5 Cheap Salesforce Alternatives to Look for Today (2018)

5 Cheap Salesforce Alternatives to Look for Today (2018)

If all your friends decide to jump off the cliff, would you do the same? As tempting as it can be to follow the commands, it is better to weigh the pros and cons before making the decision. So why take the plunge with ​Salesforce​​just because everyone else is? Since today’s CRM market offers a huge variety of solutions, let’s go over the main cheap Salesforce alternatives to help you build a successful business and save your budget.

How to Evaluate the Salesforce Competitors?

Being the leading platform in the CRM space, Salesforce stands out for the different products built around the pivotal functionality like sales force and marketing automation, contact, and lead management, as well as reporting. The numerous applications and industry-specific solutions are represented on the AppExchange that enables you to extend the solution’s capabilities. Also, the platform obtains the robust analytical tools to get the in-depth analysis and help you take the informed decisions at every step of the way. Regarding the costs, Salesforce products are all cloud-based and offered on per-user, per-month

editions (paid for annually). So, the platform includes the following pricing choices:

● Salesforce Essentials​- $25/user/month up to 5 users; ● Lightning Professional​- $75/user/month; ● Lightning Enterprise​- $150/user/month; ● Lightning Unlimited ​- $300/user/month.

By and large, Salesforce is the full-featured solution with lots of integration tools.

So, the top-leading CRM seems to do everything in the right way, why do you need the Salesforce alternative in the first place? With the urge to find the more compelling solution, a number of companies started to search for the Salesforce alternatives. The competitors usually bank upon two factors that the customers are constantly looking for:

● Simplicity. ​Some of the Salesforce users state that they haven’t been able to use the solution to its full potential due to the platform’s complexity. ● Cost-effectiveness. ​Since the top solution has been around for a while and captured the main chunk of the CRM market, the vendor tends to go a bit bold with the pricing model.

As you can see, Salesforce’s vast variety of features and costs make it overwhelming and uneconomical for some organizations, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. What’s more, the platform can be difficult to implement that usually slows down the user adoption rates. So, before selecting CRM just because of popularity, examine your company needs and objectives to find a suitable solution.

5 Salesforce Alternatives to Consider

Besides analyzing the aspects like user-friendliness and price, there are other main reasons you can look at while choosing the desired CRM. Let’s dive deeper into the CRM world and take a glance at the solutions that are competent when it comes to offering the nifty capabilities:

HubSpot CRM HubSpot CRM​​is a relatively new platform that fits the companies of small and medium sizes and provides the next functionality:

● automatic tracking of clients interactions, whether they are in the email, across social media, or on the call. Capture every activity like call, email, or meeting as it happens by syncing with Gmail or Outlook. ● use the free tools for live chat, team email, as well as bots, together with the universal inbox that provides the sales, marketing, and customer service teams with one place to view, manage, and answer to all conversations. ● send personalized sequences by queuing up a series of emails and delivering them to the potential client on a schedule you set. Turn the repetitive emails into templates to simplify your further workflow. Then track the performance and share the templates with your team.

HubSpot CRM is free forever.

Agile CRM

Being one of the newbies CRM on the market,​​Agile CRM​​already stands out for the powerful functionality: Custom Data Fields support, Lead Scoring, Appointment Scheduling, Custom Deal Milestones, and other. The users get a unified platform that settles all the users' information and their relationships on a single page, ordering their tasks. Also, it improves communication and cooperation, enhances team performance, and outputs it all at individual and collective levels.

Agile CRM is free for up to 10 users​.

Zoho CRM Zoho CRM​ ​has become one of the most popular CRM solutions for companies for all sizes over the years with the help of the following functionality:

● automate the business processes to remove the dependency on people, making your solution self-reliant. Zoho workflow automation enables you to set the organization rules by assigning tasks, sending the email alerts, updating the record values and approvals. ● create the customizable reports that let you obtain the bar, funnel, pie and line charts. Schedule the reports to be delivered to your customers as per required time frame, as well as share them with non-Zoho users via email. ● take advantage of the integration options. Go to add-ons section and select the application by the name of Surveys. Create your own surveys and receive the responses from across contacts on the CRM. Analyze

the information from the customers to make sense of and take the appropriate steps to make business more efficient.

Zoho CRM is free for up to 3 users and includes 4 paid subscriptions:

-​ Standard ​- $12/user/month/billed annually;

-​ Professional​- $20/user/month/billed annually;

-​ Enterprise​- $35/user/month/billed annually;

-​ Ultimate​- $100/user/month/billed annually.

Capsule CRM 4. ​ Capsule​ ​is a simple-to-use solution for the companies of small and medium sizes that gets attention with the practical functionality:

● use contact management to create tasks and share with other employees. Skip missing the client’s call or proposal deadline. Set the routine tasks to repeat monthly or create a track to match the business workflow. Exploit the calendar to have a complete overview of tasks ahead. ● manage the sales pipeline effortlessly. Get a complete summary of the opportunities with the sales dashboard, including the potential values.

See where they are in your pipeline and what activities need to be done next. Besides, use the opportunities to track the potential sales with a customer like a bid, deal or proposal. Explore the sales history and customize with your own custom fields. ● take advantage of the tags and make your solution even more flexible.

Tag everything starting from the opportunities to cases. Create the lists with all type of information.

Capsule CRM comprises ​a free plan​for up to 2 users and Professional subscription for $12/user/month.

Bitrix24 Bitrix24​ ​is a great choice for small companies and attracts companies with simple functionality and easy-to-use interface:

● observe the Activity Stream, the interactive update feed where all the changes and new additions can be seen. Help your employees to stay aware of what is going on, and contribute to discussions since the Activity Stream can be personalized by each user. Get real-time updates, smart following, notification settings, and announcements. ● use task dependencies that let you establish the logical relationships between tasks. Drag an arrow from one task to another and automatically change the start/end date for other tasks in the projects.

● create the personalized invoices instantly. Insert the client’s data into an invoice automatically, just select the appropriate Contact or Lead.

Bitrix24 enables you with a free plan for up to 12 users and 3 paid subscriptions:

● Plus​- $39/user/month; ● Standard​- $99/user/month; ● Professional​- $199/user/month.

Closing Thoughts It is well-known that CRM space is pretty crowded nowadays and the process of selecting the right software for your organization can be challenging. While you desire the best capabilities, you also have other aspects like cost index and its usability to consider. The perfect way is to chart a list of factors that can affect your company processes and choosing the suitable platform can be easier.

Don’t miss a unique chance to try out any of the mentioned above Salesforce alternatives for free!

Import up to 10% of your real data from CRM you use now, CSV, Excel or G-Suite to the chosen platform and see how it looks like.​​Launch free and secure ​Demo Migration​right away.