A Person Account is a Salesforce data-modelling option where a single record represents both an Account and a Contact, useful when you sell directly to consumers (B2C) rather than to companies. Once enabled, you choose per-record-type whether a record is a Business Account (with related Contacts) or a Person Account (a person with no separating Contact).
Trade-offs:
Pros:
- Cleaner B2C data model — one record per individual, no fake "Acme - John Smith" account names.
- Many features that originally only worked on Account or Contact still work via the unified Person Account.
Cons:
- Irreversible. Once Person Accounts are enabled, you cannot turn them off.
- Some features don't fully support them. Certain managed packages, integrations, and platform features assume Account-and-separate-Contact and break or behave oddly with Person Accounts.
- Complicates data integrations — every integration must be aware that an Account record might be the Contact, with conditional field mappings.
- Reporting — reports on Person Accounts often need both Account and Contact-level fields, requiring custom report types.
- Data volume — Person Accounts double-count against both Account and Contact storage limits.
When to enable: only when you genuinely run B2C and the data model is wrong without it. For B2B with the occasional consumer, stick with Business Accounts and a one-off "Consumers" account containing all individual contacts. For mixed B2B/B2C, Person Accounts are the right choice but plan the integration audit before flipping the switch.