How Salesforce Compares to the Competition
When it comes to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, choosing the best CRM system for your business can be confusing. There are many options to choose from, however, some CRM systems may only meet a fraction of your business needs, leaving staff, users, and your customers more frustrated than when you didn’t have a CRM.
Here at Canvas Cloud, we are confident in saying that while Salesforce may not be a one-size-fits-all CRM system, it definitely is a one-size-fits-most, and the market reflects that sentiment as Salesforce continues to rank #1 among other CRM systems. Let’s break down how Salesforce compares to a couple of other top choices for Small Businesses and Nonprofits.
HUBSPOT VS SALESFORCE
Hubspot originally started as a marketing automation tool and gradually introduced CRM functionalities for sales and lead generation. Although there is a free version of Hubspot, it does not provide the features that most small businesses need to meet their goals. Once you get into the paid tiers of Hubspot, pricing starts to become an apples-to-apples comparison with Salesforce, but the feature set is still an apples-to-rocket-science comparison. Salesforce offers many more options when it comes to customized configuration, as their platform can be built to handle nearly all business use cases, whether inside of Salesforce, or through integrations to outside systems.
When Hubspot users add on additional features on an a la carte basis, they can expect to see a steep increase in pricing. Salesforce instead uses a packaged subscription model where fees are tiered based on the level of a few factors, such as the level of complex processes a business may have, or whether they need to integrate with outside systems.
Additionally, when you sign up for Salesforce, you get a dedicated account executive to help answer questions, along with access to Trailhead, an extremely robust and completely free learning library that can guide users and admins through almost every area in Salesforce. On the other hand, Hubspot does offer a knowledge base of articles to assist with setup and configuration, along with their Academy of courses and video tutorials. When comparing the two offerings, they do have similarities, with Salesforce edging out Hubspot based on the approach of taking users one level deeper in their questions, using a series of real-world examples and scenarios, and approaching upon the why someone would want to set up a feature, rather than just how to set it up.
Lastly, when it comes to reporting, Salesforce takes the lead over Hubspot. HubSpot's basic CRM contains only pre-configured reports for sales activities and sales pipelines. Even at the highest licensing level, HubSpot still has far fewer customization options for reporting than Salesforce.
Verdict of Hubspot vs Salesforce
If your business is primarily focused on marketing, has very simple processes, and has no true need for deep customer relationship management or integrations to additional systems, HubSpot might be the better fit. If you’re looking for a CRM system that can flex and grow with your business at every step of the way, Salesforce is worth your time to investigate.
MICROSOFT DYNAMICS VS SALESFORCE
When it comes to Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, you will find a large number of similarities, as they are the most alike when it comes to CRM systems. Dynamics is a Microsoft product, and built with developers in mind, so the sky's the limit when it comes to possible options and capabilities. If you can dream it, you can probably build it in Dynamics. However, that flexibility comes at a much higher overhead cost of maintenance. To be fair, you can also build almost anything you can dream of within Salesforce as well, it just might not be as a straight-lined path from A to B as it would be in Dynamics, but will likely have less maintenance.
Salesforce’s Sales Cloud offers all the essential features you need for a CRM system, such as managing leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes, and cases, as well as email integration with Gmail and Outlook. Additionally, Service Cloud offers a number of additional customer service/support features such as the ability to chat with customers across multiple messaging platforms, including social media and SMS, as well as extending into a knowledgebase for self-service. Not only does Salesforce offer customer-facing communications, but also contains an internal social network called Chatter where employees can collaborate and share information surrounding your customers with the rest of their team to keep communication relevant, instead of adding another email to your inbox.
What really sets Salesforce apart is its user-friendly Lightning interface, which is intuitive to most users and allows them to flow through the system from one step to the next with as few clicks as possible, without the need for hunting and searching. In addition, if you’re a Nonprofit Organization, Salesforce provides an extra layer of functionality specific to nonprofits in managing Donations, Grants, Volunteers, Programs, and more, in a free extension app called the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP).
Once an organization starts comparing Dynamics to Salesforce, one major question that always works its way to the surface is pricing, especially for small and midsize businesses. For one, Microsoft’s licensing model is much more complex than that of Salesforce, and changes much more frequently, but once you boil it down, the licensing costs in one system for functionality are near the equivalent in the other system. Salesforce does have a lower cost entry tier available, their Essentials license at $25/user/mo, compared to Dynamics $65/user/mo entry level price for Sales Professional, however at the mid-tier licensing level, it’s much more even. The one thing that tips the scale into Salesforce’s favor is Total Cost of Ownership with long-term maintenance - Dynamics will require that you have developers on staff to maintain the system as new changes are rolled out, whereas with Salesforce, updates are rolled out in a controlled approach with the majority being “inert” that require an admin user to enable.
Verdict of Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce
If you’re already an established “Microsoft Shop”, have dedicated and available .Net developers on staff to reduce the overhead with custom development and ongoing maintenance, want the ultimate flexibility in your approach and solution, and have the budget to back it up, Dynamics might be for you. If you want a solution that “just works”, Salesforce is what you seek. Salesforce is unanimously the better choice when it comes to starting small and having a CRM that will grow with your business at any stage, with less overhead, and you might be surprised by the number of options and integrations that Salesforce has to offer, even if you are already a Microsoft customer.
WE ARE HERE TO HELP
If you are a small to midsize business or a nonprofit, we understand there are many variables that go into the selection of a new system, especially one that could serve as your central hub of operations. Let us help you find a solution that is within your budget and customizable to meet your business needs!
Find out more about how we can help by connecting with us at www.canvascloud.com.
