Salesforce Document Generation: 7 Questions to Ask Before Choosing an App

Written by

Peter Gascoyne

August 28, 2026

Evaluating document generation apps for Salesforce? These 7 questions cover architecture, templates, security, usage limits, and pricing, and will save you from an expensive mistake.

Summary

The AppExchange has plenty of document generation options for Salesforce, from long-established suites to lightweight single-purpose tools. On a feature grid they look similar. In practice they differ enormously in architecture, pricing model, and what daily use feels like for the person who has to maintain the templates. These seven questions will get you to the right answer for your org faster than any comparison table, and the last section covers how to run the evaluation itself.

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1. Does document generation happen inside Salesforce?

Some solutions generate documents natively on-platform. Others send your record data to an external service, merge it there, and send the file back. Both models are common and both can be legitimate, but they are not the same conversation with your security team.

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Ask exactly where the merge happens, what data is transmitted, where it is stored in transit, and for how long. If the answer involves anything outside your org, budget time for a security review before rollout rather than after.

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DocGen by RavenApps is 100% Salesforce native. No external servers, no callouts, no third-party processing, so your data never leaves your org.

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2. What are templates, and who can edit them?

This is the question that decides whether document generation becomes a bottleneck. A proprietary template designer means training, a limited pool of people who can make changes, and a support ticket every time terms and conditions are reworded. Templates that are ordinary .docx files can be authored by anyone in the business who can use Word or Google Docs.

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It is also a lock-in question. Templates in a proprietary format are hard to take with you if you change vendor.

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DocGen templates are just .docx files, designed in the tools your team already knows.

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3. Are there usage limits or per-document fees?

Per-document pricing punishes success. The more your team adopts it, the more you pay, and finance ends up asking why the bill grew. Check for generation caps, template count limits, storage arrangements, and what happens when you exceed them mid-quarter.

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DocGen has no usage limits: unlimited templates and generations, stored in standard Salesforce Files.

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4. What output formats do you get?

PDF is right for final, polished documents that should not be altered. A .docx is right when the recipient genuinely needs to edit, for example a colleague adjusting terms on an order form before it goes out. Most teams need both, ideally generated from the same template so you are not maintaining two versions of the same document.

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Look past the format list to the detail: conditional sections, repeating table rows for line items, locale-correct dates and currencies, clickable links, and file naming that pulls from the record rather than defaulting to something generic.

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DocGen generates both .docx and PDF, with conditional content, repeat rows for line items and child records, clickable links, dynamic file names, and international date and address formatting.

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5. How does it respect Salesforce security?

Generation should run as the user, respecting field-level security and record access, so that people can only merge data they are already permitted to see. Output should land in standard Files where your sharing rules, permissions, and encryption already apply, rather than in a custom store with its own separate access model.

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It is worth asking whether the package has been through Salesforce's security review, and confirming that on the listing itself.

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DocGen does both, and the public package has been reviewed and approved through Salesforce's security review process.

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6. How are templates managed and versioned?

Templates change constantly: pricing updates, legal wording, a new logo. When that happens, can you upload a new version with full history, or are you overwriting a file and hoping nobody needs the old one? Can you see which template produced a document six months ago?

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Also ask the deployment question. Templates should move cleanly between sandbox and production and survive a sandbox refresh, otherwise every refresh becomes a rebuild.

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DocGen Manager handles upload, versioning, and management in one place, built on standard Salesforce Files, and templates deploy cleanly between orgs.

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7. Can you validate before you buy?

A restricted trial tells you very little. What you need is a full-featured sandbox install where you can take your own real template, point it at your own objects and fields, and see whether the output is genuinely what you would send a customer.

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DocGen is free in sandboxes with full features and no time limit. Pricing is $5 per user per month, or $3 as an add-on to Grids, billed yearly with a 10 user minimum and 15% support and maintenance.

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How to Run the Evaluation

Feature checklists reward whoever wrote the longest list. A short, practical evaluation tells you more:

Pick your hardest real document, not a sample. Usually that is the one with line items, conditional clauses, and something legal in it.
Rebuild it as a template in each shortlisted tool, and time how long it takes.
Generate against three records: a simple one, a complicated one, and one with missing data. How the tool handles the third is the most revealing.
Hand it to a non-admin and ask them to change a paragraph. If they cannot, you have found your future bottleneck.
Ask your security team to review the architecture answer from question one before you get to contract stage.

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