If you have not subscribed to the Salesforce Feature Retirement monthly digest, I’d highly recommend it. With so many changes in the Salesforce Ecosystem, this monthly digest will give you a heads up each month on what features will be retired. If you’re a Pardot user, you likely saw the Pardot-only logins will be set to retire by February, 15th, 2021. This change will not have an impact on any of the Pardot features or change your level of access. If you’re Pardot users already access Pardot through the Salesforce SSO, then you will be unaffected by this change. If you do not use SSO, or you do not have a Salesforce org, or you have Pardot API integrations then you will need to understand how the removal of Pardot-only logins impacts your org.

You Have Pardot-only Users
If you currently have Pardot-only users, meaning they sign into the Pardot application only, and there is no connected Salesforce user, you will need to either connect them to their Salesforce user or obtain one of the bundled Identity licenses that will be released this summer.

In order to link your Pardot user to your CRM username you’ll need to go to your administration settings > then users > Then look for the CRM Username section, and select the Salesforce user. It will then connect the Pardot user to the Salesforce user. If you do not have a Salesforce user and do not want to purchase new licenses for these users, I’d recommend leveraging the Identity Licenses scheduled to be released this summer.

Salesforce Identity Licenses
When a Pardot user gets a Salesforce Identity license, it will essentially be a Salesforce user, with the identity license connected to their Pardot user. Once the Pardot-only logins are retired, this user will log in using Salesforce SSO but will go right to Pardot.

Pardot API
Today, the Pardot API requires Pardot credentials, starting in Summer ’20 Salesforce will make the Pardot API available to Salesforce SSO users. You will need to update your API integrations, All integrations with the Pardot API will need to be updated to use a Salesforce user instead of a Pardot user. This also includes the usage of the Salesforce Identity license, which should be released in July 2020. Any Salesforce user that is authorized to access the Pardot API will be able to regardless of the user’s assigned license.

Frequently Asked Questions for Pardot-Only Logins Set to Retire

Q – Will this change increase the cost of using Pardot?
A – No. While Sales Cloud and Service Cloud licenses do have a per-user cost, Pardot will not require that all users have one of these licenses to continue using Pardot. As part of this change, Salesforce Identity licenses will be bundled into your Salesforce org at no additional cost and can be assigned to users who do not need a full Sales or Service Cloud license.

Q – Does this mean Pardot will move more towards a seat-based pricing model?
A – No, It is an industry standard for marketing automation platforms to be priced based on the contact database size. It is important to note that Pardot can offer additional functionality to Salesforce users when they have a full Sales or Service Cloud license, but Pardot is not going to start requiring these full licenses.

Q – Does this mean the standalone Pardot app (pi.pardot.com) is not going to be available?
No, Salesforce encourages everyone to migrate to the lightning app, but the standalone Pardot app will still be available.

Q – Will contacts assigned to a Pardot user who is currently using an identity license transfer over?
A – Yes, you will still be able to use users and automation prospect assignments. It’s like logging in using a chatter license. Identity licenses are used to access third-party tools. The Pardot experience will be the same.

Q – Does this mean that Pardot officially will only integrate into SF and no other CRMs? No more stand-alone Pardot instances either?
A – Pardot hasn’t supported other platforms for a few years now. The Stand-alone Pardot instances sold are sold with a single CRM license and a stand-alone salesforce instance.

Q – If I am in the process of a Pardot implementation and my users don’t have access to Salesforce, yet is the expectation to set up a sandbox in order to conduct onboarding for the customer.
It is certainly an option. As Pardot becomes more deeply engrained into Salesforce, it is going to be thought of more as an inseparable part of Salesforce. Salesforce implementation tasks should now start aligning with Pardot. But that is certainly an option to use a Sandbox. You can also use trailheads to start the onboarding process. Refer them to Pardot lightning-specific trails.

Q – Will the identity license require a profile and a role?
The identity license works like any other license in Salesforce, when you create a new user you assign a profile role, it is an optional thing, and the work is not tied into the role hierarchy. It’s really about the profile assignment that is associated with the identity license. It’s the same process as creating a Salesforce user just assigning this specific profile.

Q – Will identity license be available in dev orgs?
A – There is already a certain number available in your dev org. Maybe around 10 to test out.

Q – Can we change our existing SSO Pardot users to start using the Identity licenses?
A – If you already have a full CRM user connected to Pardot, you cannot downgrade that user to an identity license.

If you want to learn more about all of the Salesforce licenses, check out this great overview of Salesforce licenses.

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