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Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Users report substantial ROI from Microsoft Dynamics CRM through better sales, customer retention, and enhanced operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.7
Salesforce Sales Cloud boosts data visibility, efficiency, team collaboration, and productivity, enhancing nonprofits' fundraising and grant competitiveness.
Sentiment score
6.7
Zendesk enhances organizational efficiency and productivity, reducing costs despite licensing fees, with varied but significant financial benefits.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a fantastic tool but requires disciplined data entry by sales personnel and operations teams to maintain data quality.
We are not just implementing Salesforce Sales Cloud; we need to understand what the customer wants to achieve in 5 to 10 years.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Microsoft Dynamics CRM support experiences vary, with praise for responsiveness but concerns about contact difficulty and expertise in complex cases.
Sentiment score
7.0
Salesforce Sales Cloud's support is efficient and helpful when paid, but free support is slow and basic.
Sentiment score
6.3
Zendesk excels in responsiveness and issue resolution, though reliance on documentation may delay human support replies.
I would rate customer support as ten out of ten.
While the support operates within their standard SLA, it can be difficult to speak directly with someone over the phone.
Sometimes the technical support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is not qualified enough, and in some situations, we know the tool better than they do.
Support requires a subscription and when taken, the service is pretty nice.
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is scalable, integrates widely, adapts to changing needs, but may face integration challenges and cost considerations.
Sentiment score
7.7
Salesforce Sales Cloud is scalable and adaptable across organizations but faces challenges with performance and licensing impact on scalability.
Sentiment score
7.4
Zendesk scales well for various team sizes; praised for customization, integration, though challenges include data backup and departmental customization.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is highly scalable, rated at ten, even fifteen out of ten.
I would give it a ten out of ten for scalability.
Salesforce is highly scalable and operates efficiently.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is totally cloud native, requiring no additional effort for scalability.
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
The scalability of Zendesk is still in the same range as Freshdesk.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is stable, reliable, and well-rated, with minor issues addressed through updates, suiting medium to large businesses.
Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Sales Cloud is stable and reliable, with high ratings, minor issues from configuration, and occasional performance slowdowns with large datasets.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zendesk is stable and reliable, despite occasional outages, making it ideal for small businesses and startups globally.
I would rate it ten out of ten.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is very stable.
I have not experienced any degradation in Salesforce's performance.
The stability has been quite reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires enhancements in usability, customization, integration, cost-effectiveness, automation, and support for small businesses.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is complex and expensive, with user interface, integration, scalability, and customization challenges impacting usability.
Zendesk users face challenges with interface clumsiness, slow performance, customization, integration, and pricing, affecting overall usability and efficiency.
More use-case-oriented material should be provided to help users and implementers learn how to do more, faster.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM needs improvement in simplifying the setup and configuration process, which can be relatively complex when we want all features to work properly.
Compared to AWS, it is slower, which could be a hindrance.
With today's generative AI capabilities like ChatGPT, it should be possible to directly communicate with the software rather than navigating through the entire system manually.
There could be improvements in integration, which can be achieved with APIs or tools like Zapier.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is costly yet valued for comprehensive features, with prices influenced by users, licensing, and deployment type.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is costly but valued for ROI, with pricing varying by edition and negotiable for discounts.
Zendesk pricing varies, perceived as high, but offers value and flexibility; negotiation advised for larger teams to optimize costs.
The pricing of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be complex due to Microsoft's complicated licensing model.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM costs about $110 to $115 per user per month, following a recent price increase.
Without negotiation, costs can become expensive.
This happened for the first time because of the new CEO, Arundhati, who revolutionized pricing strategies, allowing discounts of 60-70% for Salesforce Sales Cloud in India.
I would rate the price for Salesforce Sales Cloud as a three, where one is a high price.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers easy customization, integration, and features for enhanced business processes, valued for scalability and cost-effectiveness.
Salesforce Sales Cloud enhances sales efficiency with customization, integration, automation, and analytics, appealing to organizations seeking seamless processes.
Zendesk offers user-friendly integration, robust features, and valuable tools, enhancing efficiency and streamlining customer support processes effectively.
The backend storage integrates seamlessly with OneDrive, and the solution offers robust security features, including Azure integration, two-factor authentication (2FA), and comprehensive audit trails.
The CRM is very fast, which is the most important aspect, and it's very handy.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is its integration with Outlook and other Microsoft products like Microsoft 365, which includes emails, Teams, and SharePoint.
Its easy-to-navigate interface aids in delivering clear vision and organization, especially for sales and business management.
The Einstein Analytics and the inbuilt reporting are very useful for keeping track of pipeline movement.
The biggest benefit of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is a centralized point, a centralized source of truth for customer-related information; you centralize all the information in a single database, and that's the biggest benefit.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
The benefits I have seen from using Zendesk include faster response times.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is 4.5%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 3.7%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM4.5%
Salesforce Sales Cloud3.7%
Zendesk1.2%
Other90.6%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Pawel-Gawronski - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlining resource management and improving project insights with helpful support
The deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is easy because it's a software as a service, which eliminates the need to deploy anything in our data center. It has improved the verification of value streams by mapping projects to products and demonstrating the total cost of ownership. This automation significantly impacts daily operations by reducing the time spent on manual tasks and improving the quality and delivery time.
Kamal Deep - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience exceptional project enhancements and seamless automation integration
Salesforce Sales Cloud itself is a wonderful solution, and there are two different versions: Lightning and classic. The Lightning version is a new generation version compatible with any mobile device, whether it's a phone, iPad, or any size of screen. The reporting and analytics functionalities, especially with the Einstein feature, are wonderful because it allows for analysis of data regarding your opportunity pipeline, giving insight into how long it will take to close deals. This gives a great understanding of running different levels of campaigns and defining smart workflows, where if one task is done, the other task can automatically get created and assigned to different team members. This flexibility is a key benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud. Lead management is a great feature in Salesforce Sales Cloud because if you go for enterprise and above licenses, you can define different record types. For example, if one company is into two different businesses such as real estate and car reselling, both being opposite, this can be defined in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing for different workflows, fields, and mechanisms that do not affect each other's operations. The predictive insight feature known as forecasting is a very old feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud, giving predictions based on your pipeline and previous opportunity closings. The new Einstein analytics feature is more advanced and is enabled with AI, providing better forecasting based on your current pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is working smartly with AI to help close more deals based on opportunity stages, trends, and industries, advising on the steps to take next. Lead generation is the most important thing because every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.
JohanSkibdahl - PeerSpot reviewer
Automating customer support with advanced AI capabilities and seamless communication
Zendesk has been invaluable in automating communications such as email and phone calls. It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. This intelligent tool can manage complex queries before users even realize they are interacting with a non-human. Additionally, we have integrated Zendesk with Datto and Klaviyo, enhancing our workflows.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
The most valuable features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM are all the filters and possible reports.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM needs to be improved in the visibility of add-on costs for end users, which can sometimes be t...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
I use Microsoft Dynamics CRM in my day-to-day customer management tasks. Our usual use cases for Microsoft Dynamics C...
What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?
The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?
From a customer perspective, it's a very stable system, and people are used to its functionalities, good and bad. Imp...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?
For managing two different things, I'm managing some sales pipeline, the pipeline of sales of some products, and also...
What do you like most about Zendesk Support?
I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
Zendesk's pricing is reasonable. It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for mo...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
I'm going to piggyback on what I said regarding Freshdesk concerning what could be better in Zendesk: incorporate mor...
 

Also Known As

Dynamics CRM, MS Dynamics CRM
Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metro Bank, Nissan, Pandora, Delta, Haynes International, City of London, Trek and many more market leaders.
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in CRM. Updated: September 2025.
868,288 professionals have used our research since 2012.