Salesforce’s SMB strategy has evolved steadily over the past three years. The company’s 2025 announcements, including enhancements to Starter Suite and Pro Suite, and the introduction of  Free Suite are the latest stages in a multi-year effort to simplify adoption, embed AI into daily workflows, and create a clearer on-ramp for small and medium businesses (SMBs) into the broader Salesforce ecosystem.

At the same time, as Salesforce positions itself for an AI-driven future with Agentforce and Slack serving as an “agentic operating system,” the company is also planning for its SMB products to evolve in parallel. The long-term goal is to make CRM easier to adopt, use, and scale, with AI increasingly woven into the experience.

Salesforce’s Simplification Journey for SMBs

In August 2023, Salesforce introduced Starter Suite as a successor to Salesforce Essentials (which launched in 2018 as its product for small businesses). Its goal was to reduce barriers to adoption by addressing persistent SMB pain points, including complexity, unclear pricing, slow time-to-value, and fragmented tools.

With that in mind, Salesforce launched Starter Suite with:

  • Guided onboarding and a modern UI
  • Unified sales, service, and marketing tools
  • Clear, predictable pricing
  • Built-in AI with Einstein Activity Capture and basic predictive insights
  • Immediate usability

2024: Starter Expands and Pro Suite Arrives

In 2024, Salesforce expanded Starter’s capabilities to improve usability while broadening functionality with enhancements that included:

  • Deeper marketing capabilities (advanced segmentation, templates, send-time optimization)
  • Commerce features like “Pay Now” links and simple storefronts
  • Improved service workflows
  • Extended configuration controls for more nuanced SMB processes

Salesforce also launched Pro Suite to help small businesses bridge the price and complexity gap between basic CRM and enterprise-grade solutions. While the original Starter Suite made CRM simpler and more affordable, SMBs on a high-growth trajectory would often outgrow its limits.

Pro Suite addresses the gap for businesses outgrowing basic CRM but not yet ready for Enterprise editions. It delivers more automation, smarter AI insights, and deeper integrations, giving SMBs the added capabilities necessary to scale without having to jump to full-blown enterprise products before they’re ready.

With Pro Suite, Salesforce offers SMBs a continuous path from entry-level CRM to more advanced solutions, helping it to fend off competitors like HubSpot and Zoho.

2025: Starter and Pro Suites Today

Within the past year, Salesforce has taken further steps to connect its SMB offerings more closely to its core strategic pillars: intelligence, integration, and scale. Some new capabilities introduced in 2025 include:

  • Tighter Slack integration for conversational CRM workflows via Salesforce Channels: Users get a free, connected Slack workspace by default when they sign up. They can update deals, log interactions, and receive automated notifications directly in Slack, keeping everyone aligned and responsive without leaving their chat workspace. Collaboration across sales, marketing, and support becomes faster and more seamless.
  • AI-powered spotlight recommendations: AI-driven recommendations guide users on next-best actions, task automation, and workflow orchestration, helping to save time, reduce errors, and boost productivity.
  • Expanded Data Cloud connectivity for unified customer profiles: All customer data, from interactions to purchases, is centralized, enabling personalized engagement, smarter analytics, and faster, more accurate campaign execution.

Starter Suite vs. Pro Suite: Evolution and Comparison

In November, Salesforce also introduced Free Suite to provide up to two users a no-cost option to start using Salesforce—and a seamless route to Salesforce’s paid offerings when needed. The move also responds to competitors, who have long offered free tiers to attract SMBs. 

Why This Evolution Matters

Salesforce’s SMB strategy reflects a deliberate, multi-year refinement of its Starter and Starter Pro suites:

  • Incremental capabilities that prioritize usability. Each iteration adds advanced capabilities while maintaining the simplicity that attracts small teams.
  • Modern architecture and unified data:  AI and Data Cloud enhancements are embedded into the platform to deliver unified customer profiles, enabling actionable insights and smarter decision-making.
  • Solving the “outgrow and migrate” challenge: Starter and Pro Suite provide a natural growth path, allowing SMBs to expand functionality on the same platform instead of switching vendors.
  • A full-lifecycle ecosystem for SMBs: Salesforce now supports businesses at every stage, from Starter Suite to Pro Suite, then Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1 Editions. This approach creates continuity, reduces friction, and increases long-term platform stickiness.

As a result, SMBs can now adopt CRM capabilities at their own pace with minimal disruptions.

Looking ahead, Salesforce has also set the stage to selectively introduce additional agentic AI and Slack capabilities into Starter and Pro Suites in 2026. For instance, Salesforce may add more automations, increase predictive guidance capabilities, and/or provide more comprehensive Slack integration.

Perspective

Salesforce’s SMB strategy has become clearer and more cohesive over the past three years, and the evolution of Starter and      Pro reflects that maturity. The company has made significant progress in simplifying onboarding, modernizing the UI, clarifying pricing, and embedding more AI into everyday workflows.

Starter now offers a credible, easy-to-adopt entry point for small businesses, while      Pro fills a long-standing gap for growing SMBs that need more automation, customization, and data unification but are not yet ready for enterprise editions. Combined with tighter Slack and Agentforce integration, these moves indicate Salesforce’s commitment to providing smaller companies with the innovative technologies and tools they need to compete more effectively.

At the same time, Salesforce’s SMB strategy still faces challenges. Even with simplification efforts, Salesforce remains more complex than some competitors, particularly for teams without admin resources or prior CRM experience.  As Salesforce continues to add new capabilities to its SMB products, it also faces the age-old dilemma common in this market—balancing the need for new functionality against simplicity. Pricing also puts Salesforce at a premium compared to some other SMB-focused vendors, especially Zoho CRM. And while most SMBs want to take advantage of AI, many still need stronger guidance, guardrails, and packaged value to realize the benefits.

Still, Salesforce’s direction is strong. By continuing to balance usability with powerful AI-driven capabilities, the company can strengthen its foothold in the highly competitive SMB market. If Salesforce continues to pace innovation thoughtfully and match product enhancements with real-world SMB needs, Starter and Pro Suites will offer an increasingly compelling path for small businesses looking to grow on a platform built for the long term.

© SMB Group 2025