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Salesforce Essentials pros and cons

Vendor: Salesforce
4.1 out of 5
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Pros & Cons summary

Salesforce Essentials is scalable and flexible, enabling customization to meet diverse business needs. Its cloud-based nature and seamless integration enhance efficiency by streamlining processes like finance and customer activity tracking. However, limitations include high pricing, lack of domain-specific solutions, challenging integrations with complex systems like SAP, and uncomfortable experiences for right-to-left language users. Improvements are needed in reporting, user-friendliness, and multilingual support to remain competitive with alternatives like Zoho CRM.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Salesforce Essentials is scalable and flexible, allowing customization based on business needs.
It integrates business processes seamlessly, such as finance, credit lines, and quality issues.
Salesforce Essentials is reliable with standout features like a cloud-based solution and easy deployment.
It enhances tracking of every product and customer activity, helping managers monitor performance.
Reporting and analytics significantly impact operational efficiency.

CONS

Salesforce Essentials lacks domain-specific solutions and struggles with complex product configurations, making integration with SAP challenging.
Reporting capabilities need enhancement due to their current limitations.
Salesforce Essentials could benefit from reductions in pricing and operational costs, with competitors offering similar features at a lower cost.
Integration capabilities require improvement for more seamless usage.
Enhancements in analytics, automation capabilities, and stability are necessary for future releases.
 

Salesforce Essentials Pros review quotes

AA
May 22, 2025
We use Salesforce Essentials for everything we do on the sales side.
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Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
May 28, 2024
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.
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SB
Jun 9, 2025
Their reporting and analytics features have a very significant impact on my company's operational efficiency.
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Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Essentials
October 2025
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Valentin Ilie - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 20, 2024
The product is stable.
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SadeepaPalliyaguru - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 20, 2024
High availability is really important for us when getting our reports as a vendor.
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reviewer1973925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 15, 2024
The most important feature is how Salesforce Essentials brings together information from multiple channels. The nature of our complex custom product data has been challenging due to our manufacturing nature. Salesforce also allowed business processes like finance, credit lines, customer complaints, and quality issues to integrate seamlessly. I haven’t used the mobile app functionality, because we haven't fully utilized because of our preferance of more personal interactions over using mobile apps.
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GS
Apr 11, 2025
The combination of product and service are exceptional.
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Jayesh Bhandari - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 1, 2024
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.
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EM
May 15, 2024
In terms of features, the cloud-based solution and easy deployment are standout elements that have made a difference.
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VK
Apr 2, 2024
Salesforce makes tracking every product and customer activity easy, enabling managers to monitor their products, such as key products and their peak performance.
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Salesforce Essentials Cons review quotes

AA
May 22, 2025
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.
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Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
May 28, 2024
Salesforce should encourage new users by offering smaller license packages, such as packages for three or two users.
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SB
Jun 9, 2025
Salesforce Essentials operates in a table format where the entire user interface is based on tables, more specifically pivot tables. This is not very user-friendly for mobile.
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Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Essentials
October 2025
Free Report: Salesforce Essentials Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Essentials. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Valentin Ilie - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 20, 2024
The product's reporting area has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.
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SadeepaPalliyaguru - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 20, 2024
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.
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reviewer1973925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 15, 2024
Integrating Salesforce with SAP, considering our business relies heavily on SAP for ERP, has been quite challenging due to the intricate product configurations. Unlike standard products like computers with a few options, our products have hundreds of configurable options, making the integration complex. If such integration were possible, it would have been easier to understand the unique nature of our industry and the limited number of customers who buy steel products, unlike consumer electronics.
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GS
Apr 11, 2025
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.
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Jayesh Bhandari - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 1, 2024
Less integration would be better. It should work independently.
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EM
May 15, 2024
Areas that could be improved or upgraded in the next release include analytics, automation capabilities, and stability.
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VK
Apr 2, 2024
The solution could be cheaper.
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Show 4 more reviews (out of 14)

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