Whether you are a small business or a big organization, investing in good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a must. It allows you to keep track of and conveniently manage all your prospects, customer interactions, and sales pipeline from one single place.
Salesforce is one of the industry leaders in CRM software. However, even though Salesforce is a well-known CRM platform that helps several companies stay on track with their customer bases, the software’s pricing is way too high for small businesses.
In this post, we will explore Salesforce CRM, its features, pricing tiers, and whether it is worth the cost. We will also discuss some of the top alternatives to Salesforce with a similar set of features and affordable pricing. Read on.
What Is Salesforce and What Are Its Key Features?
Salesforce is a globally recognized cloud-based CRM platform designed to support service, marketing, and sales functions. It’s user-friendly and requires minimal technical expertise for setup and management.
Some of the key features of the product are:
1. Contact Management
The contact management feature in Salesforce allows you to view customers’ data in detail, including their communications, activity history, essential contacts, and more.
2. Lead Management
Salesforce offers a powerful lead management system that allows businesses to capture, track, and nurture leads effectively. From building initial customer contact to final conversion, the CRM offers an easy, efficient, and seamless way to manage potential customers.
3. Salesforce Engage
Salesforce Engage is a well-known feature of Salesforce CRM that allows you to share marketing content with sales to enhance the company’s overall selling potential. It also gives real-time sales alerts as per the engagement with the customers.
4. Salesforce Mobile
Salesforce Mobile is another feature in Salesforce CRM that allows you to organize your day through a single, unified, and comprehensive application. With one single app, you can monitor all your meetings and activities and get account updates on the go. Likewise, you can close deals, track accounts, and approve on-the-go deals.
Salesforce Pricing Details
Here is a quick overview of the Salesforce cloud pricing plans-
Salesforce product | Plan | Price |
Small Businesses |
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Sales Cloud |
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Marketing Cloud |
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Service Cloud |
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Salesforce Implementation Stages and ROI
Wondering how to implement Salesforce?
Here are the quick steps:
- Identify key goals and challenges
- Record all internal procedures and daily activities
- Establish clear project timelines and budget
- Develop various project outcome scenarios
- Define clear success metrics
- Establish communication channels and plans
- Determine Salesforce project stakeholders and roles
- Learn about the Salesforce ecosystem and UI
Apart from this, when you go ahead with measuring Salesforce ROI, it is important to determine profit by calculating your overall sales growth over some time against your total overhead costs, such as subscription, training, hardware costs, and more.
The Verdict: Is the Price of Salesforce Worth It?
The answer is nuanced.
While Salesforce offers an excellent CRM with an extensive set of features, it is also incredibly expensive, with prices that can go as high as $15,000 per month.
If you are ready to pay that much for a CRM, you can check and explore Salesforce’s pricing tiers to see what options they offer you. If you only wish to pay for the lowest plans, you can check what those plans offer to decide if they’re worth the price.
Overall, if you are a large enterprise with a good budget and intend to use all of Salesforce’s features, then Salesforce pricing is worth it. Whereas if you’re a small business simply looking for a CRM for its most basic features, Salesforce isn’t necessarily for you.
It is also important to remember that several other good CRMs can offer all the same features at a much more affordable price.
Top 5 Alternatives to Salesforce
In this section, we will explore the top 5 alternatives to Salesforce CRM that can offer you the same set of features at a much lower price than Salesforce-
Salesforce Alternatives | Key features | Average G2 Rating | Pricing |
LeadSquared is one of the fastest-growing sales CRM that combines sales CRM and marketing automation in one single software. It seamlessly aligns both teams to work towards the common goal of increasing revenue. | 4.4 |
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PipeDrive | Pipedrive is another good CRM that has all the basic features of a CRM and helps in building pipelines, managing lead databases, and more. | 4.3 |
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ActiveCampaign | ActiveCampaign is an easy-to-use, powerful CRM and marketing automation software. The software comes with several set of interesting features and is suitable for both small companies and large enterprises. | 4.6 |
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ZenDesk | Zendesk is a good CRM tool that provides dynamic workspaces and automation powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The tool boosts team performance and also offers features such as document storage, custom dashboards, and analytics tools. | 4.3 |
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Insightly | Insightly is an easy-to-use CRM system primarily for small businesses. The software comes with a simple user interface at a much lesser cost than other CRMs. | 4.2 |
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Wrapping Up
Whether you are just starting your business or you’ve been in business for a while, deploying a good CRM can be an excellent move.
However, instead of opting for an expensive CRM such as Salesforce, SMBs should pick a CRM system that is affordable, easy to use, and also has scope for scalability with customization.
LeadSquared offers a powerful CRM with a comprehensive set of features tailored to address the unique challenges of small businesses. Its cost-effective pricing ensures you get robust functionality without breaking the bank.
Contact us to discover how LeadSquared can support your business goals effectively and affordably!
