Person Accounts versus business accounts
Key Takeaway
Business accounts are for companies or other entities, and person accounts are for individual consumers. You can use both in one org, but you can't turn person accounts off after you turn them on.
By default, every Salesforce account is a business account. A business account stores information about a company or other entity, and you track the people who work there as contacts. Person accounts let you track individual consumers by combining certain account fields and contact fields into one record. An org can use both types side by side, but turning on person accounts is permanent and changes how some features behave.
Business accounts and person accounts
Person accounts extend the standard business-to-business account features so you can store information about individual consumers. Each person account represents one person, so it combines certain account and contact fields into one record.
| Business accounts | Person accounts | |
|---|---|---|
| Stores information about | Companies or other entities | Individual consumers, such as a solo contractor |
| Contacts | The people who work for the company or entity | None of its own |
| Available in | All editions | Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
Both types are available in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.