Certifying Your Application
The AppExchange Certification Program has been developed to ensure that commercial apps published on the AppExchange meet important security and quality standards. Apps that require external systems integration to Salesforce must be certified before they can go live on the AppExchange.
AppExchange Certification:
- Empowers customers to trust third-party apps to work with their Salesforce applications
- Helps partners succeed in delivering apps that span multiple systems and meet the needs of salesforce.com customers
- Allows salesforce.com to facilitate open relationships between customers, third-party developers, and application providers
NOTE: Participation in the certification program is required for all commercial apps published on the AppExchange.
The fee for certification is $5,000 per app, which covers security certification. (Native apps, which are built entirely on the Apex platform and created with no code, do not need to be security certified.)
The AppExchange is built on a shared, multi-tenant infrastructure, so apps delivered through it must meet specific standards of trust and quality before they can be deployed. The AppExchange partner team developed the criteria and processes that are the basis for security certification.
Applications that were listed on the AppExchange before security certification was required must be certified by the end 2007 or by the application's listing anniversary date (whichever comes first).
The security assessment required for certification consists of qualitative assessments of operating policies as well as active system and network tests.
The areas covered during security certification testing include:
- Network configuration, IDs, and firewall setup.
- Host operating system and component configuration, and patching/maintenance
- Application architecture, development, and authentication
- Operating procedures and data access controls
To learn more about security certification, visit the Apex wiki.
To get started with the certification process, complete the partner inquiry form.