Since its inception in 1999, Salesforce has reshaped the CRM space with its cloud-based solutions, capturing significant market share. However, being a market leader doesn’t always mean it’s the right fit for everyone.
Salesforce, often likened to the McDonald’s of cloud software, has impressively evolved from a small startup to a behemoth with major acquisitions like Slack ($27.7 billion) and Acumen Solutions ($570 million) in December 2020.
While Salesforce consistently innovates, aiming for simplicity with its “Click-not-code” approach and expansive capabilities, operating and maintaining it can be complex and costly.
Like all tech platforms, Salesforce has its strengths and weaknesses. Our comprehensive review aims to present a balanced view of Salesforce’s pros and cons to help you make an informed decision.
Salesforce is a robust CRM platform, addressing various business issues across diverse industries. Below are the top business problems that the Salesforce platform can help solve:
Business Issues Salesforce Helps to Resolve | Ascendix
Disparate Customer Data: Salesforce provides a centralized platform where businesses can store and manage all customer data, ensuring it is organized, accessible, and secure.
Ineffective Sales Operations: Salesforce enhances sales processes by providing tools for tracking sales activities, forecasting sales, managing orders, and more, helping sales teams to focus on selling and closing deals.
Inefficient Lead Management: Salesforce automates lead management processes, helping businesses track and nurture leads from initial contact to conversion. It helps in scoring and routing leads to the right personnel, ensuring timely follow-up and higher conversion rates.
Subpar Customer Support: Salesforce’s Service Cloud helps businesses streamline customer service processes, enabling them to respond to customer inquiries and issues faster and more effectively.
Limited Analytical Visibility: Salesforce provides powerful analytics and reporting tools that help businesses analyze their data and gain actionable insights, aiding in better decision-making.
Limited CRM Flexibility and Scalability: As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce seamlessly scales with business growth, offering extensive customization and integration capabilities.
We offer all types of Salesforce consulting services such as implementation, integration, customization, administration, AppExchange app development.
To analyze Salesforce’s pros and cons better, we will look at it from different angles like functionality, pricing, and customer service. We will support all the statements with real users’ reviews from independent platform.
Salesforce is a super-reliable cloud solution that seems to be a more cost-effective investment compared, for example, to on-premises CRMs. Because for implementing this system you need to hire fewer developers and have fewer IT resources to maintain it.
Nevertheless, you still require the admin’s assistance in the platform’s configuration and addressing users’ needs. But the upside is that Salesforce’s popularity makes it much easier to find any type of professional: in-house, outsourced, freelance, etc. with the necessary skills.
Read our in-depth Salesforce implementation guide
But, despite its seeming deployment simplicity that supposedly requires just a browser and internet connection, it’s definitely not for dummies and should involve expert consulting support along the whole implementation way, and, respectively, a considerable upfront infusion of money.
Besides money investment, its launch requires significant input, which is why this option may not be a good fit for small projects with limited budgets and resources.
What’s more, even though Salesforce provides data storage, it provides it with a limit of 10 GB per organization which is, most likely, not enough for larger or growing companies. And if you decide to purchase additional space, you will become more dependent on Salesforce upgrades and downtimes at their own schedule.
To sum up, here are general Salesforce advantages and disadvantages in relation to implementation and launching:
➕ Salesforce Pros
➖ Salesforce Cons
Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/61368/Salesforce/reviews/
Salesforce is almost limitless in its ability to sync with various external systems like document management software, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), IT service management software, personal planning software, and others.
You can seamlessly integrate Salesforce with any software via AppExchange (Salesforce app marketplace) apps, Salesforce Connect, or Force.com to centralize all the processes and ensure mutual data exchange among all connected systems.
Learn where to look for comprehensive Salesforce integration services in the USA
However, like any tools, out-of-the-box Salesforce integration solutions have certain technical limitations and some projects may require custom development of the integration tools or customization of the existing apps offered on AppExchange.
Additionally, some complex integration projects can be quite time-consuming and significantly extend the implementation process.
To summarize, there are general Salesforce strengths and weaknesses connected with integration capabilities:
➕ Salesforce Pros
➖ Salesforce Cons
Source: https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/salesforce-analytics-cloud-2018-08-03-10-07-38
If you are looking for a solution that will unify all the complex business operations and automate key workflows tailored to your specific goals, then Salesforce is exactly what you need. You can do 99% of anything you want with it.
Salesforce is a multi-faceted platform for any business vector and a one-stop-shop for customer service, sales, and marketing activities automation due to its products also known as Clouds.
This CRM goliath offers a vast range of Clouds like Sales, Service, Marketing, Pardot, Financial Services, Community, Commerce, Einstein Analytics, etc. for industries like Finances, Healthcare, Communications, Transportation and Hospitality, Non-Profits, and others.
And even if there is no solution for your business, most likely Salesforce AppExchange partners like Ascendix have already built it for your niche.
Having over 1,500 registered partners, Salesforce lets other companies develop and sell solutions on top of their standard functionality.
More about SF products functions: Salesforce Benefits & Perks
Moreover, Salesforce enables you to remove/add new features, create your own applications and communication portals with the help of the Lightning Platform, or even build your own website with the Salesforce tool called site.com.
However, you should be aware that all the functionality extensibility is not free of charge and so to leverage additional features, you need to be ready to pay for them.
In addition to this, many users complain that excessive functionality may be too confusing for an average user and may cause frequent stopping and freezing of the system.
Also, any Salesforce edition: Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, and even Unlimited has its limits in terms of the number of custom fields created per object or the number of validation rules.
In terms of meeting the needs of various business domains, there can be featured the following Salesforce advantages and disadvantages:
➕ Salesforce Pros
Rich. O on Capterra.com claims that Salesforce capabilities have managed to meet the needs of their company that belongs to the high-reliability industry: Critical Medical Aviation.
Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/61368/Salesforce/reviews/
➖ Salesforce Cons
Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/61368/Salesforce/reviews
Such industry sectors require custom functionality development or purchasing customized CRM solutions on top of Salesforce, like AscendixRE CRM.
Our product combines best practices of the Salesforce platform seasoned with out-of-the-shelf features specifically for commercial real estate brokers.
AscendixRE is a comprehensive CRM system that doesn’t require additional customization or development, offering in-built robust functions with Salesforce license pricing already included.
Learn more about AscendixRE pricing models, and its basic and enhanced features.
We will teach you how to use CRM software to the fullest without overpaying for unnecessary functionality.
Depending on your organization’s needs, you can tailor Salesforce by configuring or customizing it. Configuration of your solution implies using point-and-click tools to introduce additional custom objects, tabs, and fields on top of existing objects.
Customization involves the custom development of rules, reports, or other objects that are not readily available in Process Builder and require custom coding.
The good news is that basic configuration doesn’t require deep technical knowledge and due to Salesforce’s popularity, you can easily find the developer or admin that will perform necessary adjustments.
The bad news is that despite being a highly scalable solution, Salesforce customization has its weaknesses.
For example, sophisticated customization projects may require hiring a whole team of Salesforce experts like consultants, developers, and admin which may reflect higher expenses.
Moreover, over-engineering your solution can result in a lower level of CRM adoption and poorer productivity.
Generalizing all Salesforce pros and cons in solution optimization capabilities can be highlighted in the following:
➕ Salesforce Pros
➖ Salesforce Cons
Source: https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/salesforce-com-2015-01-30-10-51-10
The Salesforce support team offers various channels for contacting them.
Among the biggest advantages of Salesforce is that it truly tries to be closer to its customers by offering various helpful resources like self-service portals (Trailblazer Community), an online training hub (Trailhead), and Salesforce’s official blog.
On these sources, you can learn various new features, communicate directly with Salesforce experts, admins, and other fellow-users and get answers to your questions, share your experience, and ideas on improvements, read knowledge articles, and reports, and listen to podcasts.
However, aid provided by self-service portals is quite limited and some questions can be unanswered for a long time that’s why it’s not the best place to seek urgent help.
On top of that, it may be difficult to reach out to a live Salesforce customer service team as reflected in multiple Salesforce reviews on various platforms complaining about the inability to get in touch with support agents.
It should be mentioned, that 24/7 support is a premium feature and isn’t available for free, so if you want to have your issue addressed immediately, you need to pay for it.
But even this can’t guarantee that it will be solved soon, according to some Salesforce users.
Customer service is a subject of hot debates on review platforms, and, probably, is the most frequently mentioned item on Salesforce pros and cons list:
➕ Salesforce Advantages
Source: https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/salesforce-com-2015-01-31-16-14-57
➖ Salesforce Disadvantages
Jerry A. is one of the reviewers who mentioned Salesforce customer support as their weakness:
Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/61368/Salesforce/reviews/
To get professional and on-time help you may refer to Salesforce consulting companies like Ascendix. Our consultants will provide comprehensive answers to all your questions and your challenges will be addressed without any delays.
Salesforce cost structures are quite flexible so you may choose the model that exactly fits your company size, budget, project complexity, etc.
Your subscription cost is influenced by the number of user licenses in your organization, the selected Salesforce edition, and additional products and services you buy.
However, it should be noted that even if the pricing of Salesforce products is stated in user/per month, the fees are paid annually.
Consequently, this initiative can end up in serious investment and it should be considered in the planning stage.
Add to this related services like CRM implementation, customization, plugin integration, and maintenance and you will see what lump sum it can result in.
Broadly speaking, Salesforce’s pros and cons are:
➕ Salesforce Advantages
➖ Salesforce Disadvantages
The review by Tanuj D. highlights one of the above-mentioned Salesforce disadvantages:
Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/61368/Salesforce/reviews/
Salesforce is always on the way to making its products more user-friendly and understandable for its users.
The introduction of new features like Sales Path or Einstein AI helps to turn digital walkthroughs via Salesforce functionality into a more enjoyable experience due to step-by-step guidance.
Constant UI upgrades improve visibility into working processes, activities tracking, and interaction history, and power up organization efficiency and productivity.
But, unfortunately, many users complain about slow page load if you decide to customize your UI because of the JavaScript code. To avoid constant freezing you should consider additional JavaScript optimization.
What’s more, system updates take place 3 times a year and after each of them, you may notice that some UI objects can significantly change their layout.
To be prepared for such modifications you need to have proper Salesforce administration that will help you to be on track with all the rolled-out features and provide training or workshops for your users.
Also, some customers highlight cluttered Salesforce that results in unnecessary clicks and complicated navigation.
Here is the summary of Salesforce’s pros and cons related to its interface:
➕ Salesforce Pros
Source: https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/salesforce/reviews/
➖ Salesforce Cons
Ascendix Search was created to simplify and enhance the general Salesforce search. Our app will let you perform multi-criteria, multi-object searches by simply entering the required values, and selecting search operators.
The advanced functionality of Ascendix Search includes map search, search via charts, additional search operators, relative date operators, NOT IN, OR conditions for related objects, and more!
It’s a fact that there is no lack of educational resources for learning Salesforce that range from free-of-charge gamified online training on the Trailhead platform to paid workshops and preparation courses for particular Salesforce certifications.
And with each release and company acquisition, Salesforce adds new items to the study list.
Along with the never-ending intent to make Salesforce more comprehensive and intuitive, the learning curve is becoming never-ending as well.
So, to keep up with all the updates and upgrades you need to spend quite some time or have a dedicated person that will monitor and take necessary actions accordingly.
Speaking of functions, some users claim back-end data structure to be quite confusing and it can take quite a long time and practice to master it.
The learning curve in Salesforce has its own pros and cons:
➕ Salesforce Pros
➖ Salesforce Cons
Here is what Salesforce users are saying about learning about the product:
Source: https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/salesforce/reviews/
Reporting in Salesforce is another intricate feature with its pros and cons. On the one hand, reports in Salesforce can be customized with flexible filters, they are supported with AI-powered predictive analytics and various report delivery options.
On the other, basic Salesforce reports capabilities lack intuitive features and it can be really challenging to pull out essential information about your performance and to export it to Excel, for example.
Get a basic overview of how to create reports in Salesforce and custom report types
Some users claim that it’s easy to create reports, but it can be maddening to get them right and it can be hard to run reports or create working “views” for customer-oriented teams.
➕ Salesforce Pros
➖ Salesforce Cons
Our advanced report generation tool — Composer is designed for the easy creation of attractive reports, brochures, property tour books, and flyers. Now, all you need is to enter data and images in your Salesforce, and with prebuilt report templates, you can generate the reports or brochures in a few clicks.
To prove its name as an innovation leader, Salesforce continuously enhances its products and introduces new ones.
For better or for worse, you can’t decline or postpone org updates and have to get used to regular system updates after each release.
Prior to any release, you can test all the new or upgraded features so it shouldn’t be a complete surprise for you.
But still, such forced updates can disrupt the UI and custom features of your current version so, at least, it can be difficult to discover well-known items.
Not to turn each post-release period into a nightmare and make the adaptation process easier, your Salesforce org requires constant administration and ongoing training of your users.
Salesforce users, also consider, that system updates and upgrades have their pros and cons:
➕ Salesforce Pros
Source: https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/salesforce/reviews/
➖ Salesforce Cons
Source: https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/salesforce/reviews/
Salesforce is renowned as a leading CRM platform, offering a robust and versatile solution for businesses of all sizes. Despite the disadvantages of Salesforce, it’s instrumental in streamlining sales processes, enhancing customer service, and automating marketing efforts, allowing companies to nurture more meaningful customer relationships and bolster revenue.
Salesforce’s cloud-based architecture ensures accessibility from anywhere, providing real-time data and insights that empower informed decision-making. The platform’s scalability and customization options enable businesses to tailor Salesforce to their unique needs, ensuring continued relevance and utility as the business grows.
The extensive AppExchange offers a myriad of additional applications and integrations, further enhancing its capabilities and making Salesforce a comprehensive and valuable tool for any business.
However, to maximize the investment into this powerful platform, you may need professional help and guidance from those who know all the ins and outs of the Salesforce ecosystem.
So, if you are ready to integrate Salesforce CRM into your enterprise, or encounter any challenges regarding its implementation, configuration, or system integration, our CRM consultants are here to simplify these intricate processes through our extensive range of Salesforce consulting services.
With a rich legacy of 26+ years in the CRM market, Ascendix proudly stands with over 300 satisfied clients whose experiences attest to our expertise. Book a free CRM consulting call to discuss your project visions or Salesforce challenges.
Yes, Salesforce is beneficial for small businesses. It provides affordable and scalable CRM solutions tailored for small businesses, enhancing customer relations, automating tasks, and providing actionable insights. This supports efficient operation, helping small businesses grow and adapt to changing needs without overwhelming their resources.
Yes, Salesforce is an excellent CRM system, esteemed for its comprehensive and customizable features. It aids in efficiently managing customer relationships, sales, and marketing, providing businesses with valuable insights and automation tools to enhance productivity, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, profitability.
A benefit of Salesforce is its robust and flexible Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. It centralizes customer data, automates sales and marketing tasks, and provides actionable insights, streamlining business operations and enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty across various industries and business sizes.
Anzhelika is a seasoned B2B content marketing strategist with extensive experience in elevating corporate profiles through compelling content. At Ascendix, she offers a wealth of knowledge in Salesforce consulting, providing valuable tips, tricks, and comprehensive guides. Additionally, Anzhelika stays at the forefront of the industry, delivering expert analysis on the latest Salesforce tools and emerging technology trends.
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