Adopting the Salesforce Lightning Platform as a PaaS for a new application is a strategic decision that affects development pace, operational model, and long-term capability. The workflow below covers the standard evaluation and adoption sequence for an enterprise considering Salesforce for a new application.
- Define the application requirements and data model
Document the application: what business process it supports, what data it manages, what users it serves, what integrations it needs. Identify whether the data model overlaps significantly with the Salesforce standard data model (Account, Contact, Lead, etc.) or whether it is entirely custom. Identify the security and compliance requirements. The output is a one-page application brief that informs the platform decision.
- Evaluate Salesforce against alternatives
Compare the Lightning Platform against Heroku, AWS, Azure, and any other relevant platforms. Score each on: data model fit, development velocity, integration ease, operational burden, total cost of ownership, vendor lock-in risk. The Lightning Platform typically scores high on data model fit and integration ease (for CRM-related apps), high on development velocity (clicks-not-code for many features), low on vendor lock-in concerns is a wash (every PaaS has lock-in). Make the platform decision with stakeholders before starting any implementation.
- Provision the appropriate Salesforce edition
Engage the Salesforce account team to license the right edition: Sales Cloud or Service Cloud if the app extends those, Platform Starter or Platform Plus if it is a standalone custom app. Provision the org or scratch org as appropriate. Configure the foundational platform settings: My Domain, Identity, deployment pipeline. Set up the development environment (Salesforce DX project, source control, CI/CD).
- Build, deploy, and operate
Build the application using the platform primitives: custom objects for data, Flow Builder or Apex for logic, Lightning Web Components or Lightning App Builder for UI, REST API or Platform Events for integration. Deploy through the standard pipeline. Operate the app using the org-level monitoring (Limits, Setup Audit Trail, Event Manager). Scale the team's familiarity with the platform over the first six months; the learning curve is steep at first and flattens significantly once developers internalize the multitenant constraints.
- Governor limits are real and not negotiable. Code that runs fine in development may hit limits under production load.
- Platform Starter and Platform Plus editions have lower limits than Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. Plan accordingly for custom-app scale.
- The Salesforce data model is opinionated. Forcing non-CRM data into Account-Contact-Opportunity shapes is rarely the right design.
- Heroku integration is excellent for hybrid applications but adds operational complexity. Evaluate carefully before splitting an application across both.
- Vendor lock-in is real on any PaaS. Apex code does not run elsewhere, and migrating off the Lightning Platform is a major project.