Salesforce Competitors: Top 20 Salesforce Alternatives

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July 5, 2024

Saying Salesforce is a big name in the CRM software space is like saying Amazon is a popular shopping site — it’s pretty obvious to most people who know anything about CRM. But it doesn’t have to be the only option. For those who may be looking for something else, we gathered data on the best Salesforce competitors to help you find the right match for your organization.

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Top Salesforce competitors and alternativesHere’s what we’ll cover in this article:

Why Consider Alternatives to Salesforce?

Before diving into our Salesforce alternatives, you may be wondering, why do we have a bone to pick with Salesforce? Let me assure you that we don’t! Salesforce is an excellent CRM system that provides standard-setting service to thousands of organizations.

On top of that, Salesforce is the clear leader in the CRM industry. It ranked as the number one CRM provider for the ninth consecutive time by the International Data Corporation (IDC) as of 2022. Its revenue growth doubled from $13.3 billion in 2019 to $26.5 billion in 2022 — far above any competitors.

But Salesforce is huge – much too big for many SMBs that just want a great CRM without all the bells and whistles. Others may not have the budget for a product like Salesforce’s and instead are seeking more affordable options. And as with any product, some people have had bad experiences with Salesforce and may be looking to switch. Whatever your reasons, we’ve gone the extra mile and compiled a list of the biggest Salesforce competitors, so you don’t have to.

For a thorough rundown of Salesforce’s products, benefits, capabilities and common issues, check out our in-depth review.

Compare CRM Pricing & Costs with our Pricing Guide

What To Look For in a Salesforce Alternative

Even if you’ve decided why you want to look for Salesforce alternatives, it can be tricky to pick the right CRM solution for your business. Every business requires a different customer relationship strategy and this brings us to the next big question: what should you look for in a Salesforce alternative?

Here are the top three features to search for:

1. Reporting and Analytics

The most standard requirement of a business is the need for analytical data and reports. Data-driven decision-making enabled by analytics is the single most important factor that helps build, render and follow the right strategies for developing and maintaining customer relationships.

Salesforce offers a high-grade report which is helpful but can sometimes be complex for teams to understand. In contrast, some Salesforce competitors can provide much simpler, in-depth and relevant insights, which play a key role in developing marketing strategies. Especially when carrying out multiple tasks at once, some tasks are time-sensitive.

Quickly analyzing information in an intuitive and simplified way through reports and dashboards helps teams deliver better and faster results. Easy-to-understand data empowers you and your team members to strategize and handle customer relationships more effectively.

2. Customization

Customization plays an important role throughout the entire process of marketing and sales management. The ability to personalize communications adds great value to the overall customer experience. While the customization options offered by Salesforce are impressive, it’s also difficult to use, and additional customization options can be expensive, especially for SMBs.

Look for software that is easy to use and doesn’t overspend your budget. Customization of marketing communications and campaigns can work wonders for a brand, especially when capturing new leads and retaining existing customers.

3. Customer Support

Customer support is one of the primary features to look for in CRM software. Maintaining and catering to existing customers goes a long way for businesses of all sizes. While Salesforce does an excellent job helping you provide customer support, those features can be costly. Despite offering free support for some parts and providing basic answers through Salesforce University, most problems still require you to make an additional purchase for the service.

The first rule of a successful business is to retain existing customers and cater to them whenever needed. The ideal software should offer an affordable and efficient customer support solution that best addresses the needs of your customers without breaking the bank in the process.

Top Salesforce Alternatives

It’s a good idea to know what your options are and to spend some time comparing CRMs that may be the best match for your organization’s needs. We put together a breakdown of Salesforce vs other CRMs. This article can help you choose a CRM and improve the way you generate, nurture and manage your database of leads, opportunities and customers.

Compare Top CRM Software Leaders

The list of top Salesforce competitors includes:

1. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales helps sales professionals build customer relations, maintain accounts, track contacts, nurture sales leads and create sales collateral. It has a mobile app and offers cloud and self-hosted deployment. Serving small, medium and large organizations across industries, including retail, manufacturing and healthcare, it’s a common Salesforce alternative.

We’ve gone into more detail about the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce if you want more information on how Dynamics 365 holds up as a Salesforce alternative.

Key Features

The software empowers users with native integration, bi-directional data sync with Microsoft Office 365 applications and an impressive host of CRM capabilities. It adds value to sales professionals with sales quotations, partner relationship management (PRM), reporting, sales forecasting, workflow automation, gamification, customization, and much more. The system is built with AI, helping unify solutions and aggregate data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Office 365 and other platforms.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Dashboard

The sales dashboard in Dynamics 365 for Sales.

Primary Benefits

A product visualization feature (in preview for iOS) assists sales representatives in creating 3D digital twins of a product within their customers’ environment. Users can also use pre-built sales solutions on AppSource to extend the platform’s capabilities.

In our research, we found Dynamics 365 for Sales best suited for deployment options, workflows and process automation.

Free trial: 30 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t support native integration with Gmail.
  • Lacks native validation rules.
  • Sending validation rules requires integration with Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

2. Sugar Sell

Sugar Sell is a SaaS sales automation software from SugarCRM, one of the leading names in the customer relationship management domain and a top Salesforce alternative. It provides employees with adequate data to reach out to customers and optimize lead conversion. There’s also a mobile app compatible with Android and iOS devices.

Key Features

Sugar Sell helps users manage leads, create opportunities, and handle account and contact management. Other features include custom reporting, product cataloging, custom quotes and customer account records. It also offers sales forecasting to improve visibility and predictability.

Sugar Sell Lead Management

An overview of lead management in Sugar Sell.

Primary Benefits

Revenue analytics lets users track metrics and employee performance, with notifications about issues or available opportunities. Compatible with both G Suite and Office 365, Sugar Sell allows users to curate and use relevant data to interact with prospects and customers in real time.

It supports more than 30 languages for companies operating in multiple countries. Users can develop integrations via advanced builder tools and reusable integration components to connect with over 200 business systems.

According to our research, Sugar Sell is best for product management.

Free trial: 7 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Upgrades cause uneven functionality across desktop and mobile applications.
  • Tablet browsers aren’t user-friendly.
  • No built-in AI feature.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

3. Insightly

Next on our list of Salesforce competitors is Insightly, a cloud-deployed solution that facilitates sales, marketing and project management, all through a unified dashboard. It helps businesses of all sizes grow by enabling them to maintain customer relationships and deliver projects on time. The suite also features mobile access for Android and iOS devices.

Key Features

With Insightly, you can build custom apps that validate rules, calculate fields, monitor automation and manage dashboard functionality. It also lets you create multi-step business processes through workflow automation, which can send email alerts, update records, and execute custom business logic while syncing to external systems from SAP, Oracle, and others. Automatic lead routing, reporting, email tracking, calendar sync, record linking and more are included as part of the standard package.

Insightly Territory Dashboard

Global view of won opportunities in Insightly.

Primary Benefits

Robust integrations (Microsoft, Google, Mailchimp, Zapier and many others), business card scanning and a third-generation API assist business growth. Its Insightly Voice feature provides a completely integrated CRM telephony solution.

Free trial: Yes.

Free plan: Yes.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t provide native gamification options.
  • Lacks advanced features like custom forecast periods, opportunity splits and predictive opportunity scoring.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

4. HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is another Salesforce alternative that has a lot to offer. A cloud-based solution, it fits well for any size organization and helps users with lead progression, sales activities and sales cycle acceleration to close more deals. The platform supports sales representatives with various tasks, such as capturing prospects, connecting with new leads, closing deals and managing pipelines.

Key Features

HubSpot Sales Hub eliminates manual entry of contact info and offers workflow automation to reduce manual tasks further. Its email functionality provides tracking, scheduling and built-in templates that can be personalized and accessed inside your inbox and shared with your team. You can automatically log calls to HubSpot CRM and enable document tracking, calendar sync and meeting scheduling.

Pipeline metrics in HubSpot Sales Hub

A summary review of pipeline metrics in HubSpot Sales Hub.

Primary Benefits

If you want to use Sales Hub in tandem with Salesforce, a bi-directional sync option captures a record of every email, meeting, call and many other functionalities. The platform allows you to reroute chat conversations to the appropriate salesperson, enables predictive lead scoring, generates reports and has dashboarding capabilities that share high-level business metrics with executives and much more granular metrics for the sales team.

According to our research, HubSpot Sales is best for customer communication, document and leads management, platform security, user support, and vendor information.

Free trial: No.

Free plan: No. However, it’s built on HubSpot CRM, which offers a million contacts along with basic CRM functionality for unlimited users.

Limitations

  • Can’t customize the activity feed to add more users.
  • No built-in gamification tool.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

5. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a SaaS product delivering sales and CRM capabilities to support professionals in staying focused on the right deals. This Salesforce competitor features lead and deal management, tracks communications, automates administrative tasks and provides complete transparency on using customer data with an AI-powered sales mentor.

Key Features

You can customize chatbots and web forms as well as import data from spreadsheets or migrate from another CRM (like Salesforce, HubSpot or Zoho). A customizable catalog, communication tracking and activity history are included as well. You can monitor KPIs in one place and derive reports through an interactive dashboard. The platform’s Smart Contact Data feature retrieves contact data from various platforms such as Google+ and LinkedIn.

Pipedrive Pipeline Report

Pipedrive’s reporting feature, showing new deals started.

Primary Benefits

The platform functions seamlessly on Android and iOS devices, supporting audio note recording and transcribing as well as geo-targeting for leads or customers. Pipedrive provides a secure infrastructure in Rackspace and AWS, meets GDPR requirements, and has security dashboards for audit logs. The system is available in 14 languages and provides over 150 integrations, an open API and a marketplace with multiple app categories.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t offer out-of-the-box lead scoring.
  • Can’t track bulk email activities.
  • No ability to schedule reports.
  • Doesn’t provide order and quote management.
  • Lacks PRM capabilities.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

6. Oracle CX Sales

Oracle CX Sales, one of the biggest Salesforce competitors, is a cloud-based platform that provides managers with big-picture data and helps sellers master buyer signals. Access Siebel, Oracle’s on-premise CRM and extend Oracle CX Sales capabilities. It provides real-time customer intelligence, derives data from finance and HR software for generating quotes, and manages territories and compensation.

We’ve gone into more detail on how these CRMs match up in this Oracle vs Salesforce CRM software comparison.

Key Features

This Salesforce alternative’s extensive capabilities include managing leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, assets, activities, assessments and a 360-degree customer view. On the more advanced end, you get quotas, territories, subscription management, incentive compensation management, customer data and partner relationship management. It also includes B2B customer service and eCommerce functionality.

Oracle Engagement Cloud Dashboard

Dashboard view of key metrics in Oracle Engagement Cloud.

Primary Benefits

Oracle’s DataFox Cloud Service leverages AI with a combination of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to enable accurate data points for crucial workflows such as account assignment and territory balancing. Another notable benefit is the Sales Assistant feature, a chatbot that provides AI-backed recommendations so sales reps know the next-best actions.

According to our research, Oracle CX Sales Cloud is best for professional services and maintenance.

Free trial: 30 days and $300 USD of free credits.

Free plan: Oracle provides Cloud Free Tier with a free trial and a few always free services that include free access for using features such as virtual machines, object storage and data egress.

Limitations

  • Mobile page doesn’t support detailed page navigation after selecting the sales object from Dynamic Choice List.
  • Custom mobile details page doesn’t support the standard object subtab.
  • Can’t update the unit of measurement for saved products.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

7. Pipeliner

Pipeliner helps organize and manage sales, accounts, leads and contacts. Its flexibility allows organizations to adapt to fit their needs with a wide variety of highly customizable features. The platform also features a number of visual reports that provide pathways to help businesses leverage data based on the sales cycle.

Key Features

Pipeliner helps you build dynamic organization charts. It also centralizes contact management details such as opportunities, activities, tasks, notes, social messaging and email into a single view. The option to add leads, opportunities, accounts and contacts directly from Google forms is available as well.

Pipeliner CRM Opportunities

The visual sales pipeline in Pipeliner.

Primary Benefits

Opportunity tracking lets you see the health of a business opportunity, and the system provides an indicator when the prospect is ready to turn into a customer. You can streamline tasks via integration with Outlook or Gmail, and an in-platform automation engine provides even greater efficiency.

Pipeliner allows you to easily track sales processes by setting a timeframe for each stage in the pipeline, another reason why this platform is a great Salesforce competitor.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t work with implementation partners.
  • Limited content management and CPQ functionalities.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

8. SAP Sales Cloud

As one of the top Salesforce competitors, SAP Sales Cloud helps users shorten sales cycles, boost sales growth, and increase sales productivity. Companies can achieve a unified sales experience, gain real-time insights and leverage scalable capabilities that SAP HANA powers.

Key Features

SAP Sales Cloud provides sales automation and forecast optimization along with real-time lead management, increased pipeline visibility and insights to drive closed deals. A secure and collaborative portal is available for contract and quote management. Analytics tools support sales performance management, aid territory targeting and help with quota planning.

SAP Cloud Sales - Customer Insight

The JAM feature in SAP Sales Cloud offering sales insights.

Primary Benefits

You can achieve comprehensive management of the sales cycle, billing and invoicing. SAP Sales Cloud also automates revenue recognition for compliance with IFRS 15 and ASC 606 across multiple channels. Augmented intelligence helps detect outliers as well as provide real-time prescriptive plan recommendations and personalized recommendations.

According to our research, SAP Sales Cloud is best suited for training.

Free trial: No.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Lacks native mobile apps for Android devices.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

9. Creatio

Creatio is part of a unified CRM platform that delivers products for marketing, sales and service, which you can deploy together or individually. It efficiently manages sales processes and automates workflows for optimum results. Like other Salesforce competitors, it can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise and is compatible with Android and iOS devices, with an offline mode to promote productivity.

Key Features

Lead management, analytics tools and dashboards are a few noteworthy features. It allows you to leverage sales pipelines, integrate with email clients and third-party tools like Google, and analyze company performance at every stage. Additional features include product management, project management, contract management, field sales management, quote management, and order and invoice management.

Creatio Sales Automation

Opportunity data and sales automation in Creatio.

Primary Benefits

Business process management (BPM) is possible with process modeling, execution, monitoring and analysis tools. Sales forecasting tools, document flow management and a dedicated knowledge base help sales reps work more effectively and reduce manual workloads. Designed to connect to any cloud VoIP service, Creatio also supports telephony needs. The system simplifies content development via a customizable visual designer.

Our research states that Creatio is best for team collaboration, as well as quote, order and contract management.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t offer native integration with marketing automation apps such as Marketo and Pardot.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

10. Nimble CRM

Nimble is a SaaS platform best for small businesses, making it an attractive option for smaller operations that find Salesforce too overwhelming or expensive. It simplifies the process of collecting, sorting and managing information. Because it’s designed for smaller companies, Nimble’s sales and marketing functions are limited compared to bigger CRM solutions.

Key Features

Managing sales pipelines, setting calendar appointments, scheduling tasks, aligning sales intelligence and setting up social signals to track priorities are a few of the things you can do with Nimble. It features contact segmentation, deal forecasting and group email marketing, with a comprehensive customer view for better understanding. This Salesforce competitor can work with Office 365, Google Apps and many social networks, including Twitter, AngelList and Facebook.

Nimble Team Activity Tracking

List of team activities in Nimble CRM.

 

Primary Benefits

Nimble CRM has a Stay in Touch reminder widget with weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reminders to help companies connect with contacts. A browser extension called Nimble Prospector helps you manage contacts via your email inbox, social platforms, business apps and websites. By integrating with Outlook, you can unify contacts, email inboxes, calendars and social media connections on one dashboard.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t have hierarchies for account management.
  • Can’t link related accounts with their parent account.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

11. Freshsales

Freshsales CRM by Freshworks is one of the most widely known Salesforce competitors in the industry. This software is built with AI and helps sales professionals with lead scoring, phone and email communications, activity capturing, and much more. The platform is cloud-based and works well for businesses of all sizes.

Key Features

With Freshsales, you’ll get lead management and scoring features, dashboards, customizable reports, territory management, and sales activity management with reminders and notifications. An in-platform phone system enables sales reps to make calls from Freshsales. It also offers email tools, from customizable templates and a team inbox to metrics for tracking email open and click rates.

Freshsales Deal Pipeline

A pipeline with deal stages in Freshsales.

Primary Benefits

Freshsales natively integrates with a host of popular business apps to add greater utility. The platform features Smartforms to drive lead generation by collecting leads from filled web forms. With workflow automation, you get a point-and-click interface that makes it much easier to set up and run business processes.

In our research, we found Freshsales to be the best for opportunities/deals management, availability and scalability, and mobile support.

Free trial: 21 days.

Free plan: Yes, free forever.

Limitations

  • Lacks vertical-specific products, forcing clients to customize solutions with the help of third-party resources.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

12. Zoho CRM

Cloud-based Zoho CRM works well for organizations of all sizes and is one of the fiercest Salesforce competitors. It helps users create, manage, and organize data to drive sales and revenue. They can also log sales activities, manage notes and tasks, and move off spreadsheets with a multipurpose digital contact book.

Key Features

Zoho CRM supports lead generation automation from multiple sources, offers a visual deal pipeline and provides Macros for routine activities. Integration with Zoho Finance lets sales reps generate quotes and set up purchase orders. It also supports performance management, forecasting and visitor tracking. Marketing automation software includes customer segmentation, web forms, Google ad campaigns and email campaigns.

Zoho CRM Target Meter

Metrics for tracking regional sales against targets in Zoho CRM.

Primary Benefits

With Zia, an AI-powered sales assistant, you can encourage higher performance via gamification. On the analytics side, you get sales cycle monitoring, customized dashboards, and multi-dimensional reports that provide an anomaly detector and a comparison tool for a variety of metrics. A wide range of customization options includes validation rules, filters, multiple currencies, subforms and translations.

According to our research, Zoho CRM is best for accounts and contacts management, dashboards and reports, platform capabilities, sales performance management, social engagement, and integration and extensibility.

Free trial: 15 days.

Free plan: Yes, free forever for up to three users.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t sufficiently support complex or matrixed forecasts.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

13. Copper CRM

Copper CRM centralizes the task of managing contacts, deals, emails, files and more. It helps you grow and nurture one relationship at a time to achieve optimal results. Deployed in the cloud, it works well for all sizes of organizations and functions well on both Android and iOS mobile devices.

Key Features

This Salesforce competitor tracks lead management processes, automates activities via workflows and provides a view of the entire sales process and funnel. You can automate email tasks, measure performance and mold it to your needs via custom fields, views, activities, languages and alerts. Team permissions, record visibility and SAML-based single sign-on enable security and access control.

Copper CRM Opportunities

Opportunities data in Copper CRM.

Primary Benefits

Leveraging tag segmentation for contacts lets you track capabilities and add context to accounts. Integration with Zapier enables you to integrate with over 1,000 apps and also sync data on one dashboard. Sales analytics tools make it easier to analyze data so you can identify gaps, roadblocks and wins.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t provide native support for organization charts.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

14. Zendesk Sell

SaaS-based Zendesk Sell enhances productivity, processes and pipeline visibility for sales teams. Its sales tools can cater to a range of industries, including finance, manufacturing, healthcare and government.

Key Features

It offers email tracking, notifications when a prospect reads or clicks on an email and out-of-the-box activity reports. Sales prospecting lets you create target lead lists based on factors such as industry, company size, role and more, while integrated communications tools facilitate outreach.

Zendesk Sell Sales Prospecting

The sales prospecting tool in Zendesk Sell.

 

Primary Benefits

A native dialer logs and records calls, stores call scripts, sends texts and provides call analytics on key metrics. Equipped with an API and SDK, it can integrate projects, sync services and offer pre-built code libraries. Email templates are available to streamline routine communications.

Free trial: 14 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t provide contract management, content management or task planning.
  • Lacks tracking features, unlike other Salesforce competitors.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

15. Pega CRM

Pega Sales Automation is one of the more advanced Salesforce alternatives. It allows companies to glean business intelligence from everyday behaviors and interactions. Metrics like customer satisfaction help companies understand their customer experience, behaviors and history. Its toolset improves the efficiency of field technicians and improves decisions through statistics.

Key Features

You can expect CRM standbys such as lead management, opportunity management and contact management. And if analytics play an important role in your company, you have access to more than 40 out-of-the-box dashboards and pre-built reports. It also has real-time views into predicted sales, quota attainment, forecasting and lead quality so reps and managers can work smarter. Finally, not every Salesforce competitor has PRM capabilities, but with Pega you get role-based portals and dashboards, collateral and record sharing, partner onboarding content, and deal registration.

Pega CRM Robot Manager

A dashboard for controlling AI robots in Pega CRM’s sales automation.

Primary Benefits

AI plays a central role in the platform’s infrastructure, analyzing messages, suggesting actions, evaluating sales rep performance and more. With machine learning, it can also identify new leads, accelerate opportunity progression, generate net new sales from existing clients and improve close probability.

The sales chatbot enables intelligent routing of prospects and automates appointment scheduling.

In our research, we found Pega CRM to be the best for partner and vendor management.

Free trial: 30 days.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Limited marketplace for partner-developed add-ons.
  • Lacks plugins for integrating with third-party marketing automation and incentive management BI tools.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

16. Infor CloudSuite CRM

Another big name on the Salesforce alternatives list, Infor CloudSuite CRM increases customer loyalty, attention and satisfaction. Sales professionals can be notified about communication with a particular customer throughout his or her transaction and leverage the 360-degree view of data for greater visibility and context.

We’ve also written a more comprehensive Infor CRM vs Salesforce comparison if you want a deep dive into these two competitors.

Key Features

An impressive array of features includes lead management, customer service, marketing analytics, reporting, alerts, forecasting, team management and territory management. You can create customer profiles by capturing information and interactions across your organization and external sources. It provides integration with business management, productivity, marketing and social media tools.

Infor CRM Quota and Forecasts

Sales data in Infor CloudSuite CRM.

Primary Benefits

Patented automation and machine learning technologies, along with a networked BI approach, are a couple of highlights of the software. Another nifty feature is ION, a middleware that enables integration with ERP software on a plug-and-play basis. Embedded analytics from Infor Birst provides better visibility of the sales process through reports, dashboards and analytics, making it one of the most viable Salesforce competitors.

Free trial: No.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t offer mobile functionality for Android phones.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

17. Sage CRM

Created to improve sales within 30 days, Sage CRM is specifically designed to help small and medium businesses manage customer service, social media accounts and email marketing efforts. It’s available as a fully integrated CRM or as individual modules for sales, marketing and service, and it offers cloud and on-premise hosting.

Key Features

This Salesforce competitor has a lot to offer – real-time sales tracking, performance forecasts, opportunity management with workflows, quote and order management, and a variety of customer service tools. The marketing module manages and automates marketing campaigns across multiple channels. It also provides list segmentation, targeted emailing and email campaign reports.

Sage CRM Dashboard

The dashboard view in Sage CRM.

Primary Benefits

Sage Marketing facilitates syncing email campaigns with Mailchimp, as well as runs and tracks customer surveys. Its service module connects an existing website to a web self-service portal to simplify use for both internal users and customers.

Free trial: No.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Narrow list of features limits business functionality.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

18. NetSuite CRM

Another prime Salesforce alternative, especially for larger companies, is cloud-based NetSuite CRM. It provides a seamless flow of information across the entire customer lifecycle for leads, sales orders, fulfillment, renewals, upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and support. It caters to companies of any size and provides mobile apps for iOS and Android, along with a mobile-responsive design. As a property of the software giant Oracle, it’s easy to see why NetSuite is one of Salesforce’s main competitors.

Key Features

In addition to traditional CRM capabilities like sales force automation, customer support and marketing automation, NetSuite CRM delivers quotes, order management, commissions and integrated eCommerce capabilities. It provides recommendations based on buying patterns and offers probability-based sales forecasting and real-time sales data. Information on customer purchase trends, demographics, support history and response patterns allows you to deliver targeted marketing campaigns.

Oracle NetSuite CRM Home Pane

The home window in NetSuite CRM.

Primary Benefits

The software gives sales teams clear visibility in areas such as customer support, contracts and inventory. With the mood-ring forecast, you can make predictions without relying on data from current quotes or opportunities. And with incentive management, managers can design, track and pay for sales commission plans and manage partner commissions and royalties.

Free trial: No.

Free plan: No.

Limitations

  • Doesn’t offer individual modules for purchase.
  • Limited social network integration and social collaboration features.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

19. Agile CRM

Agile CRM provides a complete suite of sales enablement, marketing automation and customer support capabilities to manage the entire customer lifecycle. The cloud-based Salesforce alternative is mobile-ready, simple to use, avoids data leaks and enables consistent messaging.

Key Features

Deal tracking, pipeline management, marketing automation, email and social marketing, web engagement and sales process customization are just a handful of the features the platform has. You also get some less common functionality like document management and project management. On the service side, it offers ticketing, SLAs, ticket feedback, graphical metrics and reporting.

Agile CRM Marketing Campaign

A marketing automation campaign in Agile CRM.

 

Primary Benefits

Some key perks include funnel and cohort analysis, custom reports and gamification. A lead prospector automatically pulls leads from social media (including bulk import from LinkedIn) into the sales funnel. Agile CRM’s service capability provides smart views, customer support metrics, plug-ins and integrations with third-party service providers, websites and applications. You can deploy multiple chat windows and analyze customer support metrics as well.

Free trial: Yes.

Free plan: Yes, up to 10 users.

Limitations

  • Only offers integration with other apps through Zapier.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

20. Bitrix24

The final product on our list of Salesforce competitors is Bitrix24, a SaaS and self-hosted solution that works well for any size company. With productivity and collaboration tools such as Gnatt charts, Kanban boards, activity streams, group chat, workload planning calendars and workgroups, it assists with everyday tasks and projects.

Key Features

You can automate sales funnels, monitor CRM triggers, create automation rules, execute campaigns and more. Integrations with email tools and accounting software are available. It also provides sales intelligence reports, a document builder, a product catalog, a live support widget and multichannel contact centers.

Bitrix24 Contact Profile

A contact profile in Bitrix24.

Primary Benefits

A virtual PBX with an automated dialer lets you manage communications for local numbers in 53 countries. A social intranet portal and shared calendars that sync with Outlook and Google calendars let team members communicate without switching to another app. You can also create websites and online stores with the help of a visual web builder interface.

Free trial: 30 days.

Free plan: Yes. Includes unlimited users and 5 GB of storage.

Limitations

  • Emails that aren’t connected to tasks are stored and then deleted after a certain amount of time.
Price: $$$$$
Deployment:

Company Size Suitability: S M L

Compare CRM Pricing & Costs with our Pricing Guide

Conclusion

So if you’re looking for CRM software and worry that Salesforce may be too sprawling or expensive for you, there are plenty of companies like Salesforce offering amazing CRM platforms that could be a better fit for your organization. Check out our CRM comparison report and CRM pricing guide to help you with your search.

Did we include all the best Salesforce competitors? Let us know which CRM you are considering in the comments below.

Saumya AnandSalesforce Competitors: Top 20 Salesforce Alternatives

12 comments

Join the conversation
  • Simplicontract - October 4, 2021 reply

    Great and useful blog really helpful..!!
    Contract Lifecycle Management Software

  • Many Vanatta   - June 23, 2021 reply

    Greetings, Usually I never comment on blogs but your article is so convincing that I never stop myself to say something about it. You’re doing a great job, Keep it up. You can check out this article, might be of help 🙂

  • Peter R. Hess - February 12, 2021 reply

    Great post. Thanks for the information.

  • William Smith - July 10, 2019 reply

    Indeed, not only in America, but also in the world today, many CRM softwares provide better solutions and service than Salesforce for SMBs. My company uses Wukong CRM, which is a desirable choice for us and has a professional team.

    Bergen Adair - July 11, 2019 reply

    Thanks for reading and offering another alternative for users to check out, William!

  • Willem Reese - June 2, 2019 reply

    Salesforce just gave a big chunk of the country a reason to find and use a competitor that doesn’t try to dictate what legal products they can sell and which Constitutional rights they can exercise. Apparently, they don’t realize there’s a whole world outside of their California echo chamber. Too bad there’s no realistic way for most consumers to determine which businesses use Salesforce.

  • Jayesh Kanzariya - April 17, 2019 reply

    Hi Bergen,
    Thanks for sharing the insights
    I am using salesmate and I can definitely say its a good option for SMBs. Also they are coming up with calling features from CRM itself. Its really effective and affordable too.

    Bergen Adair - April 17, 2019 reply

    Thanks for reading and contributing your thoughts Jayesh! I’m sure other SMB users will appreciate the pointer to another great CRM option.

    Nicholas Holland - December 15, 2019 reply

    Thoughts on HubSpot CRM?

    Zachary Totah

    Zachary Totah - December 16, 2019 reply

    Hey Nicholas,

    You can take a look at our HubSpot product page if you want to get some more info about what the platform can do: https://www.selecthub.com/marketing-automation-software/hubspot/.

    We’ve also included HubSpot in a number of comparison articles on our site, though the scope falls under marketing automation rather than CRM. They can be accessed in the “Relevant Articles” section of the page linked above.

    And if you need information that’s more specific to your situation, feel free to give our team a call at 877-692-2896 and they can help you out.

  • Bergen Adair - December 27, 2018 reply

    We don’t focus on blogging tools, so unfortunately I’m not very knowledgeable in that area. We use WordPress and it definitely gets the job done, but isn’t the most user-friendly platform. Thanks for suggesting an alternate platform, hopefully other readers will find that information helpful!

  • ravi - December 30, 2017 reply

    awesome

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