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Salesforce Essentials vs Salesforce Sales Cloud 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
7.9
Salesforce Essentials offers an efficient, user-friendly platform that accelerates sales, aids teams, and automates processes for quick returns.
Sentiment score
7.2
Salesforce Sales Cloud enhances productivity, efficiency, and management, improving visibility, decision-making, and fundraising for non-profits.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a fantastic tool but requires disciplined data entry by sales personnel and operations teams to maintain data quality.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.0
Salesforce Essentials is praised for fast, efficient support and reliable service uptime, enhancing user satisfaction and operational stability.
Sentiment score
7.1
Salesforce Sales Cloud offers varying support quality based on subscription level, with faster responses for premium users and valuable community resources.
Their service and uptime is phenomenal.
Salesforce Essentials has excellent customer service.
Support requires a subscription and when taken, the service is pretty nice.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Salesforce Essentials is highly scalable, supporting enterprise-level needs with flexibility, although some report connectivity and enhancement dependency issues.
Sentiment score
7.8
Salesforce Sales Cloud offers scalable solutions, praised for flexibility and growth but noted for reporting and storage cost limitations.
It is one of the most scalable systems available.
It scales effortlessly with user growth.
Salesforce is highly scalable and operates efficiently.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Essentials offers stable performance, smooth SAP integration, minor bugs, and reliable uptime, ensuring minimal operational disruptions for users.
Sentiment score
8.2
Salesforce Sales Cloud is highly stable and reliable, with swift issue resolutions and high user satisfaction from regular updates.
Salesforce Essentials has proven stable, with no downtime that affects my work.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is very stable.
I have not experienced any degradation in Salesforce's performance.
 

Room For Improvement

Salesforce Essentials needs better integration, intuitive UI, competitive pricing, simplified automation, enhanced connectivity, and improved language support.
Salesforce Sales Cloud needs better UI, cost, integration, reporting, mobile support, data handling, and automation with improved performance.
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.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Salesforce Essentials is costly, but offers value through flexibility and add-ons, despite complex payment options and operational expenses.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is costly but valued for its customization, integration, and efficiency benefits for businesses despite high expenses.
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.
Without negotiation, costs can become expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Salesforce Essentials offers cloud deployment, customization, AI, and mobile support, benefiting process optimization and data integration despite high costs.
Salesforce Sales Cloud provides customizable CRM solutions with seamless integration, automation, and advanced analytics for diverse business needs.
It is very customizable to specific needs.
Salesforce Essentials is excellent because it is one of the most flexible CRMs available.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Ranking in CRM
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Opportunity Management (1st), Sales Force Automation (1st), Conversation Intelligence Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Essentials is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 8.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Greg-Lythe - PeerSpot reviewer
A feature-rich platform that helps to track sales and gather customer information
My age-old complaint with Salesforce Sales Cloud is that it has to be refreshed because it's a cloud-based system. If you make any updates, you have to refresh and save because you're fundamentally looking at what's running in the cloud. It can be slow since you constantly refresh and save the screen. If you were running a local application, like a local CRM system, as you input anything, it would be more seamless. It's like using Excel—you don't have to save every single time you enter new details into a cell because it knows it's a local copy. With a cloud-based system like the tool, changing requires refreshing and saving, which can be tedious.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
55%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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?
With today's generative AI capabilities like ChatGPT ( /products/chatgpt-reviews ), it should be possible to directly communicate with the software rather than navigating through the entire system ...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?
I generally use Salesforce Sales Cloud ( /products/salesforce-sales-cloud-reviews ) for our sales process, setting up the entire opportunity lifecycle from lead generation to contract closure. It h...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Essentials vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.