When a new or prospective customer wants to try out Salesforce, they can choose an industry-specific template that comes with sample data. These are called “trial orgs” because they’re intended to be converted into a paying account before the end of the trial period.

What is a Salesforce trial org?

A trial org includes sample data and various Salesforce features and is easy to convert into a paid subscription org. 

Trial orgs are not just for customers

Consultants, administrators and developers commonly use trial orgs to test functionality within a fresh, specific data model.

For example, if I am taking on a FSC (Financial Services Cloud) project and I want to test a new way of automating something that’s impacted by the unique FSC data model, I wouldn’t want to use a developer org because dev orgs have no test data included in them and it would take me too long to load data for testing.

However, I also know that that the trial org I spun up will not last forever – I consider it a short-term, disposable org. Anything of value I build in it I will rebuild in a dev org for longevity.

How long is the trial period?

The trial period differs based on the industry template selected, and is almost always extended at no cost by the Salesforce AE if the sales cycle is taking longer than the trial period.

For example, the FSC (Financial Services Cloud) trial is 30 days, compared to the CQP (Configure Price Quote) trial which is 90 days.

Explain the difference between a trial org and a dev org

The difference between a trial org and a dev (short for developer) org is that a dev org cannot be “converted” into a paying account. Dev orgs are meant to be used as a testing environment and cannot be transitioned to a paid Salesforce environment.

A few other differences include:

How is a trial org converted to a paid subscription?

*I say “converted” but what I mean is that additional licenses are assigned to the trial org and data and file storage is expanded to their normal limits. The actual org that is in play remains the same.

It’s less common (at least in the small/mid space) to see a Salesforce customer start out by building into a trial org and then start over in a new org.

Wait… what’s a Trailhead Playground?

Yep, but they serve a different purpose than trial and dev orgs. Trailhead playgrounds are intended to facilitate the completion of training (Trailhead) modules.

Some Trailhead modules require you to use a specific Trailhead Playground that has been provided for that specific module, as it has a specific feature enabled or it has been pre-configured for testing in a way that a dev org hasn’t.

Consultants, administrators and developers commonly use trial orgs to test functionality within a fresh, specific data model. For example, if I am taking on a FSC (Financial Services Cloud) project and I want to test a new way of automating something that’s impacted by the unique FSC data model, I wouldn’t want to use a developer org because dev orgs have no test data included in them and it would take me too long to load data for testing. 

Trial and dev org sign up links

Here’s a list of Salesforce trial org sign up links.

• Salesforce CPQ 90 Day Trial
• Salesforce Developer Org
• Salesforce Developer Org with Tableau CRM
• Salesforce Financial Service Cloud 30 Day Trial
• Salesforce CPQ Trial Org
• Salesforce Nonprofit + (NPSP) Success Pack 30 Day Trial
• Salesforce OmniStudio 180 Day Trial
• Salesforce Pardot Developer Org
• Salesforce K-12 Architecture Kit
• Salesforce Higher Ed
• Salesforce Public Sector (Unconfigured, full-featured)
• Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud
• Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud with Rebate Management
• Salesforce Health Cloud Developer Org
• Heroku
• Salesforce Field Service Lightning (start with a free dev org and set up field service within it)
• Mulesoft Anypoint
• Free Slack Workspace
  
  

How to create a new trial or dev org

Simple!

1. Click on one of the links above
2. Fill in the required fields and you’ll see this approval message:
   
   

3. Open your email and find the message from Salesforce with the subject “Welcome to Salesforce: Verify your account.”

** FYI: It can take several hours for a trial org to be provisioned.

4. Click the blue “Verify Account” button in the email message.

5. Set your new password and security question and you’re taken to your shiny new org!

6. Navigate to the company information page in Setup to see the number of active licenses and the expiration date.

7. You can verify the allotted data storage from this page.