VIDEO: Salesforce Competitors: CRM Software Comparison

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? Deciding which CRM is right for your business isn't easy, especially when vendors all seem to make the same promises.

Our CRM is the best in the universe, will provide innovation, synergy, collaboration, actionable intelligence, and so on. That’s where we come in. Instead of scouring the internet for days, and making a decision you still aren’t sure of, let us help. Our product selection tool will ask you a few questions and then return a list of CRM solutions tailored to your business goals. Already have a few products in mind? Call our team of software experts, and they’ll help you decide which one is the best fit . . . for free!