Despite being the CRM market leader for large companies, Salesforce.com suffers from a number of quirks that make it less user-friendly than CRM solutions designed for small business sales teams.
Before we dive into them, let’s take a look at the differences in pricing between Salesforce and Nutshell and unveil the true cost of Salesforce to your business.
Nutshell vs. Salesforce: A pricing comparison
When you examine the figures, it’s easy to see why Nutshell is praised as one of the most cost-effective CRM platforms on the market. Take the following breakdown, for example.
What you’ll spend in the first year for an Enterprise CRM with Marketing
Annual license cost for a 10-person teamPricing gathered from Hubpost.com and Salesforce.com
Email Sequences & Campaigns
Implementation costsSource: BacancyTechnology.com
Full-time admin salarySource: Talent.com
Live phone and chat supportSource: Salesforce.com
Fully functional mobile appSource: G2.com
Data storage
One-click dialing and call recording
Year 1 TotalLet’s assume the average of the optional fees and one level of overage for 6 months of the year.
Year 2 and Beyond TotalsThis assumes you don’t grow as a company and add more records…
$18,000
($150/user/month)
$34,680/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$10,000
(“one price fits all”)
$6,000 to
$38,400/year
(available, but not required)
$0
$0
$1,100/month
for going over 1 million total records
$50/month for 1,000 minutes
(3,000 minute limit)
$91,580
$78,580
$9,480
($79/user/month)
$4,680/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$0-$1,500
(available but not required)
$0 to
$18,000/year
(available to customers, but in no way required)
$0
$0
$0
unlimited storage at no extra cost
$0
On Pro plans and above
$23,910
$23,160
$19,800
($165/user/month)
$19,800/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$75,000 – $200,000
(has many factors)
$96,687/year
(if you’re lucky)
$5,940/year
(30% of software license)
$3,000
($25/user/month of software license)
$1,500/year
for every 500MB after the first 10GB ($125/month)
$3,600+/year
($30/month/user and an additional $15/month for every 1,000 minutes logged)
5 frustrating Salesforce misses that Nutshell resolves
Here are five annoying things in Salesforce that you won’t find in Nutshell.
1. Needing to convert Leads into Opportunities.
In Salesforce, you have to convert Leads to Opportunities once they become qualified. For deals with multiple influencers, that means converting multiple records and often doing a bunch of merging and cleanup afterward. Nutshell doesn’t split up deals into Leads and Opportunities—we just call them Leads—so you don’t need to spend the extra time converting records from one stage to another and you can see your entire pipeline in a single report.
With Salesforce, you can’t associate Leads with Accounts (only Opportunities can be associated with Accounts). So, if you’re working on a deal that has multiple influencers, it’s impossible to keep track of all the people you’ve been in contact with at that Account when using Leads. You can also easily end up with duplicate records or multiple people from the same company calling on the same prospect. In Nutshell, all deals are associated with companies.
3. Search that doesn’t work.
The Salesforce search tool is picky about syntax. For example, if an Account is called “The Acme Co.,” a search for “Acme” will not find it. Is your sales manager thinking about adopting Salesforce? Time to learn some Boolean search operators! Fortunately, Nutshell’s search is a lot more forgiving. Type in any part of a company or person’s name, and Nutshell will immediately find it in the database.
COMPARE
Which CRM has the features you need?
Our interactive worksheet compares the benefits offered by Nutshell, your existing contact management solution, and any other CRMs you’re currently evaluating.
Nutshell autosaves changes you make to a contact, company or deal, so you don’t risk losing all your work. With Salesforce, you have to remember to click the Save button every time you update a record—or else. How is this still a thing?
5. Endless training.
Unlike Nutshell, Salesforce is notoriously unintuitive. Unless there is a dedicated Salesforce admin on staff who does a great job with onboarding or your company pays for training, it’s the reps’ responsibility to learn the complicated platform themselves. Nutshell knows that sales reps aren’t software experts, which is why ease of use is our top priority. And when you just need some extra help, we provide free live support for all users and automatic data imports from your current CRM (even during free trials!).
