Is Salesforce Worth It? (+ Pros and Cons of Salesforce)

Is Salesforce worth it? It depends. Read on to find out if it’s a good option for your business.

If you’re looking for a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for your business, you’ve probably seen Salesforce listed as one of the top options out there. 

It’s true that Salesforce offers an excellent CRM. But with prices running as high as $15,000 per month, Salesforce is also incredibly expensive. So, the question becomes, is Salesforce worth it? 

Unfortunately, there’s no simple “yes” or “no” answer — it really depends on your company’s specific circumstances.

Read on to find out if it’s a good idea for you to get Salesforce. We’ll discuss the following sections:

• Pros and cons of Salesforce
• Should you get Salesforce? 3 factors to consider
• Conclusion: Is Salesforce worth it?

You can also check out this video to learn more about CRMs:

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Pros and cons of Salesforce

To answer the question, “do I need Salesforce,” let’s start by going over some basic pros and cons of Salesforce. This section will help lay a baseline for what we talk about later.

Pros

Salesforce undoubtedly comes with quite a few pros, and one of the biggest is the number of plans. Some CRMs provide a basic plan and a premium plan, and that’s it. But Salesforce offers more than 15 different plan options, giving you tons of variety based on your specific needs.

Another pro of Salesforce is that it offers multiple integration options. One of the main functions of a CRM is pulling customer data from different sources, and Salesforce has no issue with that — it integrates with more than 1000 different third-party tools.

Finally, Salesforce is cloud-based, meaning you can easily access it from anywhere, rather than being limited to a specific set of devices. That’s also quite handy if your business hires remote workers who need to access it from their homes.

There are plenty of other Salesforce pros as well, but these are among the ones that stand out the most.

Cons

Salesforce may have a lot of benefits, but there are also some considerable drawbacks. 

The most obvious downside is the price. Salesforce costs quite a lot, at least if you want access to its best features. The average Salesforce cost per month comes out to around $1800.

Another drawback of Salesforce is that it’s very complex. If you don’t already know Salesforce, it can be hard to learn, and can take you as long as a year to start getting value from the platform. That makes things difficult for companies that haven’t already hired someone proficient with the platform.

As if that wasn’t bad enough on its own, Salesforce is also reputed to offer relatively poor customer support. That means when you run into issues with the tool, you won’t receive particularly outstanding help from the Salesforce team.

Should you get Salesforce? 3 factors to consider

Now that we’ve reviewed the basic pros and cons, let’s return to our original question – is Salesforce a good choice for your business? The answer depends on your company’s situation. Here are three factors to consider when looking at Salesforce as a CRM option.

1. Budget

First, you’ll want to look at your budget. This step might seem obvious, but it can be easy to overlook. You should consider your budget before you do anything else. 

How much are you willing to pay for a CRM? What’s the highest plan you’re willing to pay for? Whatever answer you settle on, you can then look at Salesforce’s pricing to see what options that gives you. 

It might be that you’re only willing to pay for the lowest few plans. If that’s the case, you can then look at what those plans offer to decide whether you think they’re worth the price. Bear in mind that there are other CRMs out there that offer all the same features at a lower price.

Also, with Salesforce, you have to pay per user. So, if you have multiple people on your team, that can get pricey really fast!

2. Business size

Another consideration is your company size. Salesforce is undoubtedly optimized for larger businesses and enterprises. Small businesses don’t always work well with Salesforce.

A good metric is to look at how many sales reps you have on your team. If you have fewer than 25 reps, Salesforce is likely overkill — settle for a smaller CRM.

Also, you want to have some specialists on your team to help you navigate Salesforce. If your team doesn’t include any Salesforce specialists, and you’re not particularly willing to hire any, then Salesforce isn’t right for you. As we’ve already noted, it’s a hard tool to learn.

3. Intended use for Salesforce

Finally, consider how you plan on using Salesforce. This factor is essential — while Salesforce has a lot of features, those features don’t make it worth the price unless you plan on using all those features.

Think about what you want to use Salesforce to do. Do you plan on fully taking advantage of all it has to offer and using all its niche features? Or are you simply going to use the basic, surface-level features that you could find in any other CRM?

If you truly plan to use all the features unique to Salesforce, then by all means, choose it as your CRM and use our complete guide to Salesforce. But if you don’t use those features, you’re shelling out extra money for nothing. In that scenario, it’s better to go find a different CRM for your business.

Conclusion: Is Salesforce worth it?

Now we can finally answer our original question — should you get Salesforce for your company?

The answer, as you can probably already guess, is the same as before: It depends. 

If you run a large enterprise with a significant budget and you intend to use all of Salesforce’s features, then it’s definitely worth it. Whereas if you’re a small business that just wants a CRM for its most basic features, Salesforce isn’t for you.

Nutshell is the perfect Salesforce alternative for your company

If you’re a small business, you may feel that Salesforce isn’t worth it for your company. In that case, you could be back to square one when it comes to picking a CRM. Don’t worry, though — there are other good options out there, like Nutshell.

Nutshell is a CRM designed specifically for small businesses. It’s inexpensive, easy to learn, and it comes with the best CRM customer service team you’ll find — in other words, it lacks all the cons of Salesforce.

On top of using Nutshell, you can also get help with your sales and marketing needs from WebFX. To get started with us, just call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!