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How many companies use Salesforce
Installmap, 2026-10-29 · Download PDF
450 of the 4,845 Inc 5000 companies we checked (9.3%) let Salesforce send
email as their own domain. Among unicorns it is 251 of 1,048 (24.0%), in the
Fortune 500 55 of 465 (11.8%), and among Y Combinator companies 143 of 5,503
(2.6%). We counted the domains whose SPF record includes
_spf.salesforce.com, the line Salesforce asks customers to add when Sales
Cloud or Service Cloud sends mail from their address.
Companies using Salesforce, by company list
Source: Installmap, October 2026.
| Company list | Domains checked | Salesforce in SPF record | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicorns | 1,048 | 251 | 24.0% |
| Fortune 500 | 465 | 55 | 11.8% |
| Inc 5000 (2026) | 4,845 | 450 | 9.3% |
| Tranco top 10k | 7,596 | 540 | 7.1% |
| SaaS companies | 49,407 | 3,243 | 6.6% |
| Y Combinator | 5,503 | 143 | 2.6% |
Unicorns lead by a wide margin. One in four of them routes mail through Salesforce, against one in eleven Inc 5000 companies.
All Salesforce products we can see
The SPF line covers the CRM. Other Salesforce products show up on the homepage (Pardot tracking, Web-to-Lead forms, Personalization) or in SPF (Marketing Cloud, Pardot). Counting a company once if it shows any of them:
| Company list | Sales or Service Cloud (SPF) | Marketing Cloud (SPF) | Pardot | Web-to-Lead form | Personalization | Any Salesforce product | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicorns | 251 | 8 | 61 | 3 | 2 | 294 | 28.1% |
| Fortune 500 | 55 | 9 | 25 | 0 | 15 | 94 | 20.2% |
| Inc 5000 (2026) | 450 | 20 | 185 | 8 | 2 | 545 | 11.2% |
| Y Combinator | 143 | 3 | 49 | 7 | 2 | 182 | 3.3% |
The Fortune 500 number almost doubles, from 55 to 94, once Marketing Cloud, Pardot and Personalization are added: 39 of them load Salesforce's marketing products but send no CRM mail through it. For comparison, HubSpot is on the homepage of 1,261 Inc 5000 companies (25.8%), more than twice the 545 with any Salesforce product (HubSpot market share).
Inc 5000: Salesforce by company size
| Employees | Companies | With Salesforce | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 425 | 10 | 2.4% |
| 11 to 50 | 1,993 | 88 | 4.4% |
| 51 to 200 | 1,468 | 170 | 11.6% |
| 201 to 500 | 532 | 92 | 17.3% |
| 501 to 1,000 | 221 | 52 | 23.5% |
| 1,001 to 5,000 | 170 | 28 | 16.5% |
Salesforce use climbs about tenfold from the smallest companies to those with 501 to 1,000 employees. Below 50 employees it is rare.
Inc 5000: Salesforce by industry
| Industry | Companies | With Salesforce | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software | 358 | 95 | 26.5% |
| Financial Services | 407 | 76 | 18.7% |
| Artificial Intelligence & Data | 124 | 19 | 15.3% |
| Human Resources | 130 | 16 | 12.3% |
| Healthcare & Medical | 417 | 43 | 10.3% |
| Real Estate | 113 | 11 | 9.7% |
| IT Services | 390 | 35 | 9.0% |
| Manufacturing | 152 | 13 | 8.6% |
| Logistics & Transportation | 154 | 13 | 8.4% |
| Business & Corporate Services | 303 | 20 | 6.6% |
| Legal | 183 | 10 | 5.5% |
| Government Services | 158 | 6 | 3.8% |
| Consumer Services | 125 | 4 | 3.2% |
| Construction | 298 | 9 | 3.0% |
| Food & Beverage | 162 | 4 | 2.5% |
| Advertising, Marketing & PR | 434 | 10 | 2.3% |
| Consumer Products | 262 | 3 | 1.1% |
Software and financial services companies are the main users. Marketing agencies barely use it: 10 of 434, a lower share than Government Services companies (6 of 158).
Y Combinator: Salesforce by batch
| Batch year | Companies | With Salesforce | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 and earlier | 1,619 | 110 | 6.8% |
| 2020 to 2021 | 1,028 | 28 | 2.7% |
| 2022 to 2023 | 1,049 | 4 | 0.4% |
| 2024 to 2025 | 1,167 | 1 | 0.1% |
| 2026 | 640 | 0 | 0.0% |
Of the 1,807 YC companies from 2024 onward, one sends mail through Salesforce. Part of this is likely age, since companies adopt a CRM as their sales team grows. Acquired YC companies are at 5.1% (32 of 627) and inactive ones at 0.7% (5 of 698).
How we counted
We looked up the MX and TXT records of every domain in each list through
public DNS resolvers on 21 October 2026. A company counts for Sales or
Service Cloud when its SPF record includes _spf.salesforce.com, and for
Marketing Cloud when it includes an exacttarget.com host. The homepage
products come from our rendered crawl of each homepage in September and
October 2026. The base is the domains that returned a DNS answer.
A company that uses Salesforce but sends no email from it, or sends through another mail service, does not count, so these numbers are a floor. The SaaS and Tranco lists were not fully crawled in a browser, so they appear only in the first table. Full method and CSVs are on the dataset link above.
Dataset
by_group_products.csv, by_group_spf.csv, inc5000_by_employees.csv, inc5000_by_industry.csv, yc_by_batch_year.csv, yc_by_status.csv, README.md, METHOD.md
Cite this
Installmap, How many companies use Salesforce, 2026-10-29, https://installmap.com/research/how-many-companies-use-salesforce.
Groups referenced
- Inc 5000 (2026), 4,888 domains counted
- Unicorns, 1,000 domains counted
- Fortune 500, 472 domains counted
- Y Combinator companies, 5,388 domains counted
- SaaS companies, 8,048 domains counted
- Tranco top 10,000, 1,572 domains counted
Tools referenced
- Salesforce Pardot, CRM and Marketing Automation
- Salesforce Web-to-Lead, CRM and Marketing Automation
- Salesforce Personalization (Evergage), A/B Testing and Personalization
- Salesforce Lightning, CRM and Marketing Automation
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Ecommerce
- HubSpot, CRM and Marketing Automation