It has always had a reputation for being a solution more focused on the enterprise segment, leaving the CRM market for small and medium-sized companies to smaller players. However, taking advantage of the wave of artificial intelligence, Marc Benioff’s company wants to change this vision and is placing its latest star – Agentforce – to boost this plan.
In an unprecedented measure in its history, the multinational integrated Agentforce resources into its Free, Starter and Pro plans, all of which are focused on small and medium-sized clients. According to the company, with the new feature, companies can access contextualization resources, process monitoring and action automation through agents. In the Starter and Pro versions, the so-called “Employee Agent” is available.
According to Salesforce, the new features arrive without interfering with the company’s billing model, but, as expected, they come with their limitations. For example, agents cannot be customized and, according to General Manager for SMEs, Eddie Cliff, this decision is deliberate.
According to Vernon Keenan, one of the most recognized analysts in the Salesforce universe, the decision by Marc Benioff’s company brings a different view on the adoption of AI in small companies. By not placing a price barrier in the AI adoption process, the company’s plan is to increase its Agentforce user base, enabling these businesses to experiment with the technology and betting on revenue later, with the increase in demand for AI resources.
“AI does not behave like a feature that can be monetized incrementally. It behaves like a layer of capability. The moment a user needs to think about cost, they hesitate — and hesitation is fatal to learning. If you want a native AI user base, you can’t charge for the front door,” said Vernon, in his blog.
This change is not happening in isolation. HubSpot, Zoho and a growing group of CRM startups are not treating AI as an add-on, but rather as something integrated into the core product. Salesforce’s move with its SMB suites is a defensive response to this shift in expectations.
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Small and medium-sized businesses have become an important focus of Salesforce in recent years. In 2023, the company changed its strategy, retiring the Essentials version to create the Free and Starter tiers (which replaced Essentials). Above that, it created a third layer, Pro, aimed at growing companies.
Despite not disclosing specific growth figures for suites for SMEs, the company recorded a 10% increase in its revenue in 2025 (US$41.5 billion) — and Agentforce was one of the drivers of this growth, earning US$800 million.
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