Despite its reputation as the CRM market leader, Salesforce is infamous for being clumsy, confusing, and overpriced. It’s built for large enterprises—not for the people who actually have to use it.
Considering that Salesforce can cost tens of thousands of dollars in technical setup and development before your reps even start selling, our best advice to sales teams is don’t get involved with it in the first place.
But if you’re among the unlucky masses who are currently suffering under the ‘Force, it’s time to face reality. The numbers don’t lie, and when you compare apples with apples you’ll discover just how much Salesforce really costs.
Here are the five most common reasons that unhappy Salesforce users give for staying, and why switching to Nutshell is your best option.
Related: Salesforce contracts, explained—7 things you should know before signing
No…no it won’t.
Nutshell has built a simple importer that automatically transfers your leads and contacts, maps your sales process, loads your full history of email and activity, adds your custom fields and notes, and more—and does it all within minutes. Really. Just export a single backup file from Salesforce, and Nutshell does the rest.
Through our partnership with Import2, we also offer free automatic data imports. You can transfer your Salesforce data automatically into Nutshell in just a few clicks, no setup required.
Overall, getting your team set up in Nutshell will take a fraction of the time it took you to get off the ground with Salesforce. Our CRM is so intuitive that most sales reps learn it on their own, and our customer success team will provide all the one-on-one support you need to start selling quickly, with minimal disruption to your business.
“The changeover was incredibly fast, I had my sales team ditching Salesforce after one week.”
Matthew W., Product Manager, SafetySync
Look, we feel your pain. Salesforce’s annual billing ensures that they keep your money even when their software isn’t a good fit.
There’s also the substantial upfront cost required for training and administrative setup. (See comparison chart below.) It’s an arrangement that’s great for their business, and terrible for yours.
But here’s the deal: That money you spent? It’s gone. It’s a sunk cost, which means it’s an investment that can’t be recovered. Unfortunately, we humans are irrational creatures and love to keep throwing time and effort at bad investments to justify the money we already lost on them.
Don’t fall into that trap. If you want to actually help your organization, you’re better off making a new investment right now in a CRM solution that your team will love. Something powerful (like Nutshell), easy to use (like Nutshell), and much more affordable (like Nutshell!).
In fact, Nutshell is so much less expensive that you could take your entire team bowling every week on the savings alone. You like bowling, right?
Annual license cost for a 10-person team
Pricing gathered from Hubpost.com and Salesforce.com
Email Sequences & Campaigns
Implementation costs
Source: BacancyTechnology.com
Full-time admin salary
Source: Talent.com
Live phone and chat support
Source: Salesforce.com
Fully functional mobile app
Source: G2.com
Data storage
One-click dialing and call recording
Year 1 Total
Let’s assume the average of the optional fees and one level of overage for 6 months of the year.
Year 2 and Beyond Totals
This 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)
$284,452
$146,952
See how Salesforce pulls a bait and switch with their pricing model. Check out the real price of Salesforce.
“When we were evaluating CRMs, the one deciding factor between Nutshell and Salesforce came down to spin-up time and price. Nutshell wins on both counts (by a huge margin). Salesforce was 10 times as much per month for what we wanted.”
Jason C., Systems Analyst, Arrow Container Corp
Attend a live guided tour! Evert Tuesday at 3pm ET / noon PT.
Do you mean they’re used to complaining about it? It’s rare to find a Salesforce user who actually loves the product, or even fully understands it (aside from the Salesforce admin you have to keep on your payroll just to keep the thing running). Pro tip: If your CRM comes with a 949-page (!) startup guide, you picked the wrong CRM.
People actually enjoy using Nutshell because it’s so well-designed and easy to navigate. Sure, your team might be used to wasting their time converting records in Salesforce and using the awful search function, but if they were presented with a better solution, they’d switch in a heartbeat.
“Nutshell is hands down the most user-friendly CRM I’ve ever used. In just a few short minutes, we were up and running with data migrated from our old “legacy” CRM…LOVE LOVE LOVE Nutshell!”
Phil C., Director of Sales, Software Consulting Services, LLC
“I love love love Nutshell! Very easy to use and I got started in no time. The support is excellent and super friendly as well.”—Shane K., CEO, Small’s
Does your team love love love Salesforce? Ask them. We’ll wait.
This might sound crazy, but hear us out: What if we told you that Nutshell is more powerful than Salesforce?
Power does not equal complexity. Power is the ability to do important things quickly. Power means sharing important customer information with your entire organization, instead of keeping it locked up in silos where no one can leverage it.
Salesforce earned its behemoth reputation because of scale, not strength—and Nutshell beats them on every comparison that matters.
Take the sales process, for instance. Nutshell gives our customers the ability to add automated tasks to their sales stages, giving your reps a more precise roadmap to follow. Salesforce doesn’t offer that.
Want to sync your email and calendar with your CRM? Nutshell offers native Gmail and Office 365 integrations out of the box, so you can spend less time switching between programs. You need to install third-party apps to do the same thing in Salesforce.
And by the way, we’d put our sales analytics and reporting features against Salesforce’s any day of the week. (You can actually use ours without a manual, for one thing.)Your team shouldn’t have to use software built for companies like HP and Cisco; they should have a product that’s designed for their needs. That’s Nutshell.
“When you get into super complex integrations, look at Salesforce. For basically everyone else, Nutshell is phenomenal.”
Max R., Partner, Nativ3
As the longtime market leader in CRM, Salesforce has been able to get away with overcharging for its software. But make no mistake: You’re paying for name value, not product value.
Thousands of businesses around the world—from mom-and-pop design firms to international food brands and manufacturers—trust Nutshell to help them build stronger relationships and close more deals.
We’re not new kids on the block. Nutshell is a seasoned software company that has been building and fine-tuning our award-winning CRM software for the last seven years. We know what we’re doing, and we’re not going anywhere.
It feels good to partner up with a well-known name. It feels even better to partner up with actual human beings who know you personally and understand your business.
Any time you have a question while using Nutshell, you can call our awesome support team for one-on-one support. We won’t rest until your problem is fixed. (Live support comes free with every Nutshell package, by the way.)
Ready to make the switch? Try our sneaky powerful CRM for 14 days, and if you decide to become a Nutshell customer, we’ll give you a special “goodbye, Salesforce!” discount. (Contact us for details; offer valid for all Salesforce customers with an active contract.) We can’t wait to meet you!
“My company has been searching for an easy to use CRM that does everything we need it to, and we feel like we hit a homer with Nutshell.”
Julia D., Sales and Marketing Coordinator, Lelander
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