AppExchange did not disappear in April 2026. It became one part of AgentExchange, which Salesforce now runs as a single catalog for classic apps, Slack apps, consulting partners, agents, subagents and MCP servers. The old appexchange.salesforce.com address still opens, with a notice about the new name, and your installed packages are still managed from Installed Packages in Setup.
The name change is the boring part. The interesting part for admins and developers is that the same marketplace now sells things that behave very differently once they are inside your org.
A package and an agent are not the same kind of risk
A managed package adds metadata. You can open it in Setup, see the objects, fields and Apex it brought in, and upgrade on your own schedule. Once you understand what it installed, it mostly does what it did yesterday.
An agent or an MCP tool is closer to a contractor. What matters is what it does at runtime: which records it touches, which external systems it calls, and whose permissions it uses while doing it. Reading the listing page tells you very little about that.
Six checks we run before anything from AgentExchange goes near production
1. Security review status, and whether the listing is private. Public listings that need a security review must pass it before distribution. Private listings get no review at all. A passed review is a floor, not a promise.
2. Which profiles get access at install. Enterprise, Unlimited, Performance and Developer Editions let you pick profiles. Professional and Group Editions install with full access for everyone. We install to admins only in a sandbox first and widen access later.
3. What data it reads and where that data goes. Ask the publisher for the objects and fields it reads and writes, the external endpoints it calls, and anything it stores outside Salesforce. If it connects to Slack, you now have a second system to review.
4. Who the agent runs as. Agents run as a user. A new Agent User starts with very little access, which is good, but service agents serving unauthenticated or merely verified visitors run with the agent's own permissions, not the visitor's. Verification identifies a person. It does not decide what that person may see. For MCP servers, the package can carry the server definition and a permission set, but tool actions and gateway policies are configured per org, and tools stay off until an admin selects them.
5. The pricing model. Many new listings price per action or per process using Flex Credits. Ask whether those charges stack on top of your own Agentforce consumption before you sign a private offer.
6. Reviews, publisher and package type. Read recent reviews from companies on your edition, use the test drive, and confirm whether the package is managed. Components from publicly listed managed packages do not count against your custom object and tab limits. Unmanaged and unlisted packages do.
A short evaluation sequence for agents and MCP tools
- Write down the job in one sentence and one success measure.
- Install in a sandbox with non-sensitive data.
- Review the agent user and permission sets, and add access on purpose.
- Test as an anonymous visitor, a verified visitor and a logged-in user, and try to pull someone else's record.
- Allowlist only the MCP tools you need.
- Turn on logging and read transcripts weekly during the pilot.
- Model the cost at month-six volume, not week-one volume.
- Agree on the off switch before go-live.
What we see in practice
On one consumer electronics project, Service Cloud, CPQ and Agentforce handle 430,000 orders and 280,000 contacts. At that scale, the agent's permission design was the main decision, not which listing to install. On a B2B distribution project, the agent was only as good as the pricing data it could reach, which first meant getting contract rates out of spreadsheets.
Our rule is simple: nothing from AgentExchange goes straight to production, every agent gets a least-privilege user, and someone owns weekly transcript review for the first month.
The full guide, with the comparison table, the partner-side changes and all sources, is on our blog: Salesforce AgentExchange: what replaced AppExchange and 6 checks before you install. If you are planning Agentforce costs, our Flex Credits explainer covers the consumption model.
Ankur Pandey, Ashapura Softech. We are a Salesforce consulting partner.
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