulas that let you create custom summaries based on calculated values using report data 

Cross-object Filters on Reports

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Use cross-object filters to refine data (i.e. Accounts without Opportunities) 

Report Bucket Fields

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Report bucket fields allow a company to categorize many things (i.e. multiple opportunity values into buckets of Small, Medium, or Large)

Dynamic Dashboards

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Create dynamic dashboards which display information specific to the user

Scheduled Dashboards

• PE: Unavailable
• EE: Schedule dashboards to automatically refresh on a day and time that you set (i.e. daily, monthly, weekly) and receive these dashboard results via email

Marketing Email Blasts

• PE: Limited to 250 emails at a time
• EE: Send up to 500 emails in a single email blast

We also created this handy chart for your reference and to share with your team members when making a decision between Salesforce Professional Edition vs Enterprise Edition:

That’s it – the key differences between Salesforce Professional Edition vs Salesforce Enterprise Edition. If you are still feeling confused or would like to talk to someone who enjoys spending way too much time in Salesforce, contact us. We’d love to answer all of your questions about anything Salesforce.