Service Cloud vs. Force.com

Question

Problem:

If the only standard objects I am planning to use in an application are the following:

 1. Contacts
 2. Case
 3. Accounts

Is it worth it to pay for a service cloud license? I am sure its not.

What I am thinking:

I am thinking to use the force.com Enterprise licenses instead of Service Cloud. The max. number of objects being speculated are less than 10 at this moment.

Questions:

1. Can the existing Salesforce Case Management functionality be custom built?
2. If it can be, what kind of effort would be required? Also, any fall backs if someone has implemented this already will be greatly appreciated.
3. If we decide to custom build this, would I miss any existing features that service cloud might provide?
4. What functionality does Service Cloud provide out of the box that can not be rebuilt?

Current Stack:

Below are the components we plan on using for the application at the moment:

1. Site.com
2. Customer Communities / Partner Communities
3. Service Cloud / Force.com (custom application)

Answer 1

The main thing that the Service Cloud feature license will give the user is the ability to use a Service Cloud Console. If you are operating a call center with a high volume of calls per agent, then I would strongly suggest using the Service Cloud Console. Even more so, if they handle concurrent calls. This is the main thing that feature license gives the user. You could custom code your own pages/tabs and group them in your own App as something that helps the agents productivity, but the Service Cloud Console app is going to be way better than anything you or I can do (Try it out!). :)

Regardless of whether they have the feature license or not, your users will have access to the Case object if they have a full Salesforce license. If you don't purchase the Salesforce Service Cloud feature license, your users will still be able to access Cases, record activities on them, etc. Note that Salesforce Platform licenses do not give access to the Case object.

You can look at the user license help page for more about licenses and the feature license help page for more about feature licenses.

If you are trying to save money, you may want to consider the Service Cloud feature licenses for the agents taking the calls and not for the others that are only periodically reviewing things and aren't in a time crunch.