Salesforce CRM review: pros, cons and pricing plans

3.8 out of 5

• Usability
  3.8
• Customisation
  3.3
• Functionality
  3.9
• Pricing
  1.9
• Help and Support
  3

Try Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most powerful CRM brands on the market, making it best equipped for small businesses with large sales teams and complex needs.

However, this superb functionality comes with a relatively high starting price tag of £20 per user, per month. But, with an attractive free CRM software trial period, there’s plenty of incentive for small business users to give Salesforce a go.

Our expert research team has thoroughly tested Salesforce out. In this review, we share all of our findings, including its hidden fees and added perks. By the end, you’ll be able to make a confident decision about investing in the platform.

Salesforce’s pros and cons for small businesses

Salesforce dashboard

First started in 1999, Salesforce is one of the founding fathers of the CRM market. Now, it serves 150,000 customers and remains one of the fastest-growing brands on the market.

If you want a platform that can perform every CRM task under the sun, Salesforce is your dream partner – but it is also much more expensive than competitors.

Because of this, we think Salesforce is best for growing firms that already have a large number of clients, and want a software product that will optimise their existing sales process.

Read More About CRM

This page is part of a larger series on CRM. Read more about the top CRM systems in our full guide:

Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

How does Salesforce perform in the areas that matter to SMEs?

At Startups, we specialise in the needs of small business owners. To work out how well Salesforce responds to these needs, our expert research team thoroughly tested out the CRM system, alongside a variety of other CRM systems, to find out how well it performs in key areas that matter to SMEs.

Here’s a brief overview of how it performed in these criteria:

Usability

We asked our testers to look at how well each platform carried out typical CRM-related tasks, such as adding new contacts, setting up email campaigns, and managing sales pipelines. With this, we found that Salesforce performed slightly above average in this area.

However, the onboarding process can be time-consuming. Our testers received a number of error messages when trying to access basic user settings.

But once your account has been built, the system becomes much smoother to use with an intuitive, clean interface that is great for organising relevant data, such as contact information.

Salesforce case ticket

Price

For this, we compared the price of Salesforce with a number of other providers, such as HubSpot, FreshSales and Zendesk.

Out of the 11 platforms we reviewed, Salesforce receives our second-lowest score for pricing. For small businesses, there are only two plans available – Starter Suite and Pro Suite – the cheapest starting from £20 per user, per month.

Customisation

Customisation is important for small business sales teams. Unlike most mid-sized firms, you’ll likely have a unique sales process that your software needs to complement.

We tested out Salesforce’s customisation for ourselves by creating a fake sales pipeline and found it to be a high-scoring area for customisation. While it might not be as powerful as rival software like Freshsales, you can make use of custom forms, dashboards, and a sales pipeline with Salesforce.

Salesforce sales pipeline view

Help and support 

Fortunately, we found it was easy to find help and support when navigating Salesforce’s ecosystem. Not only does it have an online knowledge base and community forum, but you can also contact its support team via email, phone and its AgentForce live chat functionality. Given its relatively steep learning curve, this could be useful for new users.

Functionality

This is Salesforce’s best area. The platform’s massive inventory boasts a wide range of data storage, reporting, and customisation tools.

As a result, we gave it full marks across the board for email, organisation, and contact management.

Salesforce customer card

However, Salesforce’s weakness is its marketing and outreach, as we found that it doesn’t offer nearly as many of these features compared to rivals like Freshsales and HubSpot.

Marketing and outreach are particularly important brand-building strategies for startups and firms in the early stages of growth. For such organisations, it might be worth investing in one of the following options instead of Salesforce:

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Zoho CRM	HubSpot	Freshsales	Zendesk	Pipedrive
Best for: Established businesses with long client lists	Best for: Building email marketing campaigns	Best for: Small agencies	Best for: Businesses with fast-paced sales cycles	Best for: Managing partners and clients
Price per month (billed annually): £12 per user	Price per month (billed annually): Free plan, or from £9 per user	Price per month (billed annually): Free plan, or £7 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £15 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £14 per user

Compare quotes from the above providers using Startups' specially-designed tool Compare

Salesforce pricing explained

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CHEAPEST PLAN
Salesforce Starter Suite	Salesforce Pro Suite	Salesforce Enterprise	Salesforce Unlimited
Price per month (billed annually) £20 per user (starting price)	Price per month (billed annually) £80 per user (starting price)	Price per month (billed annually) £132 per user	Price per month (billed annually) £264 per user
Users Up to 325	Users Over 3,000	Users Unlimited	Users Unlimited

According to data reported by IT Brief, only 14% of UK businesses fully implemented AI in 2024, primarily because fully integrating new technology was seen as a risk to development.

However, it can also come down to budgeting. New technology is never cheap, and price is one of the most important considerations for typically cash-strapped small business owners.

Of the two tiers available for each product, the most affordable is the Starter Suite, which starts at £20 per month, per user. The Professional Suite starts at £80 per month, per user.

Clearly that’s a big jump between tiers, which isn’t scalable for most small businesses. Because of this, we found Salesforce was lacking in terms of value for money, particularly compared to HubSpot.

Generally speaking, Salesforce Starter Suite is the most suitable tier for SMEs (unless you’re specifically looking to spend more).

Is there a free plan?

Having worked with small businesses for over two decades, we know that freemium software versions can be a lifesaver when you’ve got a limited amount of capital to work with.

There is no free Salesforce plan, so it didn’t make our list of the top free CRM solutions for SMEs. That being said, there is a free 30-day trial of each plan for you to test out the platform before purchasing.

Salesforce CRMs explained

One criticism we have of Salesforce is that its product list is a little confusing.

Depending on the business function you need to prioritise, Salesforce has lots of different options available. We’ve picked out what we think are the top three below:

• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly ‘Pardot’)
• Salesforce Service Cloud

Below, we’ll go through the strengths and weaknesses of each product, so you can work out which one is the right fit for you.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

4 out of 5

• Sales
  3
• Reports
  4
• Organisation
  5

Sales CRM products tend to offer more features relating to team infrastructure and communication, helping coworkers to work together and onboard more efficiently.

Our research shows that where Sales Cloud stands out is employee management, particularly for its management tools, training, onboarding, security, and customer support.

However, it falls down in lead generation and outreach. There are only a few ways to communicate with leads, and you won’t be able to accept payment for any customers via the platform. That being said, you will be able to integrate with Facebook and LinkedIn, which is a plus.

Overall, we think this is a good option for small businesses that have a designated sales department they need to manage.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly ‘Pardot’)

3.3 out of 5

• Marketing
  0.5
• Email
  5
• Contact management
  5

The first thing to get out of the way with Salesforce Account Engagement is that it is very expensive. The cost starts from £1,000 a month – an instant ‘no’ for most SMEs.

But for those who have the budget to spare, it’s an option worth considering. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement mostly earns its price tag with email marketing. Users can access attractive email templates, an editor, and automation tools (a great way to save time when you’re carrying out repetitive tasks like issuing marketing emails).

Still, this plan also performs poorly for social media tools, content marketing, and paid marketing. We’d recommend a free marketing platform instead, like HubSpot.

Salesforce Service Cloud

3.8 out of 5

• Security
  3.3
• Customer service
  3.3
• Integrations
  5

If you’re running a software or tech-based team, you probably have a lot of clients who need support. CRM services, or ‘help desks’ as they are also known, are customer support platforms focused on helping businesses manage customer service queries.

Generally, the Salesforce Service Cloud’s feature list emphasises workflow management and issue tracking. You’ll also get a custom automation builder and a custom dashboard, so you can personally design your own overview of your customer pipeline.

This toolset is a really handy resource that ensures top-quality customer service across every stage of your service lifecycle. Naturally, you’ll also get more case management and ticketing tools.

Customer feedback is where the Service Cloud falls down. There’s no option for sending out customer surveys, so you won’t be able to gather client feedback on your support services.

Salesforce complaints and customer reviews

We spoke to small business users, as well as looking at authoritative reviews from the most trusted software review sites, such as TrustPilot and Capterra, to see what existing customers think of the Salesforce platform.

Some reviews were full of praise for Salesforce, most notably:

• Its simplicity in data overviews
• The fact that it’s easy to track which users are completing and meeting weekly quotas
• The fact that it offers a centralised platform to manage customer interactions
• The ability to tailor workflows, automate processes, and integrate with other platforms (e.g. Slack and Gmail)
• How easy it is to manage contacts and prospects
• The ability to manage tasks on the go through the mobile app

However, there were some negative Salesforce reviews as well. Most complaints revolved around:

• Not being able to find answers in Salesforce’s knowledge base
• Difficulty in getting adequate customer support
• Slow speed, causing delays
• A lot of error messages
• A confusing interface

Salesforce final verdict

Our experts have carried out extensive research into the Salesforce platform over the past few months, analysing its every corner. We found it is the best option for established companies that already boast a long list of clients and deal with lots of data – like an accountancy firm, for example.

What Salesforce is good for, it does really well. Few other software options give you better database management tools – which is why we gave it top marks for organisation and contact storage.

That being said, smaller organisations will likely find the platform too cumbersome for basic CRM needs. It’s particularly poor for marketing and outreach – which are important strategies for small businesses looking to grow their brand.

If you decide that Salesforce isn’t suitable for your firm – or maybe you just need a bit more information before you decide – don’t worry, we’re here to help.

We’ve designed a specialist Startups online comparison tool that will match you to the best CRM provider for your company, based on your specific needs. It takes just one minute to complete, and is entirely free of charge.

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