Freelance Salesforce consultant or atelier: you talk to the people who write the code

Cloud Atelier is an IT consulting studio based in Rome, founded by Leonardo Marchitelli. We work remotely with companies across Italy and the rest of Europe, in English and Italian. On Salesforce we cover administration and configuration, Apex, Lightning Web Components, Flow, integrations, Agentforce and ongoing support.

We grew out of freelance work and kept the useful part of it: the person who reads your request writes the quote, follows the build through to release and answers your email six months later. No account manager translating in the middle, no handover where half the context goes missing.

The founder's background is on LinkedIn, for anyone who wants to check it.

A freelance makes sense when the work has a recognisable shape and one experienced person is enough: an enhancement, a component, technical backup for an in-house admin. The limit is that person's hours, and the fact that if they stop, everything stops.

An atelier makes sense when you want the same direct relationship but the work spans several skills: an integration between Salesforce and a Microsoft system, a portal, an app connected to the CRM, an internal back-office tool. Each part is handled by someone who knows that platform, and you have a single point of contact.

A large agency is the right call when the project needs many people at once for months: a greenfield rollout across multiple clouds, change management, dozens of users to train, several workstreams running side by side. If your request is that kind, we say so before you spend three weeks finding out.

Our Salesforce rates are public: €40 an hour for consulting, development and administration when the scope stays open-ended, with a timesheet. A small enhancement starts at €260 fixed. An AMS plan with 8 hours included is €370 a month. A first Agentforce use case starts at €1,400, an integration at €1,900. All prices exclude VAT.

Some worked examples, with timings: a new field with a validation rule and a report, €260 in 1-2 days; a Screen Flow replacing a manual process, from €520 in 2-3 days; a three-level approval process with alerts, from €680 in 3-4 days; a Lightning Web Component reading an external API, from €1,050 in 4-6 days; a two-object, two-way ERP integration, from €1,900 in 1-2 weeks.

The rule is simple: if the scope can be written down, the price is fixed and the estimating risk is ours. If it can't, it's hourly with a ceiling you approve before we pass it. There is no minimum budget — a single validation rule is a legitimate request.

Administration and configuration: profiles and permission sets, objects and fields, page layouts, reports and dashboards, untangling automations that overlap. Development: Apex with its tests, Lightning Web Components, triggers, batch and scheduled jobs, Flow when it's the right tool and code when it isn't.

Integrations with ERPs, back-office systems, e-commerce platforms and external APIs over REST or SOAP, with error handling and retries written into the quote rather than discovered afterwards. Agentforce and AI, starting from one measurable use case instead of a platform programme. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud and CPQ. Outside Salesforce we work on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, and we build iOS and Android apps, websites, bespoke CRMs and back-office software: those are quoted case by case.

Everything goes through a sandbox, gets tested, and reaches production with a way back. We use a dedicated user with only the permissions the job needs, removed when the work ends, and your data never leaves your org.

With a freelance it's a real risk, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. One person gets ill, takes holidays, and has full days. An agency always has someone who picks up, even if it's often someone who has never seen your org.

We limit it in two ways. The first is the team: if the person on your work is unavailable, a colleague from the studio picks it up, with the documentation already there. The second is the contract: work runs in milestones, so you're never paying far ahead of what you've received; everything we build stays in your systems and your repositories, with credentials in your name; we document as we go, in English or Italian. And if something slips a delivery date, you hear it the same day, not on the deadline.

On capacity we're just as direct: we take on a limited number of jobs in parallel, and when we can't start by your date we write that in the quote instead of accepting the work and quietly running late. A fast no costs you less than a slow yes.

Italian VAT number and proper electronic invoicing (VAT ID 17935231005). EU companies with a valid VAT number are invoiced without Italian VAT, under the reverse charge mechanism. Bank transfer at 30 days: fixed-price work is invoiced on delivery, longer projects against agreed milestones, AMS monthly in advance.

We sign your NDA before receiving any detail about your systems, or we provide a mutual one. Scope, price and delivery date go in writing before anything is touched: if it isn't written down, it isn't agreed. Anything we deliver comes with 30 days of free fixes if it doesn't behave as agreed.

Getting started takes no tender and no three meetings: a description of what should be true at the end is enough. You get a written quote within one business day, or a short call if something genuinely needs clarifying first.

Tell us what needs to happen and on which system: which clouds or applications you use, who the users are, and the outcome you expect. Three lines are enough to get a number; the more detail you give, the sharper that number is.

We reply within one business day with scope, price and delivery date, or we tell you this isn't a job for us and why. Looking at your request is free and commits you to nothing: what you send us is used only to answer you.

A freelancer has a physical limit: one person's hours. Above a certain size, an integration with several systems, a portal, a migration, the work does not fit in those hours without stretching timelines beyond reason.

On these projects you have a single point of contact who signs the quote and answers for delivery. The work is split between the team's architects and developers, each on the part they do best, and we state it in the quote with names and roles. It is not an agency: there is no account manager, no team you have never seen, and the code is reviewed line by line before release.

The project is split into phases, each with a fixed price and a written date. You pay one phase at a time, and at every phase you can stop with something working in production. Everything lives in your systems, with users and credentials in your name, so nobody is held hostage, not even by us.