How to Buy Salesforce Stock (CRM) in 2026

How to buy Salesforce stock

1. Open your brokerage app: Log in to your brokerage account where you handle your investments. If you don't have one yet, take a look at our favorite brokers and trading platforms to find the right one for you.
2. Search for Salesforce: Enter the ticker "CRM" into the search bar to bring up the stock's trading page.
3. Decide how many shares to buy: Consider your investment goals and how much of your portfolio you want to allocate to this stock.
4. Select order type: Choose between a market order to buy at the current price or a limit order to specify the maximum price you're willing to pay.
5. Submit your order: Confirm the details and submit your buy order.
6. Review your purchase: Check your portfolio to ensure your order was filled as expected and adjust your investment strategy accordingly.

Should you invest in Salesforce?

Whether you should invest in Salesforce is a fair question. After all, if you’d bought $10,000 in Salesforce stock when its IPO hit the markets in 2004, you'd be sitting on a $645,000 nest egg.

But past performance is no guarantee of future results, and investing in a particular stock is an extremely personal decision that depends on factors such as your time horizon, risk tolerance, portfolio composition, and beliefs about the future of any particular industry or company.

You may want to consider investing in Salesforce if:

• You want to invest in a company that’s tied to a long-term secular trend like cloud computing.
• Your company uses Salesforce products, and you believe they’re superior to other offerings.
• You believe the company will take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) innovations to help customers automate processes, make faster decisions, and provide superior customer service.
• You’re encouraged as an investor by the company’s plans to pump the brakes on its mergers and acquisitions spree.
• You understand that Salesforce isn’t likely to continue growing as quickly as it has over the past two decades.
• You think Salesforce stock can outperform the S&P 500 over the long term.
• You’re a fan of founder-led companies and believe that Marc Benioff can continue to steer Salesforce in the right direction.

Here are a few reasons you might want to pass on buying Salesforce stock:

• You don’t understand exactly what Salesforce software does, or you doubt that its products add much value.
• You’re not sure that the cloud computing market will continue to grow steadily.
• You believe AI is overhyped or likely to damage the economy.
• You think Salesforce competitors are gaining ground and will soon surpass its market share.
• You’re looking for more substantial and reliable dividend income.
• You think Salesforce’s acquisitions have overextended the company.
• You have doubts about the company’s ability to match or even approach its earlier rapid growth.

Is Salesforce profitable?

Salesforce might not be posting the large profits it reported earlier in its existence, but it’s important to note that it’s still a profitable company. It recorded almost $10 billion in revenue during its most recent fourth quarter that ended Jan. 31, 2025, an 8% year-over-year increase -- healthy by most standards, but short of the 20% returns investors routinely enjoyed over the last decade.

Given that profit drives stock prices, the company’s latest returns should indicate that the company will continue to grow, even if its boom years are over. Investors should also keep in mind that even though Salesforce is a giant, it’s not immune to the recent headwinds faced by the cloud computing industry.

When considering profitability, investors also should keep in mind that the company has slowed its acquisitions spree, which had acted as a drag on net income. Meanwhile, it’s increased its free cash flow by more than 30% year over year, and operating margins have improved dramatically.

Does Salesforce pay a dividend?

Blue chip companies generate a fair amount of cash, and investors generally expect some of that extra cash to be returned to them in the form of profits. Salesforce only began declaring a dividend in February 2024.

The company announced a $0.42-per-share quarterly dividend in February 2025, paid on April 24 to shareholders of record as of April 10. Although the company’s annual dividend yield amounts to a paltry 0.6% (the S&P 500 dividend yield is around 1.3%), the change may have helped appease activist investors who were pushing for significant changes.

How to invest in Salesforce through ETFs

Not everyone wants to be an active stock picker and manage a portfolio of individual stocks. Thanks to exchange-traded funds (ETFs), you don't have to be an active investor. These passive investment vehicles allow you to gain some exposure to a company through a thematic approach or broader market strategy.

As of mid-2025, 421 ETFs reported holdings of Salesforce stock. The largest was the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI +0.66%), which held roughly 29 million shares worth $7.7 billion, about 0.45% of its total assets under management. Funds with larger exposure to Salesforce included the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV +0.54%), with 7.8%, about $898 million, of its holdings invested in the cloud-based company, worth about $898 million.

Will Salesforce stock split?

Trying to predict a stock split for a particular company is always tricky. Splits depend on a number of variables that make their timing extremely hard to predict. Although plans for a split haven't been announced, it’s fairly safe to assume that Salesforce stock may split in the not-too-distant future for the following reasons:

• The company’s first (and only) split occurred more than a decade ago, when it announced a 4-for-1 split in April 2013.
• Since the 2013 split, its share price has risen 574%, more than triple the Dow Jones Industrial Average return over the same period.
• The company’s shares were trading for roughly $275 in mid-2025. The last time it split, its shares were selling in the mid-$40 range. One of the primary reasons for a split is to make shares more accessible to retail investors by lowering the price of individual shares.

So will Salesforce split its stock? Almost certainly. When will Salesforce split its stock? Who knows.

The bottom line

The COVID-19 pandemic was brutal for many stocks, even those focused on cloud computing. Salesforce shares fell almost 50% in 2022 to about $133 per share before rebounding to around $275 by mid-2025. The increase is likely far from a dead-cat bounce, but it’s also not a sign that the company is going to re-establish the rocketlike growth trajectory of its earlier years.

Investors who believe the San Francisco-based customer relationship management giant will be able to leverage AI and stay ahead of its competitors should consider the stock as a long-term buy-and-hold proposition that’s likely to have its ups and downs as its market continues to evolve.

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