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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service enhances efficiency, reducing staffing costs, boosting satisfaction, and offering significant time savings for users.
Sentiment score
7.9
Salesforce Essentials offers an efficient, user-friendly platform that accelerates sales, aids teams, and automates processes for quick returns.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.9
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is satisfactory but needs improvement in handling complex issues with faster response times.
Sentiment score
8.0
Salesforce Essentials is praised for fast, efficient support and reliable service uptime, enhancing user satisfaction and operational stability.
We are using local Microsoft partners, not Microsoft themselves.
Their service and uptime is phenomenal.
Salesforce Essentials has excellent customer service.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is scalable for medium-large organizations, though experiences vary due to integration and licensing challenges.
Sentiment score
7.5
Salesforce Essentials is highly scalable, supporting enterprise-level needs with flexibility, although some report connectivity and enhancement dependency issues.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is praised for stability, with rare issues mainly due to broader Microsoft outages.
Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Essentials offers stable performance, smooth SAP integration, minor bugs, and reliable uptime, ensuring minimal operational disruptions for users.
Salesforce Essentials has proven stable, with no downtime that affects my work.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service needs enhanced customization, improved integration, better support, and clearer pricing for user satisfaction.
Salesforce Essentials needs better integration, intuitive UI, competitive pricing, simplified automation, enhanced connectivity, and improved language support.
The solution could improve by providing internal scorecards for agents and much better staff ratings.
The main area for improvement is the pricing model.
Instead of requiring users to think about system navigation and clicking procedures, they can simply follow a workflow that guides them through the process.
There are other competitors, like Zoho CRM, that offer similar features at a lower cost.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers competitive pricing with user-based licenses, balancing cost and features, despite some complexity.
Salesforce Essentials is costly, but offers value through flexibility and add-ons, despite complex payment options and operational expenses.
We did our integration with sales automation and other tools internally, which incurred no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees.
The pricing is within the market range, but there is room for improvement.
The cost of running Salesforce Essentials is significant.
The costs associated with Salesforce Essentials are substantial, which is a drawback compared to competitors who offer similar services for less.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers seamless integration, advanced tools, cloud-based convenience, and customizable features for efficient business support.
Salesforce Essentials offers cloud deployment, customization, AI, and mobile support, benefiting process optimization and data integration despite high costs.
It has a workflow feature and offers excellent automation capabilities that streamline our customer service.
It is fully integrated and easily scalable with other Microsoft tools like Power BI, which is a great advantage.
It is very customizable to specific needs.
Salesforce Essentials is excellent because it is one of the most flexible CRMs available.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cust...
Ranking in CRM
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Essentials
Ranking in CRM
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Essentials is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Gary Cook - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless customer communication and improves satisfaction
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service ( /products/microsoft-dynamics-365-customer-service-reviews ) stands out for its superb product functionality, price performance, flexibility, and integration with other Microsoft products like Office. I especially value the complaint management feature, which allows for much more unified communication. It has a workflow feature and offers excellent automation capabilities that streamline our customer service.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Healthcare Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
The pricing is within the market range, but there is room for improvement. I have annual subscriptions.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
The main area for improvement is the pricing model. While it is competitive within the market, there is room for improvement, as is the case with most software vendors.
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...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service vs. Salesforce Essentials and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.