The Best Salesforce Apps to Enhance Your Tech Stack

The best way to enhance your tech stack is to choose the best Salesforce apps for your workflows that fill the gaps in your feature set and help your CRM teams deliver more value from the platform. It’s a tall order given the thousands of Salesforce apps, both native and third-party, that you have to choose from. What’s the right fit?

To help you get started, we’ve singled out 10 of the best Salesforce apps, including those from Salesforce Trusted Services and Salesforce AgentExchange. These Salesforce apps address clear business challenges ranging from security, data privacy, and backup and recovery, to project management, SMS messaging, and DevOps.

bowbridge specializes in file security for enterprise platforms like SAP and Salesforce. We’ve included our content security app because it fills Salesforce gaps in URL reputation (risky links), malware scanning at upload, as well as scanning for hidden instructions targeting Agentic AI applications (aka prompt injections).

The 10 Best Salesforce Apps by Category 

Why Listen to bowbridge?

We have specialized in enterprise application content security for more than 20 years. Our medium and large enterprise customers run on SAP and Salesforce application platforms all over the world. bowbridge application-aware content security enables their IT, security and compliance teams to detect, control and evidence content-borne risks.

Enterprises, take notice: trusted application platforms such as Salesforce and SAP do not automatically scan the content your users’ uploads for cyber threats. That’s because Salesforce is a shared security responsibility. That means Salesforce secures the infrastructure, while customers are responsible for protecting their own access rights, configurations and data.

Securing Salesforce is essential to protect your apps at content entry points because file uploads can carry malware, links in content can lead to phishing pages, and AI agents can be hijacked with hidden instructions. To fill this gap, bowbridge Anti-Virus for Salesforce scans files for malware to protect your Salesforce workflows and users from malware and other content-borne threats.

In his guide we call out ten stand-out Salesforce apps, including a security tech stack and best practices, to help you make your Salesforce workloads more secure, connected and tailored to your business.

What Are Salesforce Apps?

Salesforce apps include the core applications in the Salesforce CRM Clouds, add-on Salesforce Trusted Services apps (security), and third party, add-on Salesforce apps available on AgentExchange.

Salesforce CRM clouds consist of applications that automate and manage customer relationships. The eight primary Salesforce clouds include: Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud, Revenue Cloud and Analytics Cloud. There are many more.

Agentic AI applications built with Agentforce are also Salesforce apps. AgentExchange is filled with thousands of apps and services designed to fill specific gaps or add features to the Salesforce clouds and native apps.

It is a bit overwhelming. The purpose of this guide is to help you choose the best Salesforce apps for your tech stack to get the most value out of your CRM system and avoid security risks and admin sprawl.

AppExchange Is Now AgentExchange: What Has Changed?

Salesforce is all about AI. The CRM platform includes Agentforce, creating “a single, open platform for the agentic enterprise.” Agentforce is Salesforce’s enterprise AI platform that lets you build, test, and deploy autonomous AI agents. These agents can interact directly with customers, update CRM records, execute workflows and collaborate with human employees.

AgentExchange makes it easier for customers to find, try, and deploy the next generation of AI-driven solutions and extend Agentforce across their entire Salesforce CRM platform.

By unifying AppExchange and Slack Marketplace with AgentExchange– Salesforce brings agents, apps, and experts together into a single, trusted marketplace for customers.

How Many Apps are on Salesforce AgentExchange?

A lot. As of this posting, AgentExchange lists over 10,000 Salesforce apps and experts from companies like Docusign for AI agreement and bowbridge for malware scanning at upload.

According to Salesforce, there are more than 1000 pre-built AI agents, subagents, tools and MCP servers from companies like Seismic for content discovery, Bullhorn for recruiting, and TaskRay for project management. And, 2,600 or more Slack apps and agents from leading technology companies like Notion for surfacing knowledge, Linear for tracking dev work, and Cursor for executing code changes.

10,000+ expert apps

1,000+ prebuilt AI agents

2,600+ Slack apps and agents

The dazzling array of Salesforce apps available on AgentExchange are organized by category. There’s a good search tool, but singling out the best apps is a process. Let’s begin with the basics for security.

The Best Salesforce Security Apps on AgentExchange

As mentioned above, Salesforce and its customers share responsibility for security. For starters, Salesforce recommends customers take advantage of built-in features like Multi-Factor Authentication as well as running a Security Health Check to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities in your security settings.

Salesforce organizes security into foundationals (built-in protection by Salesforce); configurables (user-managed settings); and enhanceables (advanced add-on security products). Native add-on products (Trusted Services) are offered for cloud data security and privacy and add-on security products from partners like bowbridge are offered on AgentExchange.

All partners who list their products on AgentExchange (includes AppExchange and Slack marketplace) are responsible for maintaining the Security Requirements for AppExchange for their listings.

The following add-on data security, privacy and compliance products have capabilities that all enterprises should consider as part of their Salesforce shared security responsibility. Details follow in the sections below.

Best Salesforce App for Content Security: Bowbridge Anti-Virus for Salesforce

Salesforce native security tools (like Shield and Security Center) help monitor, audit, and encrypt data, but malware scanning plus URL reputation checking is typically delivered via a partner security solution that’s integrated into the upload and messaging flows. The best security apps scans and blocks content inline before it has been downloaded into Salesforce.

For example, bowbridge Anti-Virus for Salesforce scans file content for malware and malicious links at the point of ingress. Content uploads are secured by inserting an AV scan step into the upload path, then allowing or blocking and quarantining the file, based on the verdict.

“Real-time scanning at the point of ingress is achieved by enforcing controls across multiple entry points in Salesforce,” says Joerg Schneider-Simon, CTO, bowbridge. “In addition to standard UI uploads, bowbridge scans APIs, Experience Cloud, email-to-case, mobile, and integrations.” 

Every file that gets into Salesforce is saved into the same database. Bowbridge has a trigger on that database and scans every file that gets inserted or updated. For integration, we scan the  files that come from the Integration *into* salesforce only (same for APIs, etc.)

Best Salesforce App for Data Privacy: Salesforce Shield

Salesforce Shield is a powerful new suite of advanced data security products that enhance the built-in security of Salesforce. This data privacy suite helps you proactively defend against internal and external data threats, navigate compliance with evolving data privacy regulations and secure Agentforce.

With this powerful suite of four data security products, you can monitor, encrypt, and classify with ease, safeguarding your critical and sensitive data assets. Here’s what else you can do with Shield:

• Introduce comprehensive security for critical data in Salesforce and get a real-time pulse on who has access to what data, when.
• Report on unauthorized or undesired activity to prevent, address, and monitor threats to sensitive information.
• Retain data history and strengthen data integrity for forensic-level compliance.
• Encrypt sensitive data while managing your own encryption keys and identify and categorize critical data quickly to fortify your security posture.
• Prepare your business and data for a secure and seamless Agentforce deployment.

You can extend the power of Shield with bowbridge Anti-Virus for Salesforce, Salesforce Security Center, Privacy Center, and Data Mask and Seed.

Best Salesforce Apps for Backup and Recovery 

 You have a couple of choices here, depending on what’s the best fit for your Salesforce tech stack. 

Salesforce Backup and Recover (formerly Own Recover/OwnBackup) is a native data protection suite fully integrated into the Salesforce platform. It provides automated, daily backups and rapid recovery of critical CRM data, metadata, and files. The service prevents data loss while maintaining strict enterprise compliance.

Backup and Recover automates daily backups happen smoothly, with hourly backups available for those needing tighter protection. Smart Alerts flag issues before they escalate, such as catching an accidental mass deletion. You can get side-by-side comparisons between backup snapshots to understand what’s changed, and get more granular control for restoring specific fields while keeping complex Salesforce data relationships intact.

Gearset Backup and Restore is a component of Gearset, a platform that supports the full DevOps lifecycle. Data backups, metadata backups, archiving, data masking, and sandbox seeding are all part of the platform, and can be purchased as standalone tools that have feature parity with Salesforce Backup and Recover.

Depending on the kind of restoration needed, teams can use four different data recovery workflows in Gearset Backup and Restore. Metadata restoration is intuitive, with full visualization of the items being restored from backups to orgs. When you restore data, Salesforce treats it as new record creation, potentially triggering business logic such as firing a “welcome” email to long-standing customers. To prevent these issues, Gearset helps you temporarily disable validation rules, duplicate rules, triggers, and flows during a restore.

If you also are interested in a Salesforce DevOps platform, then you can cover a lot of bases with Gearset.

Best Salesforce App for Data Management and Compliance: Salesforce Privacy Center

Privacy Center simplifies the management of personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data in your production org to maintain customer trust. 

Data admins can de-identify sensitive data in production, delete excess data, simplify customer privacy requests like Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) or Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR) with automated data management features in the Salesforce Privacy Center.

It uses Agentforce AI for continuous compliance oversight. AI agents autonomously scan your org's metadata, policies, and system context against regulatory frameworks (e.g., GDPR) to quickly identify data privacy gaps and reduce manual effort. 

Manage customer consent and proactively detect and remediate data privacy gaps to achieve compliance faster with Privacy Center.

Best Salesforce App for Data Loss Prevention (DLP)–NightFall

Nightfall™ for Salesforce DLP is a data security and compliance platform that helps find and protect your most sensitive data (customer data, PII, PHI, Secrets and Keys, etc.) in Salesforce clouds, preventing exfiltration to maintain customer trust.

Get real-time visibility of sensitive data in any object, field or attachments across production and sandbox organizations in Salesforce. Nightfall delivers proactive protection with actionable context and insights in the Nightfall dashboard, SIEM, email or Slack. Eliminate data security risks and ensure continuous compliance with PCI DSS and other regulatory requirements.

Best Salesforce Project Management App: Inspire Planner

Inspire Planner delivers structured project management and advanced Gantt-based project and time tracking, native to Salesforce. 

Inspire Planner is a project management app built for simplicity, speed, and scheduling power inside Salesforce. From onboarding to execution, Inspire Planner helps PMOs, IT teams, and Salesforce Admins plan smarter, track time accurately, and deliver projects on time, without the complexity of a professional services automation (PSA) tool. 

Inspire Planner delivers powerful Gantt charts, intuitive task management, and native time tracking seamlessly in Salesforce.

Best Salesforce Texting App: 360 SMS

Salesforce-native 360 SMS app automates texting and phone calling workflows to save time, improve response rates, and engage customers faster.

Send and receive bulk SMS campaigns, manage WhatsApp messaging, and telephony all in one place with the 360 SMS App for Salesforce Messaging.

• Nurture leads with real conversations and reduce no-shows
• AI-powered message language translation
• Multichannel messaging
• Boost sales with widespread presence

360 SMS is part of a large suite of products by 360 Degree Cloud, a certified Salesforce Summit Partner, ISV, PDO, Managed services provider, and official Salesforce Reseller with 14+ years of experience.

Best Salesforce Account Management App: Staircase AI

Staircase AI by Gainsight provides unbiased, automated customer intelligence.

Seamlessly connect to all your communication channels–including email, calendar, tickets, chats, and video calls–and analyze them with Staircase AI. Gainsight’s innovative technology helps companies prevent churn by identifying at-risk customers, creating systematic processes to mitigate concerns, and efficiently ramping up engagement efforts.

Staircase AI is part of the company’s Customer Cloud which offers a powerful set of solutions focused on customer success, product experience, revenue optimization, and customer data, that together enable businesses to put the customer at the center of everything they do.

Best Salesforce DevOps App: Gearset DevOps Platform

Gearset is the complete Salesforce DevOps platform, trusted by thousands of enterprises to manage the full DevOps lifecycle with solutions for deployments, CI/CD, testing, backups, archiving, monitoring, sandbox seeding and more.

Built for Salesforce deployments and release management and designed with deep Salesforce expertise, Gearset DevOps helps you automate, backup, test, and seed–all in one intuitive platform. With a 98% deployment success rate and advanced security features, your Salesforce orgs are in safe hands. Manage your entire Salesforce DevOps lifecycle on one platform: Gearset covers every stage—Plan, Build, Validate, Release, Operate, and Observe—to improve performance across the whole lifecycle.

How to Choose the Best Salesforce Apps for Your Business

Choosing the best Salesforce apps for your business usually comes down to fit, trust, and total cost. It could be as simple as using the checklist below, or you may need to engage a consultant.

• Start with the job-to-be-done: what process are you fixing (sales, service, security/compliance, data, docs, integrations)?
• Confirm it’s vetted: look for apps that have passed Salesforce AppExchange Security Review.
• Check adoption signals: ratings, review volume, release frequency, and a clear roadmap.
• Validate compatibility: your clouds, permissions model, objects (Files vs Attachments), and any required integrations.
• Pilot first: run a sandbox/POC with real data scenarios and success criteria.
• Operational readiness: support SLAs, implementation effort, and ongoing admin overhead.

For large, multi-system programs (especially integrations, security, and multi-cloud), use the AppExchange consulting partner directory and filter by skills and industry.

Salesforce highlights global strategic integrators like Accenture, IBM, PwC, and Slalom for complex integrations involving MuleSoft/API-led integration, multiple organizations, heavy security and compliance regulations, and for Data Cloud and Industry Cloud.

Should You Install Lots of Salesforce Apps?

Every enterprise needs a trusted CRM foundation but every one is unique. That’s why there is an abundance of vetted apps on AgentExchange to complement Salesforce with tools, security, and expertise to fit a broad range of customers’ needs.

The goal is to install as many apps as you need but make sure each Salesforce app has a specific function that doesn’t add risk or admin sprawl. Choose carefully because too many apps often means overlapping features and more permissioning, data exposure, and upgrades to manage.

Along with the Quick Checklist above, here are three rules of thumb for success:

1. Install fewer, higher-impact apps that are well supported and security reviewed.
2. Avoid duplicates (two apps doing the same thing in different ways).
3. Pilot first in a sandbox with a clear success checklist (performance, permissions, reporting, user adoption).

Too Many Security and Compliance Apps Increase Risk

Security and compliance is one area where too many apps can actually increase risk (more data access, more configs, more vendors). Instead, rely on native Salesforce controls where practical and add only one partner app per gap. That is to say: the same partner app could cover multiple security gaps but the same gap can’t have multiple partners apps.

Make sure your add-on apps are AppExchange security reviewed and support the specific Salesforce data types (objects) and entry points (channels) you use.

“bowbridge scans file uploads for malware, cross-site scripting and other threats across all channels. This ensures customers are compliant with the relevant controls in all major frameworks like NIS2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA and others," says Joerg Schneider-Simon, CTO. “Basically we scan everything an app touches.”

For example bowbridge fills Salesforce file security gaps for malware scanning and URL reputation by supporting Salesforce data types and entry points as follows:

• Objects/data: what the app touches like files (content version/content document) and attachments (plus email attachments if you use Email-to-Case), email messages, and knowledge.
• Channels/entry: how data enters Salesforce, every way a file can arrive, like UI uploads, drag-and-drop, API/integrations, Experience Cloud, and Email-to-Case, and Mobile.

And, bowbridge gives security admins granular policy controls, plus visibility and audit-ready evidence for compliance.

Protect your Salesforce apps and Agentforce workloads from malware.

Speak to bowbridge about dedicated Salesforce content security for your business-critical applications and data.