Originally posted at http://christianoferraro.com/pages/salesforce-alternatives
"What is an alternative to Salesforce?"
The answer is, it depends. Mainly it depends on circumstances where the advantages of Salesforce are irrelevant.
Here is where Salesforce advantages are relevant:
- You have separate marketing and sales teams
- You have or plan to launch marketing automation where dynamic behavioral targeting is an effective part of the strategy (Marketo, Pardot, Intercom, MaroPost are all tools that enable this)
- Your offering involves a complex sales cycle
- Cross-departmental integration beyond sales and marketing is desired
So the circumstances involve either no sales teams, no complex sales cycle or mega integration. Here are some options that meet those criteria:
For the solopreneur:
17 Hats - This provides a CRM, lead capture pages that are customizable, workflow automation, contact book, and integrates with your email, your bank account and your calendar. Pricing at either: $29/mth, 7/mth (annual or 3/mth (bi-annual)
For the massive integration:
Netsuite - Netsuite is what is called an ERP system. While the sales side is not as nice as Salesforce, it offers better integration from a customer / technical support / accounting perspective. Pricing starts at around: 00/mth per user
InfusionSoft, SugarCRM and Zoho CRMS - I don't like or recommend these services. I have used them and the lack of control to manipulate the data just won't do. The point of a CRM is data centralization. The existence of data centralization, to drive informed decision making. I have not found these CRMs to properly build in reporting that easily and comprehensively correlates data to drive informed decision making. Salesforce provides the customization to correlate data as you see fit. These reasons contribute to why Salesforce remains considered best of breed among CRMs.
I have two recommendations for future releases:
I would say, being able to export bookkeeping records that are tagged would be a crucial functionality for an entrepreneur. Keeping track is one thing but usually those records are later given to accountant or tax professional in order to minimize taxes.
Secondly, since they integrate email, it would be nice if that was a two-way sync. This matters as sometimes I may not reply from within my CRM. Without the two-way sync, this would result in duplicate work dismissing emails that have already been replied to.
