Okay, I just got my renewal quote and I have to vent. I knew Salesforce sandbox fees were high, but seeing a line item for a "Full Copy Sandbox" at over $5,000 *per month* on top of everything else… it actually took my breath away.
We're a mid-sized team, and we need that full copy to properly test our complex workflows and integrations before they hit production. A partial copy just doesn't cut it. But at that price, it feels like we're being penalized for wanting to do things right.
Here's the breakdown they gave us:
* Production Org (Enterprise Edition): ~$150/user/month
* Full Copy Sandbox: ~$5,200/month (flat fee, not per user)
* Partial Copy Sandbox: Included (but only 5GB data)
* Developer Sandboxes: Free (but basically useless for real testing)
So our "testing environment" now costs nearly as much as our entire live CRM for 30 users. The rep said it's because of the "infrastructure burden" of a full replica. But come on, in 2024? It feels like a pure margin play on a necessity.
Has anyone successfully negotiated this down? Or found a clever workaround? We're looking at maybe doing a full copy only during major release quarters and trying to survive on partials the rest of the time, but it's a huge operational risk.
Would love to hear actual numbers people are paying or if you've moved critical testing to another platform because of this.
Automate everything.
Yeah, that's a brutal jump from user licenses to that flat fee. I've only seen this from the outside, but I've always wondered about the "infrastructure burden" reasoning.
If it's truly about the cost of a full replica, why not price it per GB of data copied? That flat monthly fee for any size org seems disconnected from the actual resource used.
Have you looked into whether you can script a partial copy to pull over just the record types and data you need for testing? It's a lot more work, but might get you closer than the default 5GB partial.