8 Alternatives and Competitors to Salesforce to be Your Next CRM

Salesforce is the well-known king of enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) software. For years, it’s been one of the best CRM solutions available, and a lot of companies are using it for their support teams.

However, is it the right choice for your company? The truth is, most companies don’t need Salesforce’s full suite of features or support.

Many small or mid-size businesses might find Salesforce too expensive, time-consuming to implement, or overly complex to use. 

Anyhow there are alternatives that, in many cases, offer features and capabilities similar to those provided by Salesforce – many of them even at a lower price.

In this article, I have listed for you the best eight Salesforce alternatives you can find for your business. Then, using examples from such platforms as Capterra, G2, and Product Hunt, I will briefly describe each of the software and suggest specific application scenarios for each.

But before we get started, let’s take a quick look at Salesforce and check some of the challenges their users face. 

In case you already know these details, then you may skip the following section and go directly to the Salesforce competitors.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce CRM tool alternatives

Salesforce CRM is a well-established and popular customer relationship management software solution on the market. 

This software is an enterprise SaaS platform that offers a variety of features such as social and mobile tools, ease of use, and pre-built integrations with other cloud apps.

While its modules and integrations can help any type of business, it is considered to be more appropriate for larger enterprises that handle a lot of leads, customers, and transactions.

Many small and midsize businesses, however, do not require or want Salesforce’s full suite of features. 

Luckily, there are more affordable options and functional alternatives that offer contact management, email marketing, reporting, automation, and other valued features to meet these needs. 

Salesforce Pricing:

Essentials: $25 USD/user/month (billed annually)

Sales & Service Professional: $75 USD/user/month (billed annually)

Salesforce Reviews on Capterra:

Pros:
It provides the best customer relationship management and custom reports which helps in our company business analytics. It is perfect for sales team.”

Cons:
Random items can easily be shared. It is costly. You must learn more about it to use it. It is very expensive for small business and will need investment on training as well. It is time consuming in learning as well. Sometimes the customer support is not so good.”

G2 Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars with 12,269 reviews

Why do you need a Salesforce Alternative?

Salesforce is by far the biggest name in cloud computing software. But even though they’re the 800-pound gorilla in the CRM space, they aren’t the only option.

Most small- and medium-sized businesses are looking for a CRM system that can solve their needs without requiring an all-in-one system. And it’s no wonder why! 

Despite its great features, Salesforce CRM can be complicated and costly. 

Many startups and smaller businesses prefer not to invest in a high-end CRM system, particularly if they don’t require all of its advanced features.

The Salesforce alternative market is strong! And there are numerous other options if you (or your organization) need something smaller with fewer features, less expensive, and better suited to your needs. 

However, as you look for CRM software, there are some factors you should keep in mind. Let’s review some of these key features:

CRM Software Key Features: What Makes It Good?

1- Good Analytical & Reporting

Data-driven decisions and strategies are imperative for nearly every business and organization today. In light of the inevitable need for analytical data and statistics, reporting and analytics have become a standard feature of any good customer relationship management software. 

In order to develop and maintain strong relationships with customers, organizations must adhere to complex requirements. 

Each company has different kinds of customers, varying needs and wants, and not all teams share the same priorities. 

It is important to have access to relevant data reports in an easily digestible form, and the right CRM platform can make that possible. 

2- Ticket Automation System

It’s always been a challenge to tackle a huge backlog of tickets. The customer sales reps can’t exactly predict which tickets they should be working on and how long it will take them to complete each. 

This is exactly why you need a good CRM with a great ticket automation management system.

Advanced automation allows this feature to prioritize tickets and distribute them based on factors such as SLA breach, urgency, or the number of pending messages.

It automatically sets tickets to the top of the queue, plus it classifies them which are either resolved or escalated.

A smart ticket prioritization feature will help you find the most important tickets at a quick glance, leading to better customer service and ultimately happy customers.

3- Up-To-Date Knowledge Base & Self-Service

Knowledge bases are a reliable supplement to your CRM and enable you to collect all the questions and topics your customers are interested in. This way, you can handle repetitive requests (quite often, in fact) much more efficiently, making excellent first impressions on every new customer and solving the majority of cases without human intervention. Therefore, having this feature in your CRM can increase your customer satisfaction score (CSAT).

Top Salesforce Alternative to choose

1- Salesflare

Salesflare CRM tool

One of the most affordable CRMs of today, Salesflare manages to be the helping hand you need.

From a simple user interface to tons of integrations, this tool gets what you need and gives you exactly that.

With Salesflare as your customer relationship management tool, you’ll get access to several robust features that will improve your team’s workflow in an instant. These features include email and web tracking which enables you to observe how leads and customers interact with your business, lead scoring which prioritizes your leads and informs you momentarily via hotness alerts, and a mobile app that supports you wherever you go.

Moreover, this tool even offers task suggestions based on your previous work and current tasks – enhancing efficiency at its best.

Salesflare Pricing:

Growth: $29/month per user when billed annually

Pro: $49/month per user when billed annually

Enterprise: $99/month per user when billed annually

*All the plans above include a 30-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

Salesflare Rating on G2: 4.8 out of 5 stars with 221 reviews.

Salesflare User Reviews on G2:

“Salesflare makes me save a lot of time with its integrations and data enrichment from mail, phone, and LinkedIn. It’s very easy to use, and it has email automation integrated. Their customer support also is very great! The analytics are simple yet powerful to use and customize. It took me a few hours to create and customize my space and still using it after 3 years. Best CRM ever!”

2- HubSpot CRM & Sales Hub

HubSpot as an alternative to Salesforce

HubSpot CRM & Sales Hub is our top choice as an alternative to Salesforce. With HubSpot’s powerful features and essential tools, you can easily manage your sales cycle and turn prospects into customers.

There is incredible automation that allows you to save time, streamline processes, and make better decisions.

Additionally, it is easy to organize and find data to promote leads quickly and efficiently while also receiving closed-loop feedback. This way, you will better view your efforts and your bottlenecks.

Hubspot uses automation and self-service features to help you centralize your customer service data and channel it to a single platform, ultimately improving your customer support and buyer’s journey. Indeed, it is one of the best alternatives to Salesforce if you are looking for another CRM solution.

Hubspot CRM Pricing:

Free-for-Life: Support for unlimited users

Sales Hub Starter: Starts at $45 for 2 paid users

Sales Hub Professional: Starts at $450 for 5 paid users

Sales Hub Enterprise: Starts at $1,200 for 10 paid users

HubSpot CRM & Sales Hub Rating on G2: 4.5 out of 5 stars with 8,272 reviews

HubSpot Sales Hub User Reviews on G2:

“We switched from Pipedrive and had a very smooth transition. Hubspot sales hub is an all-in-one tool that you can use to monitor everything about your business; It can monitor your email and contacts all in one place. You can also connect it to your softphone to directly log all calls done for your business. It also generates different kinds of reports you need to monitor your productivity and sales.”

3- Zendesk 

Zendesk as an alternative to Salesforce

Whether you’re a startup or in need of a change to your current CRM software, Zendesk Sell could be the right fit for you.

Zendesk is designed for businesses that want to align their sales and customer service teams with cross-selling products and services. Offering a sales-focused CRM that automates sales-related tasks and enhances productivity, the Zendesk Support suite is a modern alternative to Salesforce.

With its lead management, canned ticket responses, and desktop Integration features, Zendesk offers an enhanced customer service experience through a faster, more personal experience.

Zendesk CRM Pricing: 

Team Plan: $19 / Month per user

Professional Plan: $49/ Month per user

Enterprise Plan: $99/ Month per user

Elite Plan: $199/ Month per user

Zendesk sell Rating on G2: 4.3 out of 5 stars with 3,583 reviews.

Zendesk Reviews on G2:

“Zendesk is an intuitive and easy-to-use tool, but the features are also very powerful. You get so much bang for your buck. We transitioned from a different customer service tool to Zendesk and were overjoyed that it gave us almost exactly what we needed with a much more friendly user experience and price.”

4- Zoho

Zoho as an alternative to Salesforce

Zoho is another good CRM software that can replace Salesforce. Zoho is a cloud-based platform that gives you everything you need to effectively manage your customer relationships and conduct sales from Email tracking to pipeline management. 

Zoho’s various complex features like Ai-powered assistant, workflow automation, seamless integrations, advanced analytics, and award-winning customer service make it perfect for growing businesses with time-starved sales teams.

In addition to lead generation, sales pipeline creation, forecasting, and team collaboration, Zoho CRM also helps you automate daily tasks. 

Zoho CRM Pricing:

Basic Plan: $14/agent/month.

Professional Plan:  $23/agent/month.

Enterprise Plan: $40/agent/month.

Ultimate Plan: $52/agent/month.

Zoho Rating on G2: 4 out of 5 stars with 2,082 reviews

Zoho Reviews on G2:

“Zoho CRM is a highly customizable CRM with powerful tools to pick and choose and configure as per your requirements. It is very simple to use and a very cost-effective CRM tool.”

5- Pipedrive

Pipedrive as an alternative to Salesforce

Pipedrive is a popular, fast-growing sales management solution that you can choose over Salesforce. This is an ideal tool for anyone who wants to organize and manage their customer relationships.

Pipedrive’s easy-to-use features and vast integration options make it a great fit even for small teams and individuals. 

You can synchronize your email (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) with Pipedrive to handle email communication and keep records of all communication in one place with all your other contact information. You can also pair your CRM with over 200 integrations to enhance its performance. 

Pipedrive CRM Pricing:

Essential Plan: $12.50/ Month
Advanced Plan: $24.90/ Month
Professional Plan: $49.90/ Month
Enterprise Plan: $99/ Month

Pipedrive Rating on G2: 4.3 out of 5 stars with 1,494 reviews

Pipedrive User Reviews on G2:

The solution’s simplicity and easy accessibility have jazzed me. My entire team is on Pipedrive. Now I have access to all my deals and activities around the deal on the go.”

6- Freshsales

Freshsales as a CRM

Freshsales is the CRM of Freshworks, known for a wide range of products that simplify the digital business processes of many tech companies.

From predictive deal insights to intelligent workflow, this thorough platform includes several powerful features that change your sales process for the better; for example, sales teams can effortlessly determine which lead is high-intent by making use of Freshsales’ AI-powered contact scoring.

To help sales teams deliver excellent service, it includes a policy that enables the platform to display a 360-degree view with different views, details sections, timelines, and cards – that can be highlighted.

Moreover, this platform can be the single source of truth for teams if you choose to integrate it with other Freshworks products that might enhance your overall business operations, such as Freshdesk, Freshmarketer, and Freshchat.

Freshsales Pricing:

Growth Plan: $15/month per user when billed annually
Pro Plan: $39/month per user when billed annually
Enterprise Plan: $69/month per user when billed annually

Freshsales Rating on G2: 4.5 out of 5 stars with 1,059 reviews

Freshsales Reviews on G2:

With a user-friendly interface, intuitive features, and a range of customization options, Freshsales is definitely the first choice for most users.

7- Crisp

Crisp as an alternative to Salesforce

Crisp is one of the most effective and innovative tools you can choose as a CRM alternative to Salesforce to increase revenue. 

Crisp CRM is far more than just a simple CRM solution. This software is packed with automation features that will help small businesses to automate repetitive tasks to close more sales. 

Your sales process will skyrocket with unlimited, customizable automation scenarios that will drive more hot leads straight into your pipeline.

Crisp is an all-in-one software platform that provides a modern customer experience, generates more qualified leads, improves customer service, and increases customer satisfaction, resulting in a global increase in sales.

Crisp CRM Pricing:

Free: 2 agents included.

Pro: €25/month, per team.

Unlimited: €95/month, per team.

Crisp Rating on G2: 4.4 out of 5 stars with 75 reviews

Crisp Reviews on G2:

“Crisp offers so many great tools for supporting members of a community (such as programs, forums, etc), such as response shortcuts, their own version of a help desk that you can utilize within the app, and the ability to leave notes on tickets. They also offer a mobile app, so you can take Crisp basically anywhere.”

8- Keap 

Keap as an alternative to Salesforce

Keap is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) that combines the power of Salesforce with the flexibility and cost-efficiency of a Software as a Service (SaaS) sales solution. A customer relationship management system developed on Keap is designed to help businesses manage increasingly complex and dynamic customer relationships.

This CRM comes with a wide range of features and is one of the best options as an alternative to Salesforce that can help you reach out to customers in the most timely manner and leave behind a lasting positive impression.

Keap Pricing:

Free Plan: Includes 100 contacts and 1 user/ per month

Lite Plan: $59/month paid annually

Pro Plan: $129/month paid annually

Max Plan: $199/month paid annually

Keap Rating on G2: 4.2 out of 5 stars with 1,352 reviews

Keap Reviews on G2:

“What I like best about the Keap CRM is that I was able to get rid of multiple software systems. We use Keap to track our sales funnel, send out invoices, send out our email campaigns, create landing pages, send out our newsletter, and of course, manage contacts. We also use it set appointments.”

Choose the Best Salesforce Alternative for Your Business

All in all, there are many good CRMs out there. Fortunately, the competition is keeping them honest, and each one is improving in certain areas over others.

Searching for a host of features and trying a few options out is a great way to find what works best for your business. Try them all out to see which works best for you. You might just be surprised at how effective they can be for your business.

And if you’re looking for the best alternative to Salesforce on the market right now, we’d recommend HubSpot —it’s been hitting all the right notes, and we don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.


Frequently Asked Questions


How is Salesforce different from competitors?

Salesforce is an enterprise SaaS solution that offers a wide variety of features. Although its integrations and modules can be helpful to any organization, it is considered to be more suitable for larger organizations that deal with a lot of leads, potential customers, and transactions.


Are Salesforce and Microsoft competitors?

The short answer is Yes! Salesforce is considered to be the most popular CRM software, but Microsoft has increasingly challenged it. Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is available both cloud-based and on-premises. Similar to CRM 4, this version can be highly customized using advanced extensions and is a good choice for enterprises looking for alternatives to Salesforce.


Which is best SAP or Salesforce?

Salesforce and SAP both have similar features, but SAP sales cloud offers native integration with the ERP system than Salesforce, especially in comparison to Salesforce. However, Salesforce has an intuitive user interface, easier usability, and better configuration options.


What is an alternative to Salesforce?

The following are some alternatives to Salesforce that you can consider based on your needs:

  • HubSpot CRM & Sales Hub
  • Salesflare
  • Pipedrive
  • Zendesk
  • Crisp
  • Zoho
  • Keap 

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Mert Aktas

Mert Aktas

Mert is the Marketing Manager of UserGuiding, a code-free product walkthrough software that helps teams scale user onboarding and boost user engagement.