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Freshsales vs Salesforce Essentials comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshsales
Ranking in CRM
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (10th), Opportunity Management (9th), Sales Force Automation (11th)
Salesforce Essentials
Ranking in CRM
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Freshsales is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Essentials is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Essentials0.6%
Freshsales0.9%
Other98.5%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Cristina Neri - PeerSpot reviewer
Cheaply-priced and does not require much customizations
It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. At the moment, the tool functions quite well for our needs. Around five people use the tool. In the future, my company might plan to increase the use of the solution. Currently, all the sales people in our company use the product.
Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages service requests and dispatches engineers to resolve issues
I work from home for a heater manufacturing company. They wanted to move away from their current SAP CRM system to Salesforce. There is a fulfillment process, which involves taking an order, delivering it, and providing service. Salesforce is used to manage the order-taking process. Once an order is taken, the backend system, SAP ERP, handles product manufacturing, delivery, and installation. After installation, the Service Cloud in Salesforce takes over for ongoing service management. Once your order is confirmed, integration with the SAP ERP backend will be seamless. The system takes the sales order from Salesforce and starts processing it for procurement, starting with creating a production order, manufacturing, and then delivery. Once the product is delivered, this information is passed back to Salesforce Service Cloud. In the Service Cloud, a service engineer receives a notification indicating that a product needs to be delivered to a specific location for installation. The engineer then inspects and installs the product at the designated site. SAP ERP manages the product manufacturing and delivery processes. After the product is delivered to the customer, Salesforce Service Cloud takes over. It manages service requests and dispatches engineers to resolve issues reported by customers. Service Cloud captures the information and creates an incident record when a customer reports a product fault. Engineers receive this information and promptly visit the client site to fix the issue. The solution is easy to implement. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is a low-cost CRM product compared to other CRM alternatives."
"Freshsales is very simple to use, but it's fairly limited in its functionalities, and it's very cheap."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its well-organized sales cycle, which is important to us."
"Email integration is easy."
"Freshsales is user-friendly, scalable and stable."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to divert deals based on the potential revenue or specific market to certain sales teams."
"I like Freshsales because it's integrated with Shopify which we use to host our website."
"The product is stable."
"The solution helps to track the performance of salespersons before closing deals."
"The solution is very scalable and flexible. It can be customized as per the business need."
"Salesforce makes tracking every product and customer activity easy, enabling managers to monitor their products, such as key products and their peak performance."
"Their reporting and analytics features have a very significant impact on my company's operational efficiency."
"The most important feature is how Salesforce Essentials brings together information from multiple channels. The nature of our complex custom product data has been challenging due to our manufacturing nature. Salesforce also allowed business processes like finance, credit lines, customer complaints, and quality issues to integrate seamlessly. I haven’t used the mobile app functionality, because we haven't fully utilized because of our preferance of more personal interactions over using mobile apps."
"Salesforce Essentials is a reliable and powerful application."
"High availability is really important for us when getting our reports as a vendor."
 

Cons

"The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application."
"The solution needs to improve the user experience and leads capture."
"The reporting for this solution across all their products could be improved. Currently, we have clients who export their data from Freshservices to third party solutions such Power BI to create more comprehensive reports."
"We can use only one domain in the basic package."
"We have a problem with the time to delivery for our customers, although this is not specific to this solution. Time to delivery can be 90 days."
"It lacks customizability for complex and larger use cases."
"The price of this solution could be improved as well as the reporting functionality."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly. It's difficult for a senior to track leads when a salesperson uploads leads. The solution should also improve its integration capabilities."
"Salesforce should encourage new users by offering smaller license packages, such as packages for three or two users."
"The cost of running Salesforce Essentials is significant. The licenses are expensive, and the operational costs are considerable, including the necessity to maintain a team of approximately 15 people to run the system."
"Less integration would be better. It should work independently."
"Areas that could be improved or upgraded in the next release include analytics, automation capabilities, and stability."
"The primary area for improvement in Salesforce Essentials is its pricing. There are other competitors, like Zoho CRM, that offer similar features at a lower cost."
"Integrating Salesforce with SAP, considering our business relies heavily on SAP for ERP, has been quite challenging due to the intricate product configurations. Unlike standard products like computers with a few options, our products have hundreds of configurable options, making the integration complex. If such integration were possible, it would have been easier to understand the unique nature of our industry and the limited number of customers who buy steel products, unlike consumer electronics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price for this solution is good in general, but in Brazil we do pay additional taxes."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"If one is a very low price and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a three."
"Freshsales is an economical product."
"The basic price is affordable. The add ons are expensive."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"The pricing is on the higher side, especially with additional costs for professional services like consultants."
"The pricing is a bit on the expensive side."
"I rate Salesforce Essentials' pricing an eight out of ten."
"Salesforce Essentials is quite expensive, almost 10 out of 10. I don't have the exact cost, but we found it to be very expensive based on our budget constraints."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"We chose quarterly payments."
"It's a perpetual license, and the subscription can be expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Freshsales?
The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application. The number of clients in the tool is 500, which is less in number.
What is your primary use case for Freshsales?
I use the solution in my company since we are interested in the application and all the activities that salespeople do. We track the email, then the appointment, and the feedback from the appointme...
What advice do you have for others considering Freshsales?
I can tell others that it is a good product and it is perfect for medium and large-sized companies because the setup phase is fast, and you don't need to do many customizations apart from the confi...
What do you like most about Salesforce Essentials?
Salesforce provides the best they have with the current version. Most of the features we need are already there, and it's very easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Essentials?
Salesforce Essentials is very expensive, but it delivers exceptional value. It is a good platform to have if you can afford it because it has numerous add-ons and modules. Anything that Salesforce ...
What needs improvement with Salesforce Essentials?
We use a limited number of automated workflows in Salesforce Essentials. The workflows we implement are designed to make sales teams' lives easier when executing certain tasks. Instead of requiring...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caratlane, Pykih, Buying Show, INTUO, WallyPark, Exploring Vacations, Raved, Forest, Ascendore, MagePlaza, Vacasa,
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshsales vs. Salesforce Essentials and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.