Salesforce Foundations: A Guide for Marketers

Introduced in late 2024, Salesforce Foundations is available to customers with E​​nterprise Edition and higher, and it’s especially valuable for those who want to try features from various clouds and editions without the commitment or cost. 

It also acts as a necessary stepping stone for enabling Agentforce. However, it’s not always obvious what’s part of the package and what isn’t, which makes planning your next move tricky. 

In this article, we’ll cut through the noise to help you unlock immediate value and ROI potential - without the guesswork.

Trying to piece together how Salesforce’s many products work together (especially when they share similar names and interfaces) can be exhausting. Foundations is Salesforce’s way of giving users a low-risk, cost-free opportunity to explore tools from across the ecosystem. For marketers, this means gaining access to features that would otherwise require extra licensing, so you can better understand what’s worth investing in long term.

One of the common roadblocks with Salesforce Foundations is confusion around what’s actually included and what still requires a paid license.

Here’s what Salesforce Foundations includes:

• Marketing Cloud: Access to Email Studio with 2,000 monthly sends. SMS, Push, and Journey Builder are not included.

• Data Cloud: 10,000 Activation Credits, with calculated insights and segmentation supported for up to five data streams.

• Agentforce: Access to build one AI agent with one skill. Generative responses included, but advanced integrations (e.g. with Einstein Bots) require an upgrade.

• Commerce Cloud: Limited to Payment Link setup; full commerce storefront features are not included.

*The above is correct at the time of writing - see the Salesforce site for inclusions.

When your team is under pressure to do more with less, taking on a new tool, even a free one, can feel like one more thing to manage. 

But Foundations isn’t about adding complexity; it’s about giving your team access to critical functionality that supports smarter decisions. It lets you build proof-of-concepts, explore Salesforce AI, and connect cloud features without immediately needing additional budget or resources.

Benefits to activating Foundations:

• Test and validate cross-cloud use cases.

• Begin using Data Cloud and Agentforce without upfront costs.

• Lay the groundwork for future platform growth.

• Align internal teams around a shared Salesforce roadmap.

• Investigate where and how to maximise Salesforce marketing ROI.

Salesforce Foundations is meant to simplify your journey, but some users report the opposite. The functionality might be free, but finding out what’s actually enabled often takes hours of digging, testing, and back-and-forth with Salesforce reps. The documentation doesn’t always match the functionality. When you’re going it alone, the setup often requires more trial and error than it should because there’s no clear sandbox or guide tailored to the Foundations experience. Permissions can block you from completing otherwise basic tasks.

The solution?

Firstly, you can use our quick-reference functionality overview:

• Marketing Cloud: 2,000 email sends/month, with access to Email Studio only.

• Data Cloud: Limited ingestion, 5 data streams, and segmentation/activation features.

• Agentforce: 1 bot, 1 skill; useful for internal enablement or customer FAQs.

• Sales Cloud: Opportunities, leads, and basic reports.

• Service Cloud: 100 cases/month, plus Knowledge (read-only).

• Commerce Cloud: Payment Link only, no commerce storefronts.

Secondly, you can take advantage of Salesforce help articles. 

Now, if you’ve ever followed a Salesforce help article step by step only to hit a permissions wall halfway through, you’re not alone. Foundations users frequently get stuck when help content assumes full access to each cloud, leaving you to work out for yourself where the line is. 

Tips to save time and frustration:

• Use the Trailblazer community to find posts tagged with ‘Foundations’.

• Avoid general help docs - look for posts or guides specifically referencing Foundations.

• Ask your AE to confirm what’s included in your account.

• Lean on a certified Salesforce Partner to ensure the right implementation.

Activating Foundations is only useful if you then do something with it. Many users turn it on, look around, and move on, either because it’s unclear where to start or because they don’t know how to test features in a meaningful way. By choosing a few targeted, low-effort activities, you can quickly demonstrate value and begin building business cases internally.

Try these steps first:

• Activate Salesforce Foundations via Setup (or contact your AE).

• Sync basic lead data from Sales Cloud to Marketing Cloud for segmentation.

• Build a simple customer support bot using Agentforce to deflect FAQs.

• Segment a data set using Data Cloud and activate it in an email journey.

You might be willing to DIY some of this, but if you’ve already spent hours in forums or hit multiple dead ends (or want to avoid that scenario), getting expert Salesforce support can save a lot of time and frustration. 

Whether it’s setting up your first use case, confirming what’s possible with your account, or planning for an upgrade, a Salesforce Partner (like MarCloud!) can help you move faster and with more confidence.

Reasons to bring in a Partner:

• You’re not sure where to begin.

• You’ve already hit feature or access limits.

• You want to explore Agentforce or Data Cloud in more depth.

• You need to show measurable ROI from your Salesforce tech.

Keen to get started?

Salesforce Foundations offers a surprisingly powerful toolkit for Marketing Cloud users - if you know how to use it. By understanding what’s included, setting realistic expectations, and testing the right use cases, you can start making tangible improvements without additional spending. 

And if you want help planning or scaling, that’s exactly what we’re here for. Contact MarCloud to get support with Salesforce Foundations, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud, and Agentforce.