Salesforce: pricing, pros and cons
Salesforce models essentially any sales process and has the largest partner ecosystem in software. Total cost is licence plus admin plus consultants, and rarely under triple the sticker.
- Price
- $165/seat/moestimate
- At 50 people
- $99,000/yr
- Free tier
- No
- Website
- salesforce.com
Specification
What Salesforce supports
The dimensions every CRM in our catalogue is compared on.
- Built for
- Inbound, Outbound, Account management
- Forecasting
- Board-grade
- Dialler and SMS included
- No
- Marketing tools included
- Yes
- Custom data model
- Yes
- SAML single sign-on
- Yes
- SOC 2
- Yes
- EU data residency
- Yes
- Self-hostable
- No
- Open source
- No
- Public API
- Yes
- Native mobile apps
- Yes
The honest assessment
Salesforce: pros and cons
Total cost is licence plus admin plus consultants — rarely under triple the sticker.
What it does well
- Models essentially any sales process, however unusual
- Reporting and forecasting depth that boards ask for
- The largest partner and integration ecosystem in software
What it costs you
- Requires a dedicated admin or agency to stay healthy
- Reps find data entry heavy, so the pipeline drifts from reality
- Multi-year contracts remove the option to leave quickly
Fit
Who Salesforce suits
Choose it if
- Enterprises with complex territories, approvals and forecasting requirements
- Companies who can staff a dedicated admin or agency
Look elsewhere if
- Teams under about twenty reps — the overhead outweighs the capability
- Companies who want to be productive in weeks rather than quarters
Head to head
Salesforce compared
Direct comparisons against every other CRM we cover.
4 alternatives
Other CRMs worth a look
Everything else we cover in crm & sales, cheapest first.
Questions
Salesforce, answered
What is Salesforce best for?
Enterprises with complex territories, approvals and forecasting requirements. Companies who can staff a dedicated admin or agency. In short: the enterprise CRM standard: infinitely configurable, and priced accordingly.
What are the downsides of Salesforce?
Requires a dedicated admin or agency to stay healthy. Reps find data entry heavy, so the pipeline drifts from reality. Multi-year contracts remove the option to leave quickly. The trade-off in one line: Total cost is licence plus admin plus consultants — rarely under triple the sticker.
How much does Salesforce cost?
About $165/seat/mo on its common paid tier — roughly $99,000 a year for 50 people. There is no free tier. That figure is our unverified estimate; confirm it with the vendor before budgeting.
What are the best Salesforce alternatives?
In crm & sales the credible alternatives are Attio, Close, HubSpot, Pipedrive. Which fits depends on your team size, budget and non-negotiables — our questionnaire ranks all of them against your answers in about three minutes.
Is Salesforce worth switching away from?
Only if one of its real drawbacks is costing you something concrete. Total cost is licence plus admin plus consultants — rarely under triple the sticker. If none of the downsides above describe your situation, staying is almost always cheaper than moving — a migration costs weeks, and a tool that merely annoys you is not worth them.
Prices are unverified estimates — useful for comparing orders of magnitude, not for budgeting. Confirm the current figure with the vendor before you commit to anything.
Is Salesforce still the right call for your team?
Answer about a dozen questions and we will rank Salesforce against every alternative in crm & sales — with the reasoning shown, and the cost of switching at your actual seat count.