Flexible development platform on the cloud

The Product is very powerful. It provides flexibility to build almost any kind of applications. Business users can build useful apps without taking help from developers. Extensive set of resources are available to build expertise on the platform. Also customers/partners are always available to answer to queries.

Pros

Force.com platform (Lightning) is very powerful development platform on the browser. It can be used to build applications for any industry. The pricing is on per user per month basis. Many tools like Validation rules, Workflows, process builder are available for business users. These tools allow business users to build apps on the platform with fairly complex logic. For additional functionality, developers are needed. Developers can build more advanced features using Apex, Visualforce and Lightning Communities. Trailhead and developer account are free resources available to build expertise on the product. Excellent community of customers/partners is available to support queries.

Cons

Like any complex software there is a steep learning curve. Hiring developers in the US on the platform can be expensive. The license pricing may also be expensive for small businesses.

Everything in one place

Before lightning, we had 2 software, one for chat and email, another one where we create the cases and logs, now everything is in one place.

Pros

Email, chat and logs platform in one place, you can chat with your customer, sent emails and reply, attach files in the logs (cases), this software have embedded the ScreenMeet software and works great, you can have remote connection.

Cons

In the start some bugs and errors, they were fixed couple months after. Chat: no timer added yet, you don't know how long is the current chat. If you have 2 chats, they are open in 2 tabs, if one customer close the chat, you don't know it until open the tab, should be great if there is an alarm or sound.

Powerful Once You Learn How to Use It (But Expensive)

Pros

Salesforce is the backbone of our company. It is tied into everything and used by every team. It is incredibly customizable and it seems they have a way to do almost anything you need. We use it for Sales, Support, Marketing, and product feature usage. We have it hooked into other apps and other saas products. This is the product that will scale with your business and can support a company at any stage of growth. There are a ton of integrations out of the box (on their salesforce exchange) and their APIs allow savvy developers to build custom integrations that aren't available.

Cons

When the company initially implemented it, they tried to "wing it" and it was a complete mess. You really need someone who knows what they are doing to setup, administer, and maintain the software. It is also expensive. We got grandfathered into some great pricing, but if we weren't, we're not sure we would be able to continue to use SFDC as we grow. SFDC also loves to gobble up other apps and brand them with the SFDC name. So they have become a jack of all trades - however, some of the things you can't do are surprising (just go check out their community page for all of the list of enhancements that haven't been implemented). For example, we use cases for our help desk, but there is a lot of functionality missing compared to a best in breed help desk software like ZenDesk. Support is terrible here by the way. They really push you toward self-service or community based service. You're lucky if you ever get a response.

Great platform for managing your business and a fantastic UI upgrade from Classic

Lightning is definitely the future of Salesforce and the vast majority of their new features and resources seem to be going towards Lightning. If you have not yet made the switch from Classic to Lightning, I would recommend doing it soon. And if you are getting into Salesforce for the first time, start with Lightning so you don't have to switch later.

Pros

A lot more user friendly and a much better UI than Salesforce Classic. It came out with a lot less features than classic, but in the past few months and years they have dedicated a lot of resources to improving Lightning to not only compare to Classic, but I think it now has even more features.

Cons

There is a learning curve to getting Lightning up and running. I would definitely recommend spending some time in the SF trailheads to get the ins and outs of Lightning before you switch from classic or sign up to start.

Lightning Platform for Software Developers

I have found this software to be fun to work with. It takes a different approach than anything else that I've worked with previously, so it keeps you engaged and entertained. I would highly recommend learning this software to other developers wanting to work with enterprise customers.

Pros

Lots of resources to help you get started with this platform. All of the prebuilt components are documented well in the Salesforce documentation, and it is extremely easy to get started with developing. Trailhead is extremely helpful in introducing the concepts that are important to developing for the Lightning Platform, so it is not hard to know where to go next in your learning journey. The other benefit is that it is extremely popular and there is a lack of qualified developers, so the barrier to entry through learning about the Lightning Platform is lower than it is with other technologies.

Cons

There is a relatively steep learning curve because it is VERY opinionated. In addition to learning the Lightning framework, there are many other pieces that you will be required to learn. Apex and SLDS are two examples of that. You won't be proficient in Lightning Platform development unless you have all of the pieces.