No, you’re not in a time loop; Salesforce has increased its prices again.
Salesforce has justified increasing its bills by an average of six percent due to “increasing integrations with AI.”
The increased rates apply to both the Enterprise and Unlimited SKUs of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Field Service, and “select Industries Clouds.” They will come into force on 01 August 2025.
However, for now, Salesforce Starter, Pro, and Foundations editions avoid the increase.
Two Price Hikes in as Many Years
So, are these rates truly justified? Well, according to its researchers, perhaps not.
Salesforce AI Research has unveiled CRMArena-Pro, a benchmark for evaluating LLM agent performance in various CRM scenarios using synthetic enterprise data.
Findings show that LLM agents complete 58 percent of single-step tasks, while effectiveness declines to 35 percent for functions requiring multiple interactions.
In July 2023, Salesforce increased prices for the first time in seven years.
The solutions included its Service, Sales, and Marketing Cloud platforms, alongside Tableau and Industries.
This time, the total average price across these products was nine percent.
What the Industry Has to Say
While some in the sector understand that price rises were inevitable after years of R&D development without price rises, others are still concerned about the knock-on implications.
Take James Kelley, Manager of Client Services at Pedowitz Group, who argued that “an increase in pricing is going to push some to migrate.”
“I doubt 70% percent of their client base is ready to implement AI, whether due to security concerns, data completeness or accuracy, processed documentation to drive AI, or several other aspects that need to enable AI within the business,” he added.
George Rumbold of Synapri also took to LinkedIn to share his thoughts:
“The driver behind the hike? A new wave of AI features under the banner of Agentforce—replacing Einstein with promises of generative AI, pre-built templates, and tighter Slack integration.”
It all sounds great on paper, but Salesforce’s own research just revealed that their AI agents only get 58% of simple tasks right—and just 35% when things get more complex. So prices are going up… but the AI still has a way to go.
Much of this commentary from the original price hike still rings true, and there is sure to be more industry reaction over the coming weeks.
