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Salesforce and monday are popular CRM platforms for small businesses. Here's how they compare.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is no longer a “nice-to-have” component of your company’s tech stack. Today, businesses need CRM software to navigate an increasingly competitive marketplace and consolidate customer data. Salesforce Sales Cloud and monday Sales CRM give businesses a 360-degree view of their customers, so they can tailor personalized experiences, forecast predicted behavior, and make data-informed business decisions. We’ll compare each platform’s pricing, features and usability to help you find the right CRM software for your needs.
With robust feature sets, Salesforce and monday Sales CRM are two of the best CRM solutions available. However, distinct differences may make one or the other the better choice for your business.
Criteria | Salesforce Sales Cloud | monday Sales CRM |
---|---|---|
Starting prices | $25 per user per month (up to 10 users) | $10 per user per month (billed annually; minimum of three users) |
Ease of use | Challenging | Easy to use |
App integrations | Over 4,000 | Over 150 |
Custom automations | Starting at five flows per organization | Starting at 250 actions per month |
Sales forecasting features | Requires Professional, Enterprise or Unlimited plan | Requires Pro or Enterprise plan |
AI features | Requires Unlimited plan | In beta testing |
Salesforce Sales Cloud is highly customizable and flexible, which makes it ideal for medium-to-large tech-savvy businesses that can use the solution to its full potential. Its vast integrations and add-ons can help businesses create a tailored solution for highly specific processes and industries and share that solution across divisions and departments. Additionally, Salesforce Sales Cloud is an excellent choice for growing companies that need a scalable CRM. For more details about Salesforce Sales Cloud’s capabilities, read our in-depth Salesforce CRM review.
Salesforce Sales Cloud has multiple add-ons and integrations that help businesses create a custom solution. Source: Salesforce
monday Sales CRM is a newer, budget-friendly CRM ideal for smaller businesses or individual teams within an organization. For example, sales teams can invest in the solution to streamline their department and gain a comprehensive customer journey overview. Marketing departments and customer support teams can also benefit from monday’s insights. Companies that choose monday will benefit from greater visibility into the sales funnel and specific operations to inform decisions. Read our detailed overview of monday’s features and functions in our monday Sales CRM review.
monday’s app marketplace helps you find integrations with the business software you already use. Source: monday
Salesforce and monday are both great companies with excellent reputations and similar feature sets, which means they’re difficult to compare. However, the following lists illustrate their differences.
Here’s how Salesforce and monday compare in essential CRM features.
Trailhead is an interactive, self-paced online learning platform with modules, projects and super badges to help users improve their Salesforce skills. Source: Salesforce
Affordability is a huge concern for many small businesses. However, larger enterprises may find Salesforce’s features worth the extra costs.
Salesforce has four service levels:
Salesforce also offers various flexible add-on features for additional costs, including the following:
monday has four service plans:
Artificial intelligence is transforming industries, and the CRM space is no exception.
Salesforce’s groundbreaking AI tool, Einstein, is available on upper-tier plans or as a paid add-on. Einstein has recently adopted generative artificial intelligence abilities that can improve the sales process by creating emails, summarizing calls and generating data-driven text.
Einstein’s AI functions go even deeper to actively capture and sync sales information to keep your CRM updated, make predictions about sales forecasts, identify customer signals, and more.
Additionally, Salesforce’s AI Cloud is dedicated to integrating Salesforce technologies to provide secure, generative services for enterprises.
monday’s AI assistant is primarily used to do the following:
Here’s how Salesforce and monday stack up regarding ease of use.
Businesses can tailor Salesforce to fit their specific needs with highly advanced features. However, this customizability comes with a steep learning curve. IT professionals must make a significant time investment to configure the platform. You may need expert support to ensure it runs smoothly for your company.
However, this investment of time and money can be well worth it for businesses that can make full use of Salesforce’s features. Additionally, you don’t need to devise a complicated solution immediately; you can adjust the software and add features as you grow more comfortable with the system. Salesforce provides ample online resources to help you get started. You can also pay for extra guidance and coaching.
monday users enjoy an easy learning curve and can use the software right out of the box. It has extensive online resources to help you get started and address any issues you encounter. Most businesses — even very small businesses — can get monday Sales CRM up and running quickly and manage the platform without expert guidance. Users who want to get the most out of the platform can access video tutorials and the monday Academy, which posts interactive courses and webinars.
monday Sales CRM has a clean, modern interface that’s intuitive to navigate and easy to learn. Source: monday
Both Salesforce and monday are great choices. However, they’re best suited for different company sizes. While they share many core CRM functionalities, their unique feature sets make them ideal for the following companies.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a powerful CRM solution used by many large, enterprise-level companies across various industries. Salesforce offers an unparalleled suite of tools, integrations, and advanced artificial intelligence features to make organizations operate more efficiently and effectively. While its plans may be cost-prohibitive for small businesses, large companies can expect a high ROI by shortening deal cycles, highlighting probable opportunities and automating many tasks.
monday Sales CRM is a versatile platform that can unite different teams across a business to help make data-informed decisions. monday’s pricing is affordable for smaller businesses, while its many features will help midsize businesses level up in their industry. The software is easy to use, so you can implement it quickly within your company and start improving your processes right away.
Salesforce was founded in 1999; it was one of the first cloud-based SaaS companies. Before entering the market, enterprise businesses with CRM software required custom-built, expensive computer systems. More recently, Salesforce was one of the first companies to invest heavily in consumer artificial intelligence with its AI, Einstein, which launched in 2016.
monday is an excellent platform for businesses that need to simplify their tech stack and save money. However, few companies can compete with Salesforce’s vast feature set, integration capabilities and artificial intelligence tools. However, this high-level functionality comes with a steep learning curve — and an even steeper price tag.
Learning how to administer Salesforce effectively can take a few weeks. Depending on your business needs, you might require technical knowledge like database management, web development and even an understanding of Apex, Salesforce’s proprietary programming language. Salesforce launched its learning platform, Trailhead, to help expedite setup and implementation.
monday can import and export data to and from spreadsheets; you can organize your data into tables similar to spreadsheets. You can also create spreadsheet functions. Not all businesses can say goodbye to spreadsheets, but CRM tools like monday and Salesforce make excellent additions to any organization’s tech stack.