Salesforce Essentials vs Salesforce Sales Cloud comparison

Salesforce Essentials vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

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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

6.7

Salesforce Sales Cloud boosts data visibility, efficiency, team collaboration, and productivity, enhancing nonprofits' fundraising and grant competitiveness.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Many first-time CRM users are unaware of all features and best practices, so we guide them with use cases, sample work, or sometimes create a POC to show them how their system will look and the expected outcomes.

Kamal Deep

Founder and Salesforce Consultant at SaaSnic

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a fantastic tool but requires disciplined data entry by sales personnel and operations teams to maintain data quality.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

CTO at Cipher7

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

7.0

Salesforce Sales Cloud's support is efficient and helpful when paid, but free support is slow and basic.

Their service and uptime is phenomenal.

Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG

Salesforce Essentials has excellent customer service.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Senior Learning Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Support requires a subscription and when taken, the service is pretty nice.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

CTO at Cipher7

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

7.7

Salesforce Sales Cloud is scalable and adaptable across organizations but faces challenges with performance and licensing impact on scalability.

It is one of the most scalable systems available.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG

Salesforce Sales Cloud is totally cloud native, requiring no additional effort for scalability.

CTO at Cipher7

Salesforce is highly scalable and operates efficiently.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

AWS Cloud Engineer at Accenture

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

8.1

Salesforce Sales Cloud is stable and reliable, with high ratings, minor issues from configuration, and occasional performance slowdowns with large datasets.

Salesforce Essentials has proven stable, with no downtime that affects my work.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Senior Learning Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Salesforce Sales Cloud is very stable.

CTO at Cipher7

I have not experienced any degradation in Salesforce's performance.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

AWS Cloud Engineer at Accenture

Room For Improvement

Salesforce Essentials needs better integration, intuitive UI, competitive pricing, simplified automation, enhanced connectivity, and improved language support.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is complex and expensive, with user interface, integration, scalability, and customization challenges impacting usability.

Instead of requiring users to think about system navigation and clicking procedures, they can simply follow a workflow that guides them through the process.

Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG

There are other competitors, like Zoho CRM, that offer similar features at a lower cost.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Senior Learning Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Compared to AWS, it is slower, which could be a hindrance.

AWS Cloud Engineer at Accenture

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

CTO at Cipher7

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 ROI, with pricing varying by edition and negotiable for discounts.

The cost of running Salesforce Essentials is significant.

Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG

The costs associated with Salesforce Essentials are substantial, which is a drawback compared to competitors who offer similar services for less.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Senior Learning Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

Kamal Deep

Founder and Salesforce Consultant at SaaSnic

Without negotiation, costs can become expensive.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

CTO at Cipher7

I would rate the price for Salesforce Sales Cloud as a three, where one is a high price.

Luís Silva

Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Valuable Features

Salesforce Essentials offers cloud deployment, customization, AI, and mobile support, benefiting process optimization and data integration despite high costs.

Salesforce Sales Cloud enhances sales efficiency with customization, integration, automation, and analytics, appealing to organizations seeking seamless processes.

It is very customizable to specific needs.

Head of Commercial Excellence at Sartorius AG

Salesforce Essentials is excellent because it is one of the most flexible CRMs available.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report

Senior Learning Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Its easy-to-navigate interface aids in delivering clear vision and organization, especially for sales and business management.

AWS Cloud Engineer at Accenture

The Einstein Analytics and the inbuilt reporting are very useful for keeping track of pipeline movement.

For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Sales Cloud report

CTO at Cipher7

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.

Luís Silva

Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Essentials

Ranking in CRM

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Ranking in CRM

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

Opportunity Management (1st), Sales Force Automation (2nd), Conversation Intelligence Software (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Essentials is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 8.1%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CRM

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

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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Kamal Deep

Founder and Salesforce Consultant at SaaSnic

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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

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...

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Comparisons

No data available

Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Oracle CRM vs Salesforce Sales Cloud

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Product Reports

Salesforce Essentials

Download Salesforce Essentials product report

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Download Salesforce Sales Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce

Overview

Salesforce Essentials is a cloud-based CRM tool for businesses seeking flexible, scalable, and customizable solutions to enhance sales and customer support processes.

Designed for seamless integration across multiple channels, Salesforce Essentials includes Sales and Service Cloud to simplify sales tasks and customer management. It enhances finance, credit, and quality processes with user-friendly AI capabilities and predictive analytics. Despite its strengths, there is room for improvement in SAP integration, interface simplicity, and report generation. Cost-effectiveness and support for diverse languages are also potential upgrade areas. Businesses use this CRM solution for lead management, opportunity tracking, and automating sales workflows, transitioning from paper-based methods to digital efficiency.

What are the essential features of Salesforce Essentials?

Scalability and Flexibility: Accommodates growth and customization needs.
Multiple Channel Integration: Enhances finance and quality processes.
User-Friendly: Easy navigation with AI capabilities.
Cloud Deployment: Includes Sales and Service Cloud features.
Predictive Analytics: Improves productivity and tracking.
Mobile App Support: Facilitates on-the-go access and management.

What benefits or ROI can users expect from Salesforce Essentials?

Improved Productivity: Automation features save time and streamline tasks.
Enhanced Customer Management: Centralizes interaction and data handling.
Ease of Transition: From manual to automated workflows.
Performance Monitoring: Standardizes processes for better oversight.

In the retail industry, businesses employ Salesforce Essentials for customer data management and transparency in order processing. Healthcare providers use it for patient engagement and streamlined communication. Financial services utilize it for billing management and compliance, harnessing automation tools for efficient data handling.

Salesforce

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a comprehensive CRM platform designed for efficient lead management, sales forecasting, and customer engagement, offering extensive customization and cloud-based accessibility.

Aimed at enhancing business efficiency, Salesforce Sales Cloud supports core business processes like CRM, lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, and customer engagement. Its robust integration capabilities allow seamless connectivity with ERP systems and various applications. The platform offers pipeline tracking, process automation, and advanced sales cycle management. Users appreciate its cloud-based accessibility, allowing teams to operate remotely and manage sales operations effectively. However, users highlight concerns about its complexity, cost, and the need for a more intuitive interface.

What features does Salesforce Sales Cloud offer?

Customization: Tailor the CRM to meet specific business requirements.
Robust Reporting: Comprehensive analytics and data insights.
Lead Management: Efficiently manage and convert leads.
API Integration: Seamless connectivity with multiple applications.
Cloud Accessibility: Work from anywhere with cloud-based access.

What benefits should be evaluated in Salesforce Sales Cloud reviews?

Enhanced Productivity: Streamline sales processes with automation.
Improved Collaboration: Facilitate team coordination and client engagement.
Accurate Forecasting: Make informed decisions with reliable sales forecasts.
Flexibility: Accommodate diverse industry needs with ease.
Legacy System Integration: Efficiently update and integrate with existing systems.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is widely implemented across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, supporting sales teams in tracking and managing sales operations. Its use extends to reporting, collaboration, and enhancing client interactions, allowing companies to tailor Salesforce to meet industry-specific requirements efficiently.

Salesforce

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

Salesforce Essentials vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud