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tinman44tinman44 

Authentication and customer portal cost (again)?

Sorry to ask this question again but it seems that I cannot find a consistent/accurate answer on the boards. I am trying to find out two things:

 

1. It appears that Salesforce.com would like us to use the Customer portal as our authentication method for Sites. However, some form of authentication could be created using APEX/VF/Cookies/Etc. Is creating another form of authentication to display user specific information a violation of the terms of service? Or is it simply not supported?

 

2. If it is a "violation" what is the pricing model for customer portal? I have read per login, per seat, etc? I know the response to this will be "contact your sales rep". But as a partner our clients are different sizes and deal with multiple sales reps. I am just looking for the overall model and some off the shelf ballpark pricing so I can share that with our clients. 

 

Any feedback/direction/help would be greatly appreciated!

Best Answer chosen by Admin (Salesforce Developers) 
BulentBulent

if you are a partner then this would be against your partner agreement.

You can get the best price form your sales/partner contact since I can't publish product prices on discussion boards. 

All Answers

BulentBulent

1- Force.com Sites supports authentication only within the context of Customer/Partner Portals. 

Any other way would not be secure and not supported.
 
Portal integration provides:

 

  • Numerous security features around login/session handling (eg: password complexity, pwd change requirements, login history, etc). 
  • Secure way of creating and managing session identifiers
  • In sites there isn't anything in our logs which will differentiate one user from another, with portal integration each logged in user is a unique user in the system
  • Reset and support forgotten passwords support
  • Sharing and personalization support 
 
2- Customer and Partner portal provides various licenses and both user and usage (login) based pricing. You would need to talk to your sales rep to pick the right license for your use case and learn about pricing options
 

 
tinman44tinman44

Bulent-

 

Thanks for your response.

 

Can you clarify your answer to point #1? Does SFDC simply not support it (like all customizations that use custom coding) or would it be a violation of license? There is a big difference. Also I would debate your points...I am pretty sure that most of all your bullet points could be recreated using the Force.com platform technology. 

 

What I am trying to drive to is if Sites is a valid solution for applications that would have a high volume of transient users. If I have to pay $$$ per portal license for someone to login once or twice then the Sites platform is not a viable solution form many types of mainstream online applications.  It would be much cheaper to build something on the LAMP stack and integrate with SFDC to get at the data I need.

 

My impression at this point is that SFDC is being pretty cagey about giving solid answers on this. Maybe pricing is still in flux. Any insight/direction would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for your time.

BulentBulent

if you are a partner then this would be against your partner agreement.

You can get the best price form your sales/partner contact since I can't publish product prices on discussion boards. 

This was selected as the best answer
tinman44tinman44

Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for.

 

 
mfergusonmferguson

I can understand why you should not post pricing on the discussion boards.....but really.  As a partner we need to know what we are selling and those of us who sell across the US and abroad need a single point of contact.  Why can't you send us to a website or post the pricing in our partner portal?
PKPK

If youa re a partner and have specific pricing questions, please just log a case in the partner portal.