Top 17 Salesforce CRM Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

Just like a successful marriage requires a good partner, a successful business demands an effective CRM (Customer relationship management) system.

CRM is a strategic approach that businesses use to manage and analyze customer interactions.

In the past CRMs were just for large-scale organizations with huge databases of customers, but nowadays, small and mid-sized businesses also take advantage of CRM software to centralize customer information, track interactions, streamline processes, and manage sales.

The benefit of CRM software is it improves customer service, deepens customer relationships, retention of new customers, a better sales engagement process, and much more.

Just like Amazon is the biggest name in eCommerce websites, Salesforce is one of the biggest names in CRM software.

However, it might be possible that Salesforce isn’t the right solution for your business. 

This could be because you’re a startup in search of a great CRM but don’t have a big budget for it, or you might find it a bit difficult to use a software like Salesforce for your small business. Alternatively, you might be seeking more affordable options, or you could have had a bad experience with Salesforce in the past.

Now, the decision of selecting the best CRM software that fits your business and improves your customer relationships can be challenging.

To help you make the right choice, I have provided an overview of 17 Salesforce CRM alternatives. After choosing the best alternative, you should check out what are some best CRM practices that you can implement to make the most of it.

17 Salesforce CRM alternatives & competitors for your business needs

When you’re considering alternatives to Salesforce for your CRM needs, you’re entering a world of various solutions. Each of these alternatives has its own features and benefits that may align with your specific goals and budget.

Let’s get into detailed insights into each option, including their descriptions, features, limitations, ratings, and pricing.

Whether you're a small business looking for cost-effective sales CRM options or a larger company trying to expand your CRM capabilities, this list will help you find the right solution.

Zixflow

Zixflow is an all-in-one AI-based CRM software that helps your business manage, engage, and retain customers. It helps you store customer data at a central location, track their interactions, and streamline business processes to simplify your sales processes.

With Zixflow you can communicate with your customers across various channels including SMS, WhatsApp, and emails. In addition to this, you can manage your sales processes, automate tasks, accelerate sales cycles, and nurture your leads. It also enables you to make informed, customized decisions that cater to your customers' unique needs.

Key features of Zixflow

Centralized space for your customers’ data

Zixflow provides a collection named "People'' that functions as a centralized database for storing all of your customer's data, including their name, email, company, job title, phone number, and address.

It allows you to manage customer information, add new customers, search for a customer, modify their information, and delete their records from the database.

With Zixflow People, you can easily access customer details, history, and preferences. This helps you better manage your customer relationships and provide them with a personalized experience since you can understand their individual needs.

Use forms to capture leads

With Zixflow form builder you can create a form and capture leads by providing a structured and organized way to collect information about potential customers. These forms have fields for essential information such as name, email address, phone number, and company.

By utilizing Zixflow forms, you can efficiently collect and store lead information, track interactions, and simplify the lead management process, improving your ability to nurture and convert leads into potential customers.

Automate your sales process with workflow automation

Automate your sales process with workflow automation of Zixflow, one of the best sales automation tools available in the market. Zixflow saves your time by minimizing manual tasks and allowing you to focus on sales engagement strategies rather than routine tasks.

By implementing automated workflows, you can seamlessly move leads through the sales funnel, trigger follow-up actions, and ensure timely communication.

With workflow automation, you can create multiple sales cadence automation that optimizes your sales stages be it lead qualification, nurturing leads, or closing deals, and organize your sales operation.

Track your interactions with customers

When working with automation, it is essential to keep track of your customers' activities and determine where they stand in the sales pipeline stages. With Zixflow, you can easily track activities related to both you and your customers.

Zixflow provides different types of views, such as table and Kanban views, to simplify activity tracking. You can also use filter and sort options to organize your data.

Pricing

Free forever

Zixflow provides a free forever plan with essential features, including 250 contacts, at no cost. Pay-per-use options are available for additional communication channels.

Starter

The Zixflow starter plan begins at $19 per user per month when billed annually, or $29 per month when billed monthly. This plan includes features such as 25,000 contacts, 1GB of file storage per user, personalized email accounts, and much more.

Growth

For the Zixflow growth plan, you can choose an annual billing option of $49 per user per month or a monthly billing option of $59. These plans include benefits such as unlimited contacts, 2GB file storage per user, custom collections, and numerous other features, in addition to all the features offered in the free and starter packs.

Zoho

Zoho is a cloud-based CRM that helps you build stronger customer relationships and improve customer attention. It helps you to create, manage, and organize data to drive sales and revenue. Its AI-powered assistant, lead management tools, and reporting dashboards provide valuable insights into sales metrics.

Its recently announced Canvas features enable you to create personalized features like custom fields, workflows, and dashboards that meet your specific needs and preferences. Zoho is also one of the best alternatives to Freshsales because of its pricing as well as robust features. For a comprehensive comparison, you can take a look at our blog on Freshsales vs Zoho software exploring the key differences between the two.

Features

👉 It offers a user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to navigate and use.

👉 It provides mobile applications, which means you can easily access all the tasks and data on your mobile device.

👉 Zoho offers a variety of services like lead management, deal management, workflow automation, sales forecasting, and email marketing.

👉 It provides integration with different applications, such as Google Workspace, WhatsApp, and Office 365.

👉 It lets you export the data to different extensions to use with other applications.

👉 It helps you organize sales activities, track leads, close deals, and get an accurate forecast.

Limitations

➤ Some users have reported that its initial setup is a little tedious.

➤ Sometimes it lags and takes time to load.

➤ Some users have reported that data export in PDF is only available for inventory.

➤ Zoho has limited customization options for specific features such as module modification, predefined workflows, and certain aspects of the user interface that may not meet the requirements of your business.

➤ Lack of integration with the third-party application.

Pricing

• Standard: ₹800 per user per month, billed annually.

• Professional: ₹1,400 per user per month, billed annually.

• Enterprise: ₹2,400 per user per month, billed annually.

• Ultimate: ₹2,600 per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐

4 out of 5 (2501 reviews).

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a customer relationship management software built to help teams drive sales as its name suggests. It is designed to fit the needs of salespeople, sales managers, business operations, contact managers, lead managers, and project managers in a range of different industries. 

It arranges your deal in the pipeline and then customizes those pipelines to cover more leads, increase the average value of closed deals, and reduce the time taken to close a deal. For ensuring that Pipedrive is the best-suited software for you, check out top Pipedrive alternatives for making comparisons between their features.

Features

👉 It displays the entire sales engagement process at a glance through its visual sales pipeline.

👉 The drag-and-drop feature of Pipedrive makes your deal updation easy.

👉 It offers detailed reporting on sales and key activities.

👉 The integration of Pipedrive with email and other tools has received positive feedback from users.

👉 Streamlined communication makes it easy to track your customer conversations.

👉 Track your performance data so you have a clear view of what areas you are successful in and what needs improvements.

Limitations

➤ Multiple users have reported that it has a lack of customization options.

➤ Some users have put forward their ideas for advanced reporting and automation.

➤ The drag-and-drop deal management feature can be tricky and overwhelming when there are multiple deals in the pipeline.

➤ Some users have reported that Pipedrive needs improvements in the areas of marketing and customer service.

➤ It has fewer automation features as compared to alternatives.

Pricing

• Essential: $9.90 per user per month, billed annually.

• Advance: $19.90 per user per month, billed annually.

• Professional: $39.90 per user per month, billed annually.

• Power: $49.90 per user per month, billed annually.

• Enterprise: $59.90 per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

4.2 out of 5 (1696 reviews).

HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the earliest CRMs in marketing and sales automation that enables you to optimize your relationships with different types of sales leads and customers. It helps teams to build strategy and drive conversation through its various platforms such as sales, marketing, customer service, content management, and operations tools. HubSpot’s meeting scheduler is one of the best meeting scheduling platforms for setting up appointments and keeping track of schedule. Also, the software allows you to connect with more than hundreds of integrated applications, and APIs. We have also laid down a comprehensive comparison between Zoho vs HubSpot vs Salesforce. Other than Salesforce, HubSpot is also one of the best Attio CRM alternatives.

Features

👉 HubSpot simplifies your sales processes by automating repetitive tasks.

👉 You can build reports from your booked meetings or calls.

👉 You can easily track customers' data and other important information.

👉 It lets you know whether your sent emails are being opened and links are clicked.

👉 Easy to use email system where you can just drag and drop the required elements into the email.

Limitations

➤ You cannot create duplicate tickets, meaning that once a property on a ticket is made as a single select, there is no option to change it to multi-select.

➤ It has limited ability to perform target account planning.

➤ Some customers have reported that there is too much information available, so they could provide customized options for pipeline views.

➤ The reports generated by HubSpot are great but they require some custom work to get set up and that takes time to figure out.

Pricing

• Free version is available.
  
  
• Starter: $20 per month.
  
  
• Professional: $450 per month.
  
  
• Enterprise: $1200 per month.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

4.4 out of 5 (10493 reviews).

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a sales CRM software that offers services to small and large businesses. It provides integration with various tools such as email marketing, sales automation, and marketing automation. It gives you the power of personalization and helps you optimize sales engagement queue to drive high-quality leads, increase conversions and customer engagement, and unify data to sharpen your marketing efforts, all within a centralized platform.

Features

👉 ActiveCampaign has a user-friendly interface with easy navigation and intuitive design.

👉 The automation streamlines customer journeys, enables personalized communication, and boosts conversions.

👉 You can create automated campaign management based on customer behavior.

👉 It provides a comprehensive view of customer data, making it easier for your sales team to track and manage leads.

Limitations

➤ ActiveCampaign has a lack of customization options while creating forms.

➤ Sometimes the email creation can be glitchy and the font size drastically changes.

➤ Some users have reported that the opt-in/sign-up pages are not visually attractive in the lower-cost memberships.

➤ Sometimes it seems very complicated and cluttered to find particular features.

➤ Some users have mentioned that customer support took longer than other software to get back to you.

Pricing

• Lite: $29 per user per month, billed annually.
• 
  Plus: $49 up to 3 users per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Professional: $149 up to 5 users per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Enterprise: Enterprise has custom pricing; you have to contact the ActiveCampaign team.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

4.4 out of 5 (1644 reviews).

Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a CRM software that focuses on productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. It has a cloud-based platform which makes it easy to collaborate with other Zendesk products such as Zendesk for services, Sunshine platform, and Marketplace. It offers contact and deal management, activity tracking, and lead generation. Also, you can set up triggers and automate tasks to keep reps on target.

Features

👉 It provides the facility to define your own categories to move through the sales process.

👉 It is user-friendly and easy to use.

👉 It helps your sales team to be focused on the highest value leads and deals, automated by full-funnel analytics.

👉 It also assists you in developing B2B sales strategies and gaining a deeper understanding of customers, their requirements, and delivering effective customer service.

👉 It covers all the basic features that you need to be productive such as contacts capture, deal capture, documents, a smart list of contacts to deals, and reminder features.

Limitations

➤ You have to manually type all of the data that you gathered about the prospects.

➤ Some users have reported that the ability to turn deals back into leads would be helpful, as reps convert leads to deals due to some errors and then can't go back.

Pricing

• Sell team: $19 per user per month.
  
  
• Sell growth: $55 per user per month.
  
  
• Sell professional: $115 per user per month.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

4.2 out of 5 (479 reviews).

Sugar Sell

Sugar Sell from Sugar CRM is a collaborative CRM, allowing you to track and monitor activities, and automate workflows such as daily tasks, automate lead generation process, and marketing campaigns as per your needs. It provides valuable data to reach out to customers and generate more leads. It has all the features such as lead management, opportunity tracking, contact management, and analytics. It is one of the best inside sales softwares that is suited for all sizes of businesses.

Features

👉 It is easy to set up and does not take a lot of time during integration.

👉 It provides custom reports, product catalogs, custom quotes, and customer account records.

👉 Its sales forecasting helps you to improve visibility and predictability.

👉 It provides detailed comprehensive analytics and reporting.

Limitations

➤ Some users report that it takes unnecessary steps while saving work which makes it time-consuming.

➤ Sometimes the system loads slowly which can affect your productivity.

➤ Some users found that table browsers are not user-friendly.

Pricing

• Sell: $49  per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Serve: $80 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Market: $1000 per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐.8

3.8 out of 5 (693 reviews).

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based CRM software that offers customized solutions for your business requirements. It provides a comprehensive set of CRM features and integrates with other Microsoft products to enhance functionality. It helps you to grow your business and improve your sales process by understanding high-quality leads and clients. Moreover, because of its various features, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is also one of the top-rated banking CRMs.

Features

👉 It provides a centralized view of all the lead data, allowing you to quickly identify hot leads and take action.

👉 It allows you to create custom workflows, custom dashboards, and reports, and assign tasks to team members.

👉 Easy to generate leads using emails, phones, and campaigns.

👉 It provides a wide range of features for sales, marketing, and customer service.

Limitations

➤ If you are not a CRM expert, customizing CRM can be complex for you.

➤ Some users reported that while creating a new lead, you have to put its source and other details which is quite irritating and time-consuming.

➤ Export of some large reports can be problematic and you may have to divide reports into smaller chunks.

Pricing

• Essentials: $70 per user per month.
  
  
• Premium: $100 per user per month.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐.6

3.6 out of 5 (12 reviews).

Keap

Keap is a CRM software and sales automation platform that helps you streamline sales and marketing processes. It offers to track leads, manage quotes, contact data, and make appointments to personalize your interactions. With automation capabilities, Keap significantly improves your sales team's productivity. This versatile solution is suitable for businesses of all sizes. If you’re a HubSpot user looking to switch to another platform, then Keap can be the way to go. For detailed comparison between the two, check out our blog on Keap CRM vs HubSpot.

Features

👉 It offers a visual dashboard to track the sales process.

👉 It takes a learning curve to do really well but is very powerful if you know how to use it.

👉 It customizes and automates follow-up reminders and communication.

👉 Identify and prioritize leads based on engagement and behavior.

Limitations

➤ The relationship between opportunities and contacts is sometimes confusing.

➤ Some users reported that the user interface and setup process is confusing.

➤ The landing page could be more robust in options and variations.

Pricing

• Pro: $159 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Max: $229 per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

4.2 out of 5 (1460 reviews).

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a local-hosted or cloud-hosted CRM software. It tracks all your interactions with leads, contacts, and customers. It offers a consolidated solution for communication and project management. With Bitrix24 you can save valuable time and energy by accessing all the necessary features from a single platform. This can help you improve your sales performance manifolds. It is also renowned for being a top-notch CRM for consultants.

Features

👉 Along with streamlining workflows, it also ensures that critical project information and discussion are easy to use.

👉 Its comprehensive task management capabilities allow you to assign tasks, establish deadlines, and monitor progress.

👉 It enables you to connect and share information in real time, promoting effective collaboration and timely decision-making.

👉 You can use the activity stream feature to take notes, send emails, place phone calls, create tasks, and make meetings.

Limitations

➤ Its user interface can be overwhelming for new users who are not familiar with similar business management platforms.

➤ Some users reported that certain features and functionalities of mobile applications are not as seamlessly accessible or user-friendly compared to desktop versions.

➤ Occasional performance issues, such as slow loading times and occasional glitches.

Pricing

• Basic: ₹1590 up to 5 users per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Standard: ₹3990 up to 50 users per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Professional: ₹7990 up to 100 users per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Enterprise: ₹15990 up to 250 users per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.1

4.1 out of 5 (508 reviews).

LeadSquared

LeadSquared is a marketing automation and CRM platform that provides sales, marketing, and onboarding automation solutions. It specializes in solving high-velocity business challenges like high volume leads, multiple sales channels, and multiple teams.

Furthermore, by utilizing the LeadSquared tool, you can channel your sales engagement and intelligence techniques in the right direction. This can help you enhance your customer engagement and make your pipeline move faster than ever.

Features

👉 Its user-friendly interface enables you to quickly perform tasks and effective leads management.

👉 It helps you and your teams track, monitor, and optimize your business and customer operations.

👉 LeadSquared provides in-depth reports and analytics to give a complete view of forecasts, your targets, and the progress that you’ve made.

👉 It offers a detailed dashboard of all the campaigns and these dashboards are very informative and easy to understand.

Limitations

➤ Some users reported that it loads quite slowly and sometimes it gets stuck when they run a large campaign.

➤ Some users reported that it required better connectivity with multiple applications.

Pricing

• Lite: ₹1250 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Pro: ₹2500 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Super: ₹5000 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Ultimate: Ultimate has custom pricing; you have to contact the LeadSquared team.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐

4.6 out of 5 (212 reviews).

Sage

Sage is a small and midsized business-oriented CRM platform. It offers sales accelerations, drives business productivity, and makes customer interactions count. It is a flexible software that can be adapted to any business model.

Features

👉 It offers an email finder tool that can assist you in segmenting lists for targeted emailing and provides reports for email campaigns.

👉 Sage helps track the team’s performance and also generates real-time reports of the leads.

👉 Sales and marketing teams can easily work together as all have access to customer data using CRM.

Limitations

➤ Sometimes local server issues like starting up the server, Apache Tomcat misconfigurations, or Java.

➤ Some users reported that Sage support is really slow and sometimes it takes days to resolve a query.

➤ Modules like export features in the billing module should be expanded to import robust Excel files.

Pricing

• Sage CRM price is available on request.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐.7

3.7 out of 5 (121 reviews).

Insightly

Insightly is a modern and affordable CRM software that is easy to use, and simple to customize. It offers task management, updating client contact information, and tracking opportunities. It enables you to maintain customer relationships and deliver projects on time.

Features

👉 The dashboards are very easy to use and offer unlimited customization.

👉 You can build custom apps that calculate fields, monitor automation, and manage dashboard functionality.

👉 By implementing sales process automation workflow, you can send email alerts, update records, and execute custom business logic.

Limitations

➤ Pulling a report from multiple objects is limited.

➤ Sometimes minor glitches occur such as screen freezing which disrupts the workflow.

➤ Some users reported that differentiating between pipeline stage and project status is a bit confusing.

Pricing

• Plus: $29 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Enterprise: $99  per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

4.2 out of 5 (886 reviews).

Salesflare

Salesflare is an intelligent CRM for small and medium-sized businesses. It is widely used in marketing departments to create deals from inbound leads and track conversion rates and also has the ability to organize the sales pipeline stages which helps your business to increase sales in less time. It is also one of the best sales tool for B2B businesses and top-rated consulting CRM.

Features

👉 It provides integration with G-suite so you can easily track leads, follow-ups, and potential deals.

👉 It provides an overview of the sales process and custom fields for individual accounts.

👉 It automates repetitive tasks so you can focus on relationship-building with prospects and customers.

👉 Salesflare offers a wide range of integration through its API or Zapier which provides you the flexibility and enhances your overall CRM experience.

Limitations

➤ Some users have found that integrating Salesflare with larger teams can be challenging.

➤ Customers have reported occasional problems with email syncing in Salesflare including missing emails.

➤ It has limited reporting features compared with some of its competitors.

Pricing

• Growth: $29 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Pro: $49 per user per month, billed annually.
  
  
• Enterprise: $99 per user per month, billed annually.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.8

4.8 out of 5 (244 reviews).

Less Annoying CRM

Less Annoying CRM as the name suggests is an easy-to-use CRM software built specifically for small businesses to help clients manage contacts, track leads, and schedule follow-ups. It helps you to increase sales and organize tasks.

Features

👉 It is easy to use and no training is necessary to use it.

👉 It provides a lead qualification checklist to track contacts, leads, and follow-ups without any clutter.

👉 Offers unlimited customization of fields, client profiles, tasks, and schedules.

👉 Provide a single dashboard that keeps all of your contact information where you can add notes, files, events, and tasks.

Limitations

➤ It doesn't have the email marketing or ROI tracking that other CRM systems have.

➤ Some users reported that they would like to see an additional pipeline view in which they can drag and drop clients from one stage to the next.

Pricing

• One plan: $15 per user per month.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.9

4.9 out of 5 (969 reviews).

NEON CRM

NEON CRM is a management platform designed for nonprofits and membership associations. It can be used to manage NGO fundraising campaigns with templates, events, and communications, and it offers reporting tools to give stronger insights to your organization. It offers automation such as email marketing, workflows, volunteer management, and payment processing so that you can spend less time on administrative work.

Features

👉 User-friendly interface and does not require extreme tech knowledge.

👉 It helps you to track your donations and store all donor information.

👉 It allows you to build events, take registrations, and customize those events.

👉 From dashboard snapshots to graphical reports, it provides a variety of reporting mechanisms that allow you to review programs at a glance or in-depth.

Limitations

➤ Peer-to-peer fundraising is a bit difficult for some users.

➤ You cannot assign reports and events to a staff person.

➤ Some users reported that it does not allow you to create and bill with an invoice.

Pricing

• Essentials: $99 per month.
  
  
• Impact: $199 per month.
  
  
• Empower: $399 per month.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐.3

4.3 out of 5 (186 reviews).

NETSUITE

NETSUITE is a cloud-based CRM software that focuses on sales and customers. It helps companies to manage all prospects, customers, partners, and vendors in a single place. From leads to up-sell and cross-sell, it has all the capabilities of a traditional CRM solution, such as sales force automation (SFA), customer service management, and marketing automation, NETSUITE CRM provides a seamless flow of information across the entire customer lifecycle.

Features

👉 It provides recommendations based on the buying patterns of customers.

👉 It has the ability to manage quotes, commissions, and sales forecasts.

👉 It has a mood-ring forecast which means you can make predictions without relying on data from current quotes or opportunities.

👉 It provides valuable insights into sales performance and customer behavior.

Limitations

➤ It has limited availability of templates and workflows.

➤ Some users report that the interface is outdated and needs some improvements.

➤ Occasional system performance issues sometimes show slow response time.

Pricing

• NETSUITE price is available on request.

Rating & reviews by G2

⭐⭐⭐⭐

4 out of 5 (2853 reviews).

Elevate Customer Relationships with Zixflow CRM Solutions

To elevate your business, a reliable CRM is crucial. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) streamlines operations and builds stronger customer relationships. If you are a start-up looking to streamline your sales process or a large organization seeking resource allocation, Zixflow is a perfect fit for you.

Zixflow stands as the best Salesforce CRM alternative. It offers excellent features including lead management, sales automation, targeted marketing, sales pipeline management, prospect tracking, and more. With Zixflow, you can manage sales, nurture leads, and provide omnichannel customer support through various channels. 

Most importantly, Zixflow is completely free of cost! 

Consider your specific business needs when exploring these CRM options to enhance customer relationships effectively. Remember, Zixflow stands out as an ideal choice.

Get a personalized 🆓 Zixflow demo today!