It's nearly undeniable that Salesforce is the industry leader in customer relationship
management.
The publicly traded company has over 100,000 customers, and changed the face of the CRM
industry when its cloud-based product first launched.
It's important to compare Salesforce with other “best of breed” solutions, and with
vendors that perhaps get less media attention, but still have a solid product.
There are a number of salesforce alternatives that function just as well, if not better
for their own niche.
Let's take a look at a few examples.
Zoho Average user rating: 3.7/5
Zoho provides an integrated suite of cloud-based business apps for growing businesses, all
of which can be purchased separately.
As with Salesforce, that means their CRM application is fully compatible with a range of closely
related tools, such as business intelligence, marketing automation, and project management.
Zoho’s CRM solution is designed to help customer-facing organizations attract and
retain current customers by selling smarter, automating repetitive tasks, and gaining full
visibility into the sales cycle.
The system is accessible on desktop computers via web application or away from the office
through native mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Though Zoho obviously has much fewer add-ons than Salesforce, users can still build out
their system through the online marketplace.
If you work on a small team, you might even be able to use Zoho for free (up to 10 users).
Unique Features: * Visitor tracking
* Web forms * Territory management
* Social CRM * PhoneBridge
* Live customer chat * Add-on marketplace
Infusionsoft Average User Rating: 3.7/5
Infusionsoft offers cloud-based sales and marketing software targeted toward small teams.
Their product combines CRM, marketing automation, and e-commerce to provide an end-to-end solution
for customer-facing organizations.
Starting in the second pricing tier, buyers gain access to all of these modules for a
single monthly price, which makes Infusionsoft a strong alternative to Salesforce, whose
marketing automation platform is a separate (and quite expensive) system.
Although pricier than than Zoho, Infusionsoft can save a small team a considerable amount
when adopted in place of Salesforce and other megavendor solutions.
The system’s e-commerce features are also much more sophisticated than most you’ll
find in an off-the-shelf CRM.
Infusionsoft can help you set up a complete online storefront and manage shopping carts,
inventory, fulfillment, and billing.
Unique Features: * Built-in marketing automation
* E-commerce * Referral programs
* Add-on marketplace * Visitor tracking
* Social marketing (with GroSocial add-on) * Quotes and proposals
Netsuite Average User Rating: 3.1/5
Serving nearly 16,000 clients, NetSuite is one of the world’s largest providers of
cloud-based business software.
Their CRM solution gives businesses a “real-time, 360-degree” view of each customer and facilitates
the journey from lead, to opportunity, to sale, with additional provisions for order
fulfillment, upsell and cross-sell, contract renewal, and customer support along the way.
Netsuite is anything but a niche product; their CRM+ platform addresses the whole spectrum
of customer management needs, including CRM, sales and marketing automation, and even partner
relationship management for companies that sell or market through partner channels.
Many businesses have switched to Netsuite to replace unwieldy systems from larger vendors.
Their CRM customers come from many different industries, including IT, retail, real estate,
nonprofit, financial services, and more.
Unique Features: * Partner relationship management
* Advanced sales forecasting * Incentive compensation management
* Built-in marketing automation * Case management
* Customer self-service * Social CRM (with Yammer or Qontext add-on)
* Global sales and service management (multi-currency, multi-lingual)
SugarCRM Average User Rating: 3.3/5
SugarCRM’s vision is to “deliver a fully transformed, personalized user experience
that is immersive, engaging, and intuitive.”
To that end, their CRM platform is built with simplicity, mobility, and customization in
mind—perhaps more reminiscent of a consumer app than a complicated business system.
That said, SugarCRM can be deployed in a cloud or on-premise version, which gives buyers
a little more flexibility in terms of infrastructure (after all, not every business wants a cloud
CRM).
With over 30 supported languages and currencies and hundreds of preconfigured add-ons, the
Sugar platform can expand to meet just about any business need, while keeping relationship
management at the heart of it all.
Sugar is available in three editions with pricing based on features and support; they
also offer a free, open-source version called SugarCRM Community Edition.
Unique Features: * Call center automation
* Optional cloud or on-premise deployment * Customer self-service
* Trouble ticket management * Activity streams
* “What-if” sales forecasting
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Average User Rating: 3.2/5
Last, but certainly not least, is Microsoft Dynamics CRM—one of most oft-pitted competitors
of Salesforce (see our side-by-side comparison of the two).
The obvious reason for this rivalry is the striking similarity between the two systems,
both in price and in user experience.
Microsoft’s flagship CRM product is Dynamics CRM Online Professional, which provides integrated
sales and service functionality in either a cloud, on-premise, or hybrid platform.
Dynamics—like Salesforce—has an expansive add-on marketplace and partner developer network.
They provide the industry’s best integrations with other Microsoft products like Outlook,
Office 365, SharePoint, and SQL Server (obviously).
Marketing automation features require purchase of an additional module, or upgrading to an
all-in-one suite, which could be seen as a drawback for smaller teams.
For this reason, Microsoft Dynamics is usually geared toward large or rapidly growing companies.
Unique Features: * Case management
* Customer self-service * Social CRM
* Enterprise social networking (through Yammer) * Territory management
* Add-on marketplace * Conferencing/IM
* Hybrid deployment options
Looking for CRM alternatives to Salesforce?
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to make the same promises.
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