Industry Clouds are pre-built Salesforce solutions tailored to vertical industries — Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, Education, Nonprofit, Public Sector, Media, Communications, Energy/Utilities, Automotive.
Each ships with:
- Vertical data model — industry-specific objects (e.g., Financial Services Cloud has Insurance Policy, Account Plan, Financial Account).
- Pre-built page layouts and Lightning Record Pages.
- OmniStudio components (FlexCards, OmniScripts, Integration Procedures) for industry workflows.
- Pre-built integrations to vertical systems.
- Pre-defined automation — flows for common scenarios.
When to use: organization is in one of the supported verticals AND the standard Salesforce schema doesn't cover their needs out of the box.
Alternative: Sales Cloud + Service Cloud + custom objects to model the same domain. Sometimes cheaper and simpler if needs are narrow.
Trade-offs:
- Industry Cloud: faster start, vertical best practices baked in, but tied to Salesforce's Industry Cloud roadmap and pricing.
- Custom: more flexibility, full ownership, but slower to build, requires deep Discovery to capture vertical needs from scratch.
Decision often comes down to: how much of the standard Industry Cloud will we use vs throw away? If <50%, custom is often cheaper.