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Interactive Intelligence 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

Interactive Intelligence
Ranking in CRM
45th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Essentials
Ranking in CRM
12th
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 January 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Interactive Intelligence is 0.8%, up from 0.2% 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%
Interactive Intelligence0.8%
Other98.6%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

MA
CX Team Lead
A customizable solution that can be integrated with almost anything
The best thing about this solution is the customizability because it can be integrated with pretty much anything. There are many solutions that are black boxes and we're unable to make any modifications to the call flows. With Interactive Intelligence, we can utilize APIs and variables. With the REST call, you can send a request and response. Elements can be incorporated into the workflow based on the response. This is the go-to thing with Interactive Intelligence. The Interactive Intelligence is quite user friendly. And Avaya, in that case, is not that great solution, on user friendliness. Basically, yeah, the same purpose I've used, but you need more expertise to manage the product. And Interactive Intelligence is one box. It contains a lot of features and we don't need to have much resources. But Avaya and others have many servers to be maintained with a single solution. It has a CN. You have to go for session manager and lots of other product servers. So, for a single solution, you need to maintain a lot of servers. This is more or less an easy environment to manage, but Avaya is very complex on the architectural level.
AA
Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG
Has provided a reliable service with responsive support and offers valuable features, though pricing could be more affordable
We are a large organization with 14,000 people. As a user, Salesforce Essentials is extremely easy to use. The complete rollout from minimum viable product to final acceptable product took two years for our global deployment. The business operations for our 14,000 people are managed by approximately 10 people on the business side. These business admins are responsible for sales operations, troubleshooting, training, and driving features and requirements from the sales and marketing organizations. Additionally, we work with product owners on the IT side and a team of programmers. Daily operations require about five people for IT work, security programming, system connections, and development execution. For day-to-day user support, we need eight to ten people in the business. We operate on Microsoft Azure private cloud infrastructure. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate Salesforce Essentials a 9 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Interactive Intelligence is quite user friendly."
"The social media integration is excellent."
"The CRM system has SAP Sales, SAP Service, and SAP Billing, with everything integrated into an on-premise SAP CRM system. Salesforce Essentials replaced this on-premise system, bringing all functionalities onto the cloud platform."
"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 Essentials is a reliable and powerful application."
"Their reporting and analytics features have a very significant impact on my company's operational efficiency."
"We use Salesforce Essentials for everything we do on the sales side."
"Salesforce makes tracking every product and customer activity easy, enabling managers to monitor their products, such as key products and their peak performance."
"The product is stable."
 

Cons

"The problem with this current system is that the support is not great."
"The initial setup can be a bit difficult."
"The solution's UI is not user-friendly."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Areas that could be improved or upgraded in the next release include analytics, automation capabilities, and stability."
"The product's reporting area has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"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."
"When we use mixed languages, it can be uncomfortable because there seems to be no consideration for right-to-left speakers. It feels like these tools were developed by people who only speak left-to-right languages and didn't consider other language types' needs."
"I have seen Salesforce evaluate a lot of AI and analytics into that. But as an end user, I don’t have that much input."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is on the higher side, especially with additional costs for professional services like consultants."
"It's a perpetual license, and the subscription can be expensive."
"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."
"We chose quarterly payments."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"I rate Salesforce Essentials' pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing is a bit on the expensive side."
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Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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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?
The mobile access can be improved in several ways. Salesforce Essentials operates in a table format where the entire user interface is based on tables, more specifically pivot tables. This is not v...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ABC Financial, AFAS Software, Quality Bicycle Products, CryptoLogic & WagerLogic, SERVOData, Shinsei Bank, TENAQUIP, MCAP, Visaya Knowledge Process Outsourcing Corporation, Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari, Memira
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Find out what your peers are saying about Interactive Intelligence vs. Salesforce Essentials and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.