Introduction to AppExchange Marketplace
The Salesforce AppExchange is a marketplace filled with applications designed to enhance and extend the capabilities of the Salesforce platform. With thousands of apps available, businesses can find tools for every need, from improving sales productivity to managing customer service more effectively. This analysis aims to shed light on the AppExchange ecosystem by examining various statistics related to app categories, developers, and user feedback.
Key Findings
- Diverse App Categories: The AppExchange hosts a wide range of apps across multiple categories. The Sales and Productivity categories lead with the highest number of available apps, showcasing the demand for tools that enhance these critical business functions. For instance, the best Salesforce productivity tools are highly sought after for streamlining business processes.
- Top Developers: A select group of developers dominates the platform, offering a multitude of apps that address various business needs. This concentration indicates the influence and trust these developers have garnered within the Salesforce community. Top analytics tools can be found among the Salesforce data analysis tools, demonstrating the high-quality offerings from these leading developers.
- User Feedback: The majority of apps have a limited number of reviews, with a significant portion having none at all. This highlights areas for potential growth in user engagement and feedback collection. Understanding user feedback on Salesforce customer service tools can provide insights into improving these apps.
Industry Insights
The digital transformation is rapidly evolving, and platforms like Salesforce AppExchange are at the forefront of this change. Businesses are increasingly relying on cloud services and integrated solutions to remain agile and competitive. According to Gartner, the enterprise software market is projected to grow steadily, driven by the need for digital agility and innovation. This trend is evident in the expanding ecosystem of apps and developers on the AppExchange, reflecting broader industry shifts.
As businesses try to stay ahead, leveraging the right tools from the AppExchange can make a significant difference. By providing a detailed analysis of the AppExchange, this article aims to equip businesses and stakeholders with valuable insights to make decisions about adopting these tools for their specific needs. For example, the top Salesforce sales tools and insights into the Salesforce job market can help businesses identify key areas for investment and growth.
Our Research and Methodology
All further numbers below are based on the number of AppExchange apps available at the marketplace in May 2024. We’ve gathered all apps (yes, it took a while) from the official website, including information about their primary categories and the company developer behind them. Since the Salesforce marketplace has new apps published and removed daily, the statistics below may not be precisely accurate at the date of your reading. The stats we provide are for informational purposes and give the feeling of shares (not absolute numbers) inside categories.
Also, AppExchange presents industry-specific applications and solutions, even if they don’t have a business need defined in the marketplace. We included those in our research as well – you may see such apps under the “Industry” category in further breakdowns.
Total Number of Salesforce Apps by Categories
Share of Apps by Business Need
The AppExchange Salesforce marketplace offers a diverse range of applications categorized to meet various business needs. Here’s a breakdown by main categories as defined on the AppExchange marketplace:
| Main Business Category | # of Apps | % of Apps |
| Sales | 1205 | 23.44% |
| Productivity | 833 | 16.20% |
| IT & Administration | 582 | 11.32% |
| Analytics | 490 | 9.53% |
| Marketing | 415 | 8.07% |
| Customer Service | 367 | 7.14% |
| Finance | 328 | 6.38% |
| Industry | 327 | 6.36% |
| Commerce | 307 | 5.97% |
| Collaboration | 160 | 3.11% |
| ERP | 127 | 2.47% |
These categories help users quickly find the tools they need to enhance specific areas of their business operations. To illustrate these numbers better, please see the infographics below:
The AppExchange Salesforce marketplace categorizes applications to help users find tools for specific business needs. Each category has several more specific subcategories and app developers may select up to 3 categories/subcategories, which will be applied to their app.
Insight:
The Sales category has the most apps on the Salesforce AppExchange and the popularity of this category actually proves the original need and focus of the CRM. Looks like the Sales-force CRM name says for itself. Salesforce’s emphasis on sales capabilities further encourages developers to create supportive apps. Additionally, the wide range of sales activities, from lead management to quoting, requires specialized tools, resulting in a large number of sales-related apps.
Categories without Apps
There are several categories on the Salesforce AppExchange that currently do not have any apps. These categories represent areas where there may be opportunities for future development:
- Analytics & Site Monitoring: This category aims to include tools for tracking website performance and analytics, but currently, there are no apps listed.
- Augmented Reality (AR): This category is intended for applications utilizing AR technologies, which are yet to be developed or listed.
- Punchout System: Designed for integrating procurement processes, this category also has no apps listed currently.
- Conversational Commerce: This category focuses on applications enabling commerce through chat interfaces, which currently lack any app listings.
Apps by Categories and Subcategories
Here is the detailed breakdown of the number of apps in each category, as per the current structure of Business Needs on Appexchange.
Sales: 1205 apps
- Contract Management: 129 apps
- Forecasting: 39 apps
- Geolocation: 41 apps
- Lead & Opportunity Management: 16 apps
- Partner Management: 30 apps
- Quotes & Orders: 167 apps
- Sales Intelligence: 276 apps
- Sales Methodologies: 61 apps
- Sales Productivity: 46 apps
Marketing: 415 apps
- Account-Based Marketing: 2 apps
- Campaign Management: 103 apps
- Event Management: 59 apps
- Feeds: 24 apps
- Loyalty: 2 apps
- Marketing Automation: 83 apps
- Marketing Intelligence: 1 app
- Mass Emails: 32 apps
- Personalization: 6 apps
- Social Channels: 1 app
- Surveys: 41 apps
- Testing & Segmentation: 1 app
- Websites: 34 apps
IT & Administration: 582 apps
- Admin & Developer Tools: 377 apps
- Audit & Compliance: 7 apps
- Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR): 0 apps
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): 0 apps
- Content Management System (CMS): 1 app
- Data Backup & Storage: 5 apps
- Data Management: 80 apps
- Data Migration: 3 apps
- Developer Tools: 5 apps
- Information Management: 2 apps
- Integration: 196 apps
- IT Management: 56 apps
- Search & Recommendation: 2 apps
- Security: 5 apps
- Translation: 0 apps
Customer Service: 367 apps
- Agent Productivity: 153 apps
- Case Management: 9 apps
- Field Service: 68 apps
- Route Planning: 1 app
- Telephony: 72 apps
Finance: 328 apps
- Accounting: 108 apps
- Compensation Management: 23 apps
- Grant Management: 1 app
- Time & Expense: 40 apps
Analytics: 490 apps
- Analytics & Site Monitoring: 0 apps
- Dashboards & Reports: 191 apps
- Data Cleansing: 108 apps
- Data Visualization: 121 apps
Productivity: 833 apps
- Alerts: 4 apps
- Document Generation: 79 apps
- Document Management: 110 apps
- Email & Calendar Sync: 38 apps
- Process Management: 14 apps
- Project Management: 110 apps
- Time & Date: 19 apps
Commerce: 307 apps
- Ecommerce: 67 apps
- Live Commerce: 3 apps
- Marketplace: 4 apps
- Payments Processing: 77 apps
- Point of Sale (POS) & In-Store: 2 apps
- Product Information Management (PIM): 3 apps
- Ratings & Reviews: 4 apps
- Shipping, Fulfillment & Logistics: 4 apps
- Subscriptions: 1 app
- Warranty & Returns Management: 1 app
Collaboration: 160 apps
- Chat & Web Conferencing: 59 apps
- Conversational Commerce: 0 apps
Enterprise Resource Planning: 127 apps
- Human Resources: 99 apps
- Order & Inventory Management System: 2 apps
- People Management: 2 apps
- Punchout System: 0 apps
- Warehouse Management System (WMS): 3 apps
Industry-specific: 327 apps
As you may notice, the total number of apps in subcategories doesn’t match the total number of apps in the category due to the specifics of listings (apps may be present in subcategories, as well as be in the main category only, without any specific subcategories defined).
Salesforce Apps Stats by Key Appexchange Developers
From Salesforce apps by categories, we move to the companies, which stand behind these apps. There are quite interesting and insightful stats in terms of the number of apps by Appexchange developers – 5141 Salesforce apps were developed by 3122 different companies.
Top 15 Developers by Number of Apps
Developers with the highest number of apps presented on Appexchange include such companies as:
| App Developer | Number of Apps | % of the total presented on the marketplace | Number of Reviews for All Apps | Average Rating | Most Reviewed App | Its Main Category |
| Salesforce Labs | 492 | 9.57% | 5751 | 3.47 | Salesforce Adoption Dashboards | IT & Administration |
| Astrea IT Services Pvt Ltd | 49 | 0.95% | 350 | 3.99 | Files, Attachments & Notes | Productivity |
| Commercient LLC | 39 | 0.76% | 188 | 4.95 | NetSuite Sage QuickBooks Epicor SAP SYSPRO ERP Integration – SYNC by Commercient | Sales |
| IBM | 25 | 0.49% | 45 | 4.45 | Connector for Twitter | Marketing |
| Salesforce | 20 | 0.39% | 302 | 3.10 | User Access and Permissions Assistant | IT & Administration |
| OSF Digital – Connect Technology and Strategy to Accelerate Business Value | 18 | 0.35% | 12 | 4.39 | Calendar Pro for Salesforce Lightning by OSF Digital | Productivity |
| BoonPlus | 16 | 0.31% | 29 | 5.00 | Easy Pricing for Opportunity | Sales |
| Webkul Software Pvt. Ltd. | 15 | 0.29% | 521 | 4.79 | eShopSync For Shopify | Sales |
| Satrang Technologies | 14 | 0.27% | 329 | 4.86 | Satrang Mass File Download | Productivity |
| CRM.Team | 13 | 0.25% | 79 | 4.57 | CRM Apps Lab™ Activity Comments Enabler: View task & event comments in lists | Collaboration |
| Advanced Communities | 12 | 0.23% | 156 | 4.88 | Ideas Component Lite for Experience Cloud | Productivity |
| Cloud Maven, Inc | 12 | 0.23% | 127 | 5.00 | Credit Checker – Instant Credit Reports from Experian™, TransUnion®, Equifax® | Finance |
| Conga | 11 | 0.21% | 1528 | 4.70 | Conga Composer Connector for Salesforce | Create and manage documents with ease | Productivity |
| Zenkraft, a Bringg Solution | 10 | 0.19% | 300 | 4.90 | FedEx Shipping App: Shipping, Returns, RMAs and Tracking | Customer Service |
| Certinia | 10 | 0.19% | 306 | 4.58 | Certinia ERP Cloud | Finance |
Sales and Productivity remain the most popular categories among app developers and these top developers released 14.7% of all apps presented at the marketplace.
Breakdowns by AppExchange App Ratings and Reviews
Here’s how the apps are distributed across different review count ranges, with the total number of all reviews being a fantastic 75,161 reviews:
- 0 reviews: 2,457 apps
- 1-9 reviews: 1,710 apps
- 10-49 reviews: 701 apps
- 50-99 reviews: 136 apps
- 100-499 reviews: 118 apps
- 500-999 reviews: 14 apps
- 1000+ reviews: 5 apps
There are only 5 Salesforce apps, which have over 1k reviews, and those are:
| Full App Name | App Developer | Star Rating | Number of Reviews |
| Docusign eSignature for Salesforce: The trusted eSignature solution | Docusign, Inc | 4.55 | 4639 |
| Adobe Acrobat Sign eSignatures for Salesforce | Adobe | 4.86 | 3198 |
| Cirrus Insight for Gmail | Cirrus Insight | 4.7 | 2092 |
| 360 SMS App for Salesforce – Send SMS | WhatsApp from Salesforce | 360 Degree Cloud Technologies Pvt. Ltd. | 4.89 | 1145 |
| SMS-Magic & Conversive | Conversational Messaging | Screen Magic Mobile Media | 4.82 | 1021 |
As AppExchange continues to grow as a marketplace, we anticipate that next year there would be already 10 apps with the total number of reviews above 1000, since user reviews remain to be one of the most critical decision factors, especially if several solutions with the same function are available.
Insight:
Appexchange is indeed a marketplace since the Top 5 apps by reviews were developed by independent companies, not listed by Salesforce itself.
App Breakdown by Star Ratings
Among 5141 apps we’ve analyzed, 2457 (47.79%) apps didn’t have any reviews at the time of writing.
The remaining 2684 reviewed Salesforce apps were distributed by ratings in the following way (we’ve rounded the average rating displayed on Appexchange):
| Rounded Rating | # of Apps with at Least One Review | Share of Apps with Such Rating |
| 5 | 1966 | 73.25% |
| 4 | 398 | 14.83% |
| 3 | 204 | 7.60% |
| 2 | 59 | 2.20% |
| 1 | 57 | 2.12% |
73.25% of apps with an average 5-star review rating actually show positive sentiment across the Salesforce community and overall positive experience with official Salesforce apps.
If we take apps with at least 5 reviews published, a breakdown would look in the following way:
| Rounded Rating | # of Apps with 5 and More Reviews | Share of Apps with Such Rating |
| 5 | 1003 | 70.83% |
| 4 | 275 | 19.42% |
| 3 | 115 | 8.12% |
| 2 | 20 | 1.41% |
| 1 | 3 | 0.21% |
Distribution didn’t change much, which means ratings have a proportional distribution.
Insight:
Did you know that 52.21% of apps on the AppExchange have reviews (2684 apps), while 47.79% remain unrated (2457 apps)?
Key Numbers of Salesforce Apps Market State Analysis in 2024
The Salesforce AppExchange is more than just a marketplace—it’s a vibrant ecosystem where businesses can find innovative solutions to enhance their Salesforce experience. Our detailed analysis of the AppExchange has uncovered several key insights:
App Categories:
- In May 2024 there were 5141 unique Salesforce apps listed across 10 main categories by Business Needs and Industry solutions.
- Top 3 Salesforce app categories by business needs include: 23.44% apps – Sales, 16.20% apps – Productivity, 11.32% apps – IT & Administration.
- 327 industry-specific Salesforce apps have no Business Need category selected.
- There are 4 subcategories on Appexchange without any apps listed: Analytics & Site Monitoring, Augmented Reality (AR), Punchout System and Conversational Commerce.
Top Developers:
- 5141 Salesforce apps were released by 3122 companies.
- Top15 developers released 14.7% of all apps on the marketplace, with Salesforce itself responsible for 9.96% apps (Salesforce Labs and Salesforce as a listed app developer).
- Salesforce Labs leads with 492 apps, followed by Astrea IT Services Pvt Ltd with 49 apps.
User Feedback:
- 75,161 reviews were published on AppExchange in total.
- 47.79% of apps on the AppExchange have no reviews.
- The Salesforce app with the highest number of reviews (4639 reviews) is Docusign eSignature for Salesforce: The trusted eSignature solution.
- There are only 5 apps, which have over 1000 reviews listed.
Star Ratings Distribution:
- 73.25% of Salesforce apps have an average 5-star rating.
- Only 4.32% of all Appexchange apps have 1- or 2-star ratings
Looks like you just saw impressive numbers and insightful stats?
Download infographics using the link below:
The Salesforce AppExchange plays a crucial role in supporting business agility and innovation. As we move forward, it will be exciting to see how the platform continues to evolve and how businesses and developers alike rise to the challenge of meeting ever-changing demands.
Dorian is a 5X Certified Salesforce Developer and Administrator with a start in the IT world as a CRM Admin in 2020. Since diving into Salesforce in 2021 via Trailhead and Focus on Force, he has achieved a Ranger Rank, earned several Superbadges, and bagged certifications including the Salesforce Certified Administrator, Platform App Builder, Associate and Platform Developer I by 2023. In 2024 he also became Salesforce Certified AI Associate. Dorian is very keen on continuous learning, always looks for fresh ways to improve his knowledge. He enjoys running, boxing, kickboxing and reading diverse kinds of books in his free time.
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If you’re a new developer trying to stand out in less crowded categories, focus on finding a niche where there’s a clear need but less competition. Create unique solutions that solve specific problems. Also, build connections with potential users, get their feedback, and keep improving your app based on what they need. This approach can help you get noticed even in less popular categories.