Salesforce Sales Cloud is the world's largest CRM by revenue, but ships with zero solar domain modelling. Solar Spine ships the Indian EPC workflow on day one.
In short
Salesforce Sales Cloud is the sales module of Salesforce, the world's largest generic CRM vendor. It positions itself as an AI-native platform through Agentforce, which automates prospecting, pipeline management and forecasting. The platform is built on Flow, a low-code workflow engine, and Apex, which lets implementers write custom code. It is not vertical—there is no solar edition, no rooftop-EPC edition, no net-metering tracking, no PM Surya Ghar subsidy workflow. Every solar-specific feature you see in Solar Spine's checklist exists as a custom build on top of Salesforce's generic opportunity stages, records and fields.
An EPC deploying Salesforce today gets a generic lead, contact, account and opportunity pipeline, configurable dashboards, and a mobile app for field use. But kW capacity is not a native field, DISCOM net-metering is not a stage, and the subsidy and scheme state machine you need is not a decision tree — it is custom Record Types and Flow logic, designed and tested by a partner. Salesforce does not publish a fixed price or timeline for that build; it depends on the partner and the scope you agree with them.
Salesforce's pricing model mismatches the way you run an EPC. Every user, from owner to telecaller to site supervisor, costs ₹2,100 to ₹46,200 a month depending on tier (our conversion of the published USD prices at ₹84/$1). Solar Spine costs ₹10,000 a month flat, per workspace, unlimited users. Log in 20 people and Salesforce runs ₹42,000 to ₹9.2 lakh a month depending on tier; Solar Spine still runs ₹10,000. Salesforce prices in USD on the India domain with no INR option, which points to reverse-charge GST rather than an Indian GST invoice. Solar Spine invoices in rupees.
Where Salesforce wins
- Salesforce has a genuinely deep and broad AI stack. Agentforce SDR and Voice agents, Einstein and Agentforce conversational analytics, and predictive forecasting capabilities go well beyond what a single-vertical CRM's AI surface typically covers. For a company with the budget to invest in Agentforce heavily, the AI depth is substantial.
- The platform's extensibility is broad. Flow (low-code) and Apex (custom code), combined with an AppExchange marketplace of thousands of pre-built apps and integrations, mean almost anything can eventually be built on top, given enough consulting time and budget. Third-party implementers have built solar-specific configurations on Salesforce for teams that can afford the build.
- Salesforce carries heavyweight enterprise trust signals. IDC ranks it the number one CRM provider by revenue for the 12th consecutive year (20.7 per cent global share, 2024 data) and number one in Sales for 13 consecutive years. It is also a Gartner Leader for the 20th year running, publishes 64 plus India case studies with quantified results, maintains physical India offices with published local support lines, and runs a live trust and status portal. If your leadership team values analyst credibility and shared implementation patterns across a thousand companies, Salesforce's footprint matters.
Where Solar Spine wins
- Solar Spine ships the Indian rooftop and C&I EPC workflow on day one: 7 sales stages, 17 project stages, 57 branching checklist items for loan, subsidy and DISCOM paths, and PM Surya Ghar and subsidy tracking. Salesforce makes you specify it. Every day you spend on configuration is a day your sales team is not selling.
- Every user, from owner to director to telecaller to site supervisor, is included in the same ₹10,000-a-month flat price. Log in 5 users or 50 users; the bill stays the same. Salesforce charges each one individually, ₹2,100 to ₹46,200 a month depending on tier. A 20-person team costs ₹42,000 to ₹9.2 lakh a month on Salesforce; it costs ₹10,000 on Solar Spine.
- Money and operations primitives run natively in Solar Spine. An instalment schedule (10/70/20, 20/50/30, whatever you agreed) is not a custom object. It is data. A payment gate that blocks dispatch until 65 per cent is collected is not a Flow to write. It is a setting. A cheque bounce that reopens an instalment is not custom logic. It is a rule. Salesforce has none of this built in.
- Solar Spine invoices you in rupees on Indian GST terms. Salesforce invoices in USD on a reverse-charge basis, meaning you self-assess the GST and file the return yourself. Solar Spine's invoice is a drop into your books; Salesforce's requires your accountant to reframe it.
- You own your data and can export it any time. Solar Spine commits to one-click export in Excel, no lock-in, no API negotiation. Salesforce offers export paths, but a team that has custom fields, custom Record Types and custom Flow logic will find that a Salesforce export is a schema you no longer understand without a partner to decipher it.
Best for
Global enterprises with the budget for a custom Salesforce build and the need to extend beyond sales into other custom workflows.
Not for
A team wanting net-metering, DISCOM stages, PM Surya Ghar tracking or an instalment schedule the day you sign up. Salesforce makes you build it. Solar Spine has it built.
Pricing
Salesforce
Six public Sales Cloud editions, all per-user per-month in USD—no INR option even on the India domain. Free Suite is $0/user/month; Starter Suite is $25/user/month (billed monthly or annually); Pro Suite through Unlimited range ₹8,400–₹29,400/user/month at ₹84/$1 conversion; Agentforce 1 Sales is ₹46,200/user/month (sales-assisted, contact for pricing). The figures below in rupees are our own conversion at ₹84/$1, confirmed from Salesforce's own India pages, not a vendor-published number.
| Tier | ₹ / user / month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free Suite | ₹0 | $0/user/month as shown on salesforce.com/in/products/sales-pricing/. Basic account, contact, lead and opportunity management. |
| Starter Suite | ₹2,100 | $25 USD/user/month (billed monthly or annually on the vendor's own /in/ page). Lead, account, contact and opportunity management, built-in sales flows, lead routing, AI email and event sync. |
| Pro Suite | ₹8,400 | $100 USD/user/month, billed annually, per salesforce.com/in. Adds quoting, forecasting and AgentExchange access. |
| Enterprise | ₹14,700 | $175 USD/user/month, billed annually, per salesforce.com/in. Adds advanced pipeline and deal insights, conversation intelligence and Agentforce. |
| Unlimited | ₹29,400 | $350 USD/user/month, billed annually, per salesforce.com/in. Adds predictive AI, full sandbox and premier success plan. |
| Agentforce 1 Sales | ₹46,200 | $550 USD/user/month, billed annually, per salesforce.com/in. Top tier: unmetered Agentforce usage, Sales Planning, Tableau Next and Slack Enterprise+. Sales-assisted (Contact us). |
Read from https://www.salesforce.com/in/products/sales-pricing/ on 8 September 2026
Solar Spine
Solar Spine price list, the same numbers Razorpay charges
Feature by feature
| Capability | Salesforce | Solar Spine |
|---|---|---|
| Solar-specific | ||
| Solar sales and install stages out of the box | No. Sales Cloud ships generic, fully configurable opportunity stages only; nothing solar-specific exists out of the box. Reaching solar-workflow parity means custom Record Types and Flow logic, built by an admin or partner. | Yes. 7 sales stages and 17 project stages seeded on day one, all editable. |
| Stage checklists that change with loan, subsidy and DISCOM | No. No native concept of a per-stage checklist that branches on loan, subsidy or DISCOM path; would have to be modelled with custom Record Types and Flow by an admin or partner. | Yes. 57 checklist items; loan, subsidy and DISCOM-specific tasks appear only where they apply. |
| DISCOM net-metering steps tracked | No. DISCOM net-metering by name is absent from Sales Cloud and every India-specific Salesforce page checked. Salesforce does sell a separate product, Energy and Utilities Cloud, with generic interconnection and clean-energy-programme tracking — but that is built for utility companies running their own grid-connection pipeline, not solar EPCs selling to homeowners, names no DISCOM or net meter, and is not part of Sales Cloud. | Yes. Net-meter paperwork branches for BRPL, BYPL, TPDDL, PVVNL, NPCL, DHBVN and UHBVN. |
| PM Surya Ghar and subsidy tracking | No. No mention of PM Surya Ghar or any Indian solar subsidy scheme on Salesforce's product, industry or India pages. | Yes. PMSG submission, DCR certificate, GBI and central subsidy redemption as dated tasks. |
| kW as a native field with kW reporting | No. No native kW capacity field or kW-based reporting; would be a custom number field with no built-in rollups, dashboards or forecasting tied to it. | Yes. Every deal and project carries capacity; dashboards and targets report in kW. |
| Roof design, shading and proposal generation | No. No native roof-design, shading or proposal generator. Third-party AppExchange integrations such as Aurora Solar are commonly bolted on by solar implementers, but these are separate paid products requiring integration work, not a Sales Cloud feature. | No. Solar Spine does not do roof design. Use a design tool and track the job here. |
| Execution | ||
| Tasks written automatically with due dates when a stage opens | Yes. Flow Builder can create tasks with due dates when a record enters a stage. This is a general admin-configured platform capability, not a solar-specific or pre-built feature. | Yes. Nobody types the checklist; each task carries the date it was given when the stage opened. |
| Overdue work escalates up the org chart on its own | Partly. Salesforce has native Escalation Rules, but they are a Case/Service-Cloud feature for support tickets; an equivalent for overdue sales tasks escalating up a reporting hierarchy is not a documented out-of-the-box Sales Cloud feature and would need custom Flow and org-hierarchy logic. | Yes. Every night a late task climbs one rung and keeps climbing until someone acts. |
| A stage cannot be advanced with open checklist items | Partly. Validation Rules and the Path component are a standard Salesforce admin pattern for gating stage changes on field completeness, but there is no native checklist object; it has to be modelled with custom fields. | Yes. The advance button is unavailable until the stage's items are closed. |
| Documents verified by ops before work proceeds | Partly. Standard Salesforce Approval Processes do not have a built-in feature to require an attached document before a request can proceed; gating logic must be custom-built in Flow, not out-of-the-box. | Yes. A document is done when ops marks it correct; a rejection goes back to the person who photographed it. |
| A different first screen per role | Yes. Lightning App Builder natively supports assigning different Home pages per user profile, so owner, ops, sales and other roles can land on different first screens. This is a well-documented, standard Salesforce platform capability (requires admin configuration, not pre-built per role out of the box). | Yes. Nine roles, nine first screens, from telecaller to director. |
| Field use on a phone: photos, tasks, call outcomes | Yes. Salesforce mobile app gives real-time CRM access, on-device dictation and Agentforce integration; a separate Field Service mobile app supports site work, task completion and photo capture for field technicians. | Yes. Every screen works on a phone; documents are photographed at the customer's house. |
| Money | ||
| Instalment schedule per project | No. No native concept of a project instalment schedule such as 10/70/20; billing and invoicing is a separate paid product (Salesforce Billing and CPQ), not part of Sales Cloud, and has no EPC-style instalment modelling either. | Yes. 10/70/20 or whatever you agreed, with due dates and outstanding balance visible to all. |
| Material cannot dispatch until payment is collected | No. No native mechanism to block a fulfilment or dispatch step until a share of payment is collected; would require custom Flow tied to a billing integration. | Yes. Thresholds per stage, set by the workspace; the default is the one the first customer ran. |
| Daily overdue payment alerts to owner and manager | No. No native payment-overdue concept in Sales Cloud itself; generic overdue-task reminders exist via Flow but nothing purpose-built for payment collection. | Yes. 7 am every day, to the person who owns the collection and their manager. |
| A bounced cheque reopens the instalment | No. Cheque-bounce-reopens-instalment is an India-banking-specific primitive absent from a generic global CRM; not found on any Salesforce page checked. | Yes. Yes |
| GST invoices and quotes from the same record | No. No native GST-compliant invoice or quote tied to the CRM record inside Sales Cloud; that requires the separate Salesforce Billing product, CPQ, or a third-party AppExchange or accounting integration. | Yes. Invoice creation is a stage in the pipeline; the subscription itself is GST-invoiced too. |
| Leads and calling | ||
| Meta lead ads land in the system within minutes | Yes. Salesforce's free, native Lead Capture app syncs Meta and Facebook Lead Ads instant-form submissions into Sales Cloud Leads in real time at no cost, per Salesforce and Meta's own integration documentation. | Yes. Ad leads arrive marked hot at the top of the calling queue inside five minutes. |
| PIN-code check on incoming leads | No. No PIN-code serviceability check on incoming leads found anywhere; this is an India-solar-specific concept absent from a generic global CRM. | Yes. Leads outside the PIN codes you serve are kept out of the AI caller's queue. |
| AI caller that qualifies leads and books visits | Partly. Agentforce SDR and Agentforce Voice can autonomously qualify leads and book meetings, with some outbound voice automation capability—but it is a general B2B SDR or BDR product (not solar- or India-telecalling specific), available only on Enterprise or higher editions with Einstein for Sales, and priced on top via consumption-based Flex Credits, not included in Starter or Pro Suite. | Yes. Optional. Calls 9 am to 9 pm IST, books the visit on a named salesperson's day, hands off with notes. |
| Built-in telecalling queue with daily batches and outcomes | Yes. Sales Engagement (formerly High Velocity Sales) provides Sales Cadences and a prioritised Work Queue of calls, emails and tasks, functionally a telecalling queue with daily batches and logged call outcomes. It is part of the paid Sales Engagement add-on, not a base-tier feature. | Yes. Queues built and ordered before the caller sits down; one outcome vocabulary for humans and the AI. |
| Lead outcomes written back to Meta | Yes. Salesforce's Meta Conversion Leads integration sends lead lifecycle status (qualified, won, junk) from Salesforce back to Meta to optimise ad delivery—a bidirectional write-back, confirmed via Meta's own Salesforce integration help page. | Yes. Qualified, converted and disqualified statuses flow back through the lead sheet into Meta's Conversions API, so the account optimises for buyers, not form-fillers. |
| WhatsApp messaging and automation | Partly. Unified Conversations for WhatsApp is generally available and lets Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud share a WhatsApp thread with a shared customer profile—a real, native capability, but it sits in Service Cloud or Marketing Cloud (separate paid products or add-ons), not the core Sales Cloud SKU being evaluated here. | Partly. Click-to-chat and logged WhatsApp interactions. No automated messaging. |
| Reporting | ||
| Owner dashboard: kW against target, cash due, stuck projects | Partly. Salesforce's dashboard builder is fully generic and could be configured to show kW versus target or cash due if those fields existed—but neither kW capacity nor cash-due or payment concepts are native to Sales Cloud, so nothing solar or EPC-relevant is pre-built; it would all be custom. | Yes. Yes |
| Per-person monthly targets and attainment | Yes. Sales Cloud has native Forecasting with per-rep Quotas and attainment tracking against those quotas—a standard, long-standing Salesforce feature (generic revenue targets, not solar-specific). | Yes. Yes |
| Ask the business a question in plain English | Yes. Agentforce and Einstein Conversational Analytics let users type plain-English questions and get answers as charts from live data. This capability sits on top of Enterprise and higher editions and Tableau Next or Agentforce add-ons, not included in the base tiers. | Yes. Director and GM only. Finding, evidence, table, caveat, next step, from live data. |
| One-click export of everything | Yes. Native Data Export Service (scheduled weekly or monthly export of the whole org to zipped per-object CSV files), Data Loader (scriptable SOQL-driven CSV export and import), and Bulk API v2 for large-scale programmatic export are all standard, well-documented Salesforce data-export paths. | Yes. Excel export any time. No lock-in. |
| Data | ||
| Data hosted in India | Partly. Salesforce has offered India as a Hyperforce data-residency region since 2020, and in May 2026 extended MuleSoft-on-Hyperforce to India for local integration data residency—but this is opt-in at provisioning for enterprise contracts, not a stated default for self-serve Starter or Pro Suite signups. Salesforce's own India pricing page still bills in USD via a Singapore entity, suggesting the org itself is not automatically India-hosted for smaller customers. | Yes. Postgres in Mumbai (ap-south-1); documents in a private store. |
| Tenant isolation at the database level | Yes. Salesforce's multi-tenant org architecture is a well-documented, mature model for per-customer data isolation, though implemented as metadata-driven logical separation within a shared platform rather than a literal separate database per tenant (as Solar Spine's Postgres RLS-per-tenant approach is). | Yes. Row-level security fences every workspace; identity documents are visible only to the project chain. |
| Pricing and support | ||
| Pricing model | No. Strictly per-user-per-month across every tier ($0 to $550/user/month). No flat per-company or per-project plan, and no unlimited-users option at any published price point—the opposite of Solar Spine's flat ₹10,000 per workspace per month, unlimited-users model. | Yes. Flat per company: ₹10,000 a month or ₹99,999 a year plus GST. Unlimited users. |
| Prices published in INR | No. Even on the India-specific /in/ domain, Sales Cloud prices are shown only in USD, with a currency toggle for AUD, GBP, EUR, JPY and SEK—INR is not one of the offered currencies, confirmed directly on Salesforce's own pricing page. | Yes. Yes |
| Free trial without a card | Yes. 30-day free trials are offered for Starter Suite, Pro Suite, Enterprise and Unlimited via Try for free buttons; third-party and Salesforce-adjacent sources confirm no credit card is required to start the standard CRM trial. | Yes. 30 days, no card, no call. |
| Setup or onboarding fee | No. No setup or onboarding fee is published on Salesforce's own pricing pages (a Standard Success Plan is included in every licence), but that plan does not cover the custom build a solar workflow needs. That cost sits with whichever partner you hire and is not published anywhere we could check. | Yes. None. Send the filled setup form and the workspace configures itself. |
| India-based support in IST | Yes. Salesforce has physical India offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad with published local support phone numbers (toll-free 1800-420-7332 and direct Hyderabad lines)—India-based, IST-hours support presence. | Yes. Email, replies within one business day, from Mumbai. |
Switching from Salesforce
- Export your Salesforce data using the native Data Loader or Data Export Service. Request a CSV export of Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities—the four core objects that carry customer and deal state.
- Map Salesforce's generic Opportunity StageName values onto Solar Spine's pre-built solar stages. Salesforce has one pipeline (opportunity stages); Solar Spine has two (sales stages and project stages). Document which Salesforce stage corresponds to which Solar Spine stage (e.g. Prospecting to Lead Qualified).
- Re-key any custom fields you tracked in Salesforce into Solar Spine's native solar and money fields. If you tracked kW capacity, loan type or subsidy scheme as Salesforce custom fields, key them into Solar Spine's native capacity, loan and subsidy dropdowns. Most of what took a Salesforce partner months of custom object and Flow work becomes configuration rather than development.
- Re-point outbound integrations. If you have Meta Lead Ads feeding into Salesforce's Lead Capture app and writing qualified leads back to Meta's Conversions API, point those integrations at Solar Spine's built-in Meta intake and write-back instead.
- Import your customer and deal data into Solar Spine using the CSV upload path (calling queue for leads, customer import for accounts). Solar Spine's import path is built for teams that move fast; you can be live in an afternoon.
Questions people ask
Can I use Salesforce and Solar Spine at the same time?
Yes. Some teams run Salesforce for legacy enterprise reporting and Solar Spine for the day-to-day EPC workflow. Solar Spine can read from a Salesforce export and land your customer and deal state into both systems. However, keeping two systems in sync requires discipline; most teams that try this end up abandoning one.
Which is cheaper for a 12-person team?
Solar Spine costs ₹10,000 a month, unlimited users. Salesforce's Starter Suite costs ₹2,100 per user per month; 12 users cost ₹25,200 a month, or ₹3,02,400 a year — roughly 2.5 times Solar Spine's price, and the gap widens as you add people. Starter Suite makes sense for a 12-person team only if you value Salesforce's broader AI stack and extensibility over the solar-specific workflow Solar Spine ships on day one.
Does Salesforce have an integration with Solar Spine?
Not today. You export from Salesforce and import into Solar Spine. If you need a live two-way sync between the two systems, you would build it with a third-party iPaaS like Zapier or Make, which adds cost and maintenance burden.
Where is my data hosted?
Salesforce's India offerings sit in a Hyperforce region (India opt-in for enterprise contracts) or a shared global region billed via Singapore (the default for self-serve Starter and Pro Suite signups). Solar Spine's data lives in Postgres in Mumbai (ap-south-1), with row-level security fences per workspace, so each team's data is visible only to that team.
Does Salesforce have roof design or shading analysis?
No. Salesforce sells no design tool. Third-party AppExchange apps like Aurora Solar can be bolted on at extra cost and integration work. Solar Spine also does not do design; it assumes you use a specialist design tool (Aurora, OpenSolar, Arka 360 or your own) and tracks the project here. Design and CRM are separate problems.
If I move to Solar Spine, what happens to my Salesforce data?
It stays in Salesforce. Export your Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities as CSV from Salesforce; import them into Solar Spine's customer and calling-queue uploads. Salesforce's custom fields (kW, loan status, subsidy stage) do not carry over automatically—you key them into Solar Spine's native solar and money fields as you import. Most customers find the move takes an afternoon to a day.
Other comparisons
Run one real project through it this month. You will know by the end of it.
30 days free, no card, no call. Then ₹10,000 a month for the whole company, however many people you put on it.