Business owner’s guide to understanding Salesforce features, pricing and user reviews
Salesforce Review (2024): Features, Pricing and User Experiences Reviewed
Updated:
Nov 2, 2023
Written by:
Dan Holland
Dan Holland
Edited by:
Kara Credle
Kara Credle
Understanding Salesforce
Salesforce is a tool for managing relationships that spans crucial business interactions, from lead generation and sales oversight to customer support and data analysis.
What Is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a robust CRM technology solution. Its core areas of effectiveness include the tracking of customer interactions and real-time sales data, along with contacts, opportunities, cases, automated marketing, lead capture and lead scoring among many others.
Offering an extensive suite of applications, Salesforce specializes in sales, service, marketing, commerce and more. It provides a unified interface for businesses to track and manage their sales, customer support and marketing activities efficiently.
How Does Salesforce Work?
Salesforce operates primarily through its cloud-based applications, eliminating much of the need for businesses to invest in onsite hardware or software. Its platform allows users to access a range of services, including sales automation, customer service, partner relationship management and marketing automation, all from a centralized dashboard.
At its core, the working mechanism of Salesforce revolves around leads, opportunities and customer records.
- Leads are potential customers who express interest in a product or service. Salesforce helps businesses track and nurture these leads until they’re converted into opportunities.
- Opportunities represent potential sales and revenue which, when closed successfully, transform into customers.
- Customers are the last phase of the process and serve as the hub of information that has been collected during the entire customer acquisition process.
Throughout this process, Salesforce provides valuable insights and analytics, aiding businesses in making data-driven decisions. The separation of the record types allows for deeper customization and reporting, which is why customization is considered a key feature of the platform.
History of Salesforce
Founded in 1999, Salesforce started as a Software as a Service (SaaS) company with the tagline “the end of software.” Despite challenges during the dot-com era, it grew rapidly, earning $5.4 million in 2001 to over $100 million in 2003, eventually reaching over $1 billion in revenue by 2009. Salesforce hosts the annual “Dreamforce” conference and has introduced various notable services and platforms.
- IdeaExchange (2006)
- Service Cloud (2009)
- Trailhead (free learning platform launched in 2014)
- Einstein (AI platform supporting various Salesforce cloud services)
These innovations directly support businesses and customers to navigate the platform and develop best practices.
Navigating Salesforce Features
Through a combination of core and advanced features, Salesforce supports sales, service, marketing and more, all while compiling a consolidated view of historical customer engagement.
Core Features
Salesforce’s core features are fundamental in facilitating customer relationship management. The platform offers lead and contact management, which aids businesses in tracking valuable information about their customer base and capturing leads. With opportunity management, users can manage their sales and deals efficiently while the workflow automation feature helps in creating and automating business processes. Salesforce’s customizable reports and dashboards provide valuable insights into business performance, enabling informed decision-making.
Service Cloud
With a diverse customer base that has a wide range of social and technical skills, the Salesforce Service Cloud provides your business the opportunity to meet your customer’s wants and needs in a timely and efficient manner across multiple channels.
You can track customer concerns and issues and identify trends that will help you proactively address issues and changes in the marketplace.
Sales Cloud
In both the B2B and B2C space, the ability to leverage your leads and sales activities is paramount in determining strategies, resource requirements and keeping your customers engaged and prioritized. The Salesforce Sales Cloud places all of your customer information in a central location so that you can not only better track activities and responses but also allows you to collaborate across different business units in your organization. Business leaders will be able to identify both local and global trends and develop strategies for the ever changing environment, while sales teams will be able to better track, manage and prioritize their daily activities.
Marketing Cloud
Brand awareness, reaching your target audience, creating value and generating interest and trust are all key considerations when developing a marketing strategy for your business. Being able to track and manage your marketing activities across multiple media channels is a necessity as well as the ability to identify effectiveness and success.
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides businesses with the tools and flexibility to meet their customers in environments, times and spaces that are most desirable and effective.
Advanced Features
Businesses have access to superior advanced features in sales including reporting and analytics, AI insights via Einstein and various automation functionality.
Reporting and Analytics
Salesforce provides a deep variety of reports that can be run across multiple objects, allowing users to create customized reports. Because all of the data is in a central location, sales leadership can pull reports to determine team performance.
Marketing can run reports on the efficacy of leads generated from its campaigns, and leadership can run reports to determine business strategies based. Need help digesting the data within your system? Salesforce offers tools like Einstein Analytics to help further diagnose and analyze your data.
Insights Via Einstein Artificial Intelligence
Einstein is the native AI function within the Salesforce ecosystem and allows users to customize the analytics outputs for reporting, forecasting trends, increasing average sales, predicting how to reduce customer satisfaction and more.
Business Automation
Automation’s core function is to improve employee performance by reducing manual processes in an organization. Automation is available extensively within Marketing Cloud and supports the development of dynamic customer journeys.
Chatter
Chatter is an internal collaboration tool for Salesforce customers to share information within the various objects in use. Not to be confused with customer notes, Chatter is designed for users to communicate and track historical notes on specific record types such as customers, leads and opportunities.
Integration and Compatibility
Maximizing data will play a huge role in meeting the needs of your customers while giving you the information to guide your business through an ever-changing and dynamic marketplace. Integration and compatibility are paramount in today’s interconnected tech landscape, an area in which Salesforce excels.
The platform seamlessly integrates with a multitude of third-party applications and services, including marketing automation tools, email services, social media platforms and financial software. This extensive integration capability allows businesses to sync data across different platforms, creating a cohesive and streamlined working environment. With the Salesforce API, businesses can also develop custom integrations, ensuring the CRM system works perfectly with their existing tech stack.
Examples of common integrations are Tableau for advanced reporting and Amazon AWS for data storage and backup. Salesforce also utilizes third party integration solutions such as Zapier and Coupler.
Analyzing Salesforce Cost
Salesforce provides various pricing plans tailored to the diverse needs of businesses, with each plan offering different sets of features and tools as well as an array of applications.
Salesforce Price Structure
| User/Month Billed Annually | Monthly Price | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $25 monthly ($300 annually) | The simple CRM suite with marketing, sales and service for small teams |
| Sales Professional | $80 monthly ($960 annually) | Complete sales solution for any size team |
| Service Professional | $80 monthly ($960 annually) | Complete customer service solution for any size team |
| Marketing Cloud Account Management | $1,250 monthly ($15,000 annually) | Suite of marketing automation tools for any size team |
Each plan provides a varying degree of features and services, with higher-tier plans offering more advanced and in some instances, unlimited options. Businesses should consider specific use cases to ensure a plan that best aligns with their needs and budget. Also, there are additional costs for extra services, add-ons and integrations that should be reviewed ahead of making a purchase decision.
Comparing Pricing of Salesforce
| | Low Pricing | High Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Monday.com | $12.50 / User / Month | $30 / User / Month |
| Zoho CRM | $14 / User / Month | $65 / User / Month |
| Freshsales | $18 / User / Month | $83 / User / Month |
| Zendesk | $25 / User / Month | $149 / User / Month |
| Pipedrive | $14.90 / User / Month | $119 / User / Month |
| Salesforce (Billed Annually) | $25 / User / Month | $80 / User / Year |
User Experiences with Salesforce
User experience with a software solution offers invaluable insights into its practical utility, ease of use and efficiency in solving real-world problems.
Salesforce Software Review
Various Salesforce reviews highlight a mix of positive and negative salesforce customer experiences that provide a clear picture of what a business owner can expect. Positive feedback is often centered around Salesforce’s robust customization features, which allow for extensive reporting and integration. Users appreciate the platform’s ability to centralize customer information, manage lead and customer records and provide insightful analytics and reporting tools.
On the other hand, some users have pointed out that there can be a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with CRM systems, making it more intimidating for beginners. While Salesforce provides a wide range of tutorials via Trailhead, new users are likely to have a steep learning curve. Some reviews also mention the price can quickly increase when adding features, third party integrations and applications.
Pros and Cons of Salesforce
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Extensive and customizable features | Steep learning curve for new users |
| Strong integration with other tools and apps | Can be expensive, especially for small businesses |
| Reliable customer support and community | Many add-ons which can make customization difficult. |
| Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities | Requires time and resources for proper implementation |
One of the primary features of Salesforce is the ability for extensive customization across various needs of businesses. Integration capabilities are also a significant advantage, allowing businesses to easily connect Salesforce with other tools and applications. However, Salesforce is not one of the easiest CRMs to use. New or novice CRM users commonly face a steep learning curve due to the complex customization options and extensive list of features. In this instance, what some list as cons to Salesforce are pros for others.
Evaluating Salesforce’s Value Proposition
ROI Consideration
As with many CRM systems, demonstrating an ROI is directly correlated to the data entered and user participation. When clean data is paired with strong participation, ROI is much more likely and will aid in a business’s ability to maximize customer acquisition and retention.
With customization at the top of the features list, the platform’s ability to automate tasks and streamline processes can be measured and directly tied to generating an ROI. Salesforce allows businesses to reduce waste commonly associated with using multiple third party tools.
Calculating ROI depends heavily on not only the type of business, but the level of complexity within the sales cycle duration, the steps within the sales processes and the amount of need for customization.
Salesforce is a leading enterprise level CRM solution and as such should provide business owners the confidence there will be an associated ROI when the system is deployed correctly.
Suitability and Use Cases
While the MarketWatch Guides team has identified Salesforce as best for large and growing businesses, the program is certainly scalable across any size and type of businesses including small business, sales organizations, software companies and marketing firms.
Small businesses and start ups such as local marketing agencies or finance companies can leverage the Starter plan which offers off the shelf customer management, marketing automations and customized reporting. All of which are critical features necessary to provide the data and analytics needed for a business owner to continue making decisions.
The Bottom Line
Summary of Salesforce Review
Salesforce is a giant in the CRM industry and will continue to lead the charge with its superior customization, automation and integration capabilities. Their pipeline of small businesses allow Salesforce to continually deploy system improvements that help businesses scale and potentially become enterprise users.
Business owners considering Salesforce should take the time to properly identify their use cases to ensure their plan choice meets their needs while identifying the potential need for add ons which can quickly add to the price tag.
Final Recommendations
Salesforce is a reliable marketing CRM with strong customer reviews for both small, large and growing businesses. Our team at MarketWatch Guides believes Salesforce is best for large and growing companies as well as businesses with complex data and analytics needs and third party integrations.
For these reasons, Salesforce has a compelling value proposition and should be a consideration when choosing a CRM.
Frequently Asked Questions About SalesForce
Fortune 500 companies aren’t the only users of Salesforce. Salesforce is commonly listed as a leader in CRM due to the level of customization and features available to both small and large businesses. From Einstein artificial intelligence and lead scoring to opportunity management and object customization, it’s a versatile tool box.
Yes, but like any CRM platform, the Salesforce platform is as good as the data provided and the participation of its users. The platform deeply supports the needs of small and large businesses with a plethora of tools, add ons, integrations and customizations.
A steep learning curve is commonly associated with Salesforce, which is largely due to the level of customization available. However, Salesforce Trailhead is a great resource for new or experienced users to continually learn how to use the system, navigate new updates and learn about emerging capabilities. For instances where additional help is required, a vast team of Salesforce developers are readily available for additional costs.
Many industries can live within the Salesforce ecosystem including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, e-commerce, legal, technology and nonprofits. Salesforce offers customized solutions such as automated processes to eliminate time-consuming tasks, email marketing campaign templates designed to support the customer experience and many others such as integrations with Microsoft and Google. The list is endless as most industries have similar macro needs from a customer data and process management standpoint.
Methodology: Our System for Ranking the Best CRM Software
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help businesses bring in new customers and nurture current ones. With different businesses come different business goals and CRM needs. So, the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours evaluating 13 providers to determine who each CRM is best for. We looked at big names, such as Salesforce and monday.com, as well as small providers, including Liondesk and Less Annoying CRM.
We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using CRM or had used CRM within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:
- User Experience (15%)
- Features (30%)
- Pricing (30%)
- Customer Support (15%)
- Reputation and Credibility (10%)
Visit the full CRM methodology page for more details on our rating system.
If you have feedback or questions about this article, please email the MarketWatch Guides team at editors@marketwatchguides.
