Business accounts versus Person accounts
Key Takeaway
A business account represents a company, and its people are separate contact records. A person account represents one individual, with account and contact details on a single record. After you enable person accounts, you can't disable them.
By default, Salesforce accounts are business accounts. They store information about companies or other entities. Person accounts support business-to-consumer models. They store information about individual consumers by combining certain account fields and contact fields into one record. An org can use both types side by side. Turning on person accounts is permanent. Many features also behave differently after you turn them on.
Business accounts and person accounts
The two account types differ in who the record represents and where the person's details live.
| Business account | Person account | |
|---|---|---|
| Represents | A company or other entity | One individual consumer |
| People's details | Separate contact records | Account and contact details on one record |
| Editions | All editions | Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
You can use business accounts and person accounts in the same org. Person accounts are available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.
Each person account consists of one account and one contact, so it counts against both account storage and contact storage.