10 Best Salesforce Alternatives in 2025 (Review & Comparison)

Paul Newham 18 December 2024

Salesforce is one of the biggest names in CRM software. As the world’s first SaaS product, it pioneered modern cloud software. And it still ranks as the most-used CRM platform in the world. 

It’s renowned for its sales, marketing and customer service tools. In recent years it has invested heavily in AI. But for all its strengths, Salesforce isn’t for everyone. Top of that list are SMEs. Salesforce is a big platform built for big businesses. For smaller companies, it’s often too expensive and tricky to use.

So what are the best alternatives out there for SMEs? I’ve used and reviewed 20+ small business CRMs in my time. So I put my thinking hat on and came up with the top 10 Salesforce alternatives.

Salesforce Alternatives Overview

In a hurry? Here’s a quick summary of our top 10 Salesforce alternatives.

	Best for	Free Plan/Trial	Starting Price	Score
ActiveCampaign	Automation	30-Day Free Trial	$15/mo
HubSpot	Free CRM	Free Plan	$20/mo
Engagebay	Small Teams	Free Plan	$12.74/mo
GetResponse	SME eCommerce	Free Plan	$13.40/mo
Brevo	Channel Choice	Free Plan	$8.08/mo
Pipedrive	SME Sales	14-day Free Trial	$14/mo
Freshsales	Value	Free Plan	$9/mo
Zoho CRM	AI-Powered CRM	Free Plan	$14/mo
Monday.com	Project Management	Free Plan	$24/mo
Microsoft Dynamics	Enterprise	30-Day Free Trial	$65/mo

What’s Wrong With Salesforce?

Salesforce isn’t the best pick for small businesses for 2 main reasons.

It’s expensive

Salesforce is very expensive. Its sales CRM is called Sales Cloud and starts at $165 per user, per month. And that doesn’t even unlock all of the features in Salesforce. If you want to add Salesforce AI and data management to Sales Cloud that costs an extra $500 a month. And there are many extra products, tiers and add-ons that only make it way more expensive.

There’s a small business suite that costs just $25 per user, per month. But it’s very basic. You can build simple email campaigns and sales pipelines. Several platforms in our alternatives list let you do that for free. Even the small business ‘Pro’ suite starts at $100 per user per month. And that only gets you sales automation tools that should be standard.

Cheaper alternatives: ActiveCampaign, Engagebay, GetResponse, Brevo, Pipedrive

It’s hard to use and too complex

Many of Salesforce’s tools are very impressive, but also complex and come with a steep learning curve. A lot of users complain about the cluttered, hard-to-navigate interface. That’s the downside of having a legacy platform wirth too many features. You may even need it customised and hire a developer.

And the truth is, for a small business or someone new to CRM, you just don’t need complex functionality. You want a platform that is simple, intuitive and quick to learn.

Easy-to-use Salesforce alternatives: ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Engagebay, Brevo, Pipedrive, Monday.com

What To Look For In a Salesforce Alternative

Here are the top things to look out for when choosing your Salesforce alternative.

• Ease of Use: A major complaint about Salesforce from SMEs is that it’s too big and complex. So make ease of use a priority when picking your alternative. Simple doesn’t have to mean basic, either. Even advanced tools can be user-friendly with the right interface.
• Great Price: Salesforce is too expensive for many small businesses. Lower cost should be high on your list when choosing an alternative. As we will see, there are plenty of tools that have the features you need at a price that suits your budget.
• Automation: Automation is right up there in tools to prioritise in a CRM. A goal of CRM software is increasing efficiency. And CRM is there to automate repetitive tasks. Ideally, you want a CRM tool with advanced automation, that is still easy to use. 
• Data tools: Data is one of the most important parts of a CRM platform. Your CRM should include everything you know about your customers to increase customer satisfaction. Look for lead scoring, win probability, data capture, tracking, and segmentation.
• Integrations: It’s fine to have a specialized CRM system if that suits your business. But it’s better to go a little further and link sales and marketing. The more you can do on one platform, the more efficient and cost-effective it is. So look for the integrations and check they fit your existing tech stack.

The 10 Best Salesforce Alternatives in 2025

I’ve picked out 10 Salesforce alternatives that meet the criteria listed above. Despite those similarities, my choices cover a lot of different types of software. HubSpot, Engagebay, Freshsales, and Zoho CRM are organised like Salesforce and offer a platform with CRM, sales, marketing, and service tools.

Others are more specialized, sales CRMs or marketing platforms that have branched out into CRM.

1. ActiveCampaign: Best for Automation

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation specialist that has branched out into CRM. Automation is its real superpower. It has automation tools for every stage of the customer journey. From generating leads right through to post-sale retention strategies.

Versus Salesforce, ActiveCampaign’s big advantage is ease of use. Salesforce has a more comprehensive set of sales CRM and customer service features. ActiveCampaign’s automation is powerful and versatile. They’re also very easy to work with, even for beginners.

ActiveCampaign has one of the best workflow automation builders I’ve worked with. Its drag-and-drop controls are intuitive and quick to learn. And it gives you the flexibility to build as big and as complex as you want. With the tools to automate pretty much any sales or marketing process you like.

Even better, ActiveCampaign comes with a massive 900+ pre-made automation templates. If you think you can automate it, ActiveCampaign probably has a template for it. All are fully customizable so you can put your own spin on things.

ActiveCampaign started as an email marketing platform. So there’s a big focus on creating and sending emails across all its workflows. But you can also run your marketing campaigns for leads and customers via SMS and social channels. It includes Gen AI tools for speeding up content creation. And dynamic content for personalizing every message.

Sales teams can build pipelines and manage deals in the usual CRM fashion. But another standout strength is how easy it is to link the sales process to marketing activity. Again, automation is at the heart of it. Through web tracking and detailed analytics, ActiveCampaign captures customer data at every step. It uses this data for things like lead scoring and calculating win probability. This helps you focus on the best prospects from marketing campaigns. Find out about sales automation features in our ActiveCampaign CRM review.

ActiveCampaign is also easy to add to your existing software stack. It offers 900+ integrations with other platforms.

ActiveCampaign’s cheapest plan starts at $15 per month. Sales CRM features are add-ons for the Plus plans and higher. The Plus plan starts at $49 a month and the Enhanced CRM add-on costs $39/month. There is a 30-day free trial. Check out our ActiveCampaign pricing guide for more pricing details.

Try ActiveCampaign for free or read our full review

2. Hubspot: Best Free CRM

Hubspot is a genuine CRM all-rounder. Like Salesforce, it has separate products for sales, marketing, customer service and commerce. It has also been quick to jump on the opportunities AI presents across its platform.

Where Hubspot stands out versus Salesforce is at the opposite end of the market. It has affordable, user-friendly plans that are much more accessible to SMEs. Even better, it has a superb free tier that is one of the best ways to get started with CRM anywhere.

HubSpot’s free CRM pulls in features from across its product range. They’re largely basic, for sure. The real attraction is how much you can do in one place, for no cost. This includes capturing leads with sign up forms. Creating and sending marketing emails. Managing a sales pipeline across a team. Handling customer service queries. And tracking insights and customer data across all.

As you grow beyond the limitations of the free CRM, HubSpot’s biggest strength is its flexibility. You can mix and match products for sales, marketing, service, commerce and operations. Or, you can choose an all-in-one CRM package. HubSpot also has 1,200+ direct integrations with other apps.

HubSpot is also big on the ‘three A’s’ of customer relationship management software. Automation, analytics and AI. It’s very easy to build automated workflows for marketing and sales processes. HubSpot collects and shares customer data across the platform. So for everything you do, you have full insight about what’s happening elsewhere. Much of this is powered by HubSpot’s own Breeze AI. This handles everything from content generation to data enrichment to running chatbots.

HubSpot’s individual Hubs start at $20 per user per month. Custom bundles start at $23 per user per month. Find out what each plan has in our full Hubspot pricing guide.

Get started with Hubspot for free or read our full review

3. Engagebay: Best for Small Teams

Engagebay shares a lot in common with Salesforce. It’s an all-in-one CRM with separate products for sales, marketing and customer service. You can choose any of these individually. Or combine them into a complete CRM package.

The main difference versus Salesforce is Engagebay’s target audience. Salesforce has SME-focused tiers. But its real focus is CRM for larger businesses. Engagebay is the opposite. It’s built for small business users. That shines through in its usability, its features and its pricing.

With Engagebay, you don’t get the huge choice of tools you get with other CRM software. But what it does offer is very good. This is especially true of its automation tools. Its visual workflow automation builder is user-friendly and easy to learn. But you can still build some sophisticated automations.

Elsewhere, Engagebay focuses on doing the basics of customer and lead management well. You can build web forms and landing pages for lead capture. And nurture these leads with a mix of email and SMS campaigns. You can also add push notifications to your website. So you can reach out to would-be customers as they browse. On the sales side, you can build pipelines and automate task allocation and follow-ups. Its support CRM includes tools for online help desks, live chat widgets and ticketing.

As you’d expect from a CRM, Engagebay is strong on managing contacts and customer data. It tracks interactions across all channels and makes insights available everywhere. This is particularly useful for sharing information between marketing, sales and support teams.

Speaking of teams, Engagebay has a free tier with 15 users. This is a great incentive for any small team looking to get started with CRM. The tools are basic, but you can build lists, create email campaigns and run sales pipelines. You can even get started with lead scoring and automation.

Engagebay pricing for the marketing suite starts at $11.04 per user per month. The full CRM starts at $12.74 per user per month. With 500 contacts on both.

Try Engagebay for free or read our full review

4. GetResponse: Best for Small eCommerce Businesses

GetResponse is a great alternative for smaller eCommerce businesses. Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud is a dedicated sales CRM for eCommerce businesses. It’s packed full of great tools for both B2C and B2B businesses looking to improve their digital sales. But Salesforce is geared towards larger companies.

Versus Salesforce, GetResponse is more affordable and easier to use. It’s also more focused on marketing software than sales. Although it does reach into sales territory with some of its automated ‘funnels’. These are conversion-focused workflows. For example, you can use them to offer discounts and other incentives for new sign-ups. The idea is to encourage new leads to become paying customers.

GetResponse structures its pricing plans in an interesting way. It doesn’t just layer on extra features as you go up through the tiers. It organises those features to provide a specific service. Its cheapest tier is its Email Marketing plan. This gives you everything you need to start running email marketing campaigns. So email templates and a drag-and-drop builder. Bulk sending capabilities. Plus you can make landing pages and sign-up forms for lead capture. You can also set up simple automated responses.

The next tier up is the Marketing Automation plan. This unlocks more advanced event-based automations. And sales funnels. You can reach out to contacts via SMS, web push and live chat. And you can also build complete websites and manage advertising campaigns. 

Then on the eCommerce Marketing tier, you can connect directly to a web store. Supported platforms include Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and WordPress. With a store connected, you can pull product listings straight into promotional emails. You can use customer shopping data to trigger and target automations. Including making product recommendations. You can also run transactional emails and generate promotional codes.

GetResponse’s Email Marketing plan starts at $13.30 a month. But that doesn’t include any sales or eCommerce features. The Marketing Automation plan starts at $40 a month and the eCommerce Marketing plan starts at $80 a month. Check out our GetResponse pricing guide to find the right plan for your business.

Get started with GetResponse for free or read our full review

5. Brevo: Best for Choice of Communication Channels

Brevo has evolved from an email marketing tool into a CRM platform. It’s quite different from Salesforce, focusing much more on the email marketing and marketing automation side. And its sales CRM tools are basic in comparison. But then again it is aimed much more at a small business audience.

One big USP of Brevo’s is how much of a multi-channel platform it is these days. Send emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages in campaigns and automated workflows. It also has its own Messaging API for transactional messages.

Brevo’s sales pipelines cover the basics of building and managing pipelines. You can also automate moving deals, task allocation, and setting up meetings. A standout feature is that Brevo supports in-app video and phone calling. This is common with enterprise-level CRMs like Salesforce. But is rare on platforms aimed at SMEs.

Brevo’s Conversations Platform also supports phone call management for help desks. You can build live chat and chatbot widgets for your website, too. And it gives your teams a single shared inbox for all communications. This includes Facebook and Instagram integrations.

Brevo hasn’t forgotten its email marketing roots and is an excellent email marketing platform. I’m a big fan of its drag-and-drop email and automated workflow builders. Both rank for me as among the most user-friendly examples out there. Even better, you can use both of them for free. Brevo has a fantastic free plan which gives you access to all its main email and automation features. Plus basic live chat, transactional email and sales pipelines. You are limited to sending 300 emails/messages a day. But you can have unlimited contacts.

Brevo pricing starts at $8.08 a month. The Sales Platform’s paid tier is $12 per user, and the Conversations Platform is $15. Find more details about each plan in our full Brevo pricing guide.

Try Brevo for free here or read our full review

6. Pipedrive: Best for SME Sales Teams

Pipedrive is a sales CRM. It does include some email marketing and marketing automation tools, too. But focusses on Sales, pipeline management and sales automation. And it does this very well.

A key difference versus Salesforce is simplicity and pricing. If you create, say, a sales pipeline or an automation workflow it has an attractive visual interface. There’s a lot of flexibility to customize pipelines to suit your sales processes. And you can automate tasks across your sales team.

Pipedrive automation tools are excellent. You can automate how and when deals move through your pipelines. Assign deals and tasks to team members. And schedule follow-up activity. All via a drag-and-drop workflow builder. You also get an AI Sales Assistant that gives prompts on how to make your workflows and pipelines better.

Another benefit of Pipedrive is the close link between sales and marketing tools. Pipedrive Campaigns is a paid-for email marketing add-on. But core email building tools are included as part of the main sales CRM. This includes a drag-and-drop no-code HTML email builder, segmentation, personalization and sequencing. Find similar CRM tools in our best Pipedrive alternatives review.

Other add-ons are kanban-based project management suite. And a lead generation tool set that includes web forms, prospecting and chatbot tools. There are 400+ third-party integrations to further extend what you can do. Pipedrive offers both iOS and Android mobile apps. So you can manage your sales on the go.

Pipedrive’s Essentials plan starts at $14. There is a 14-day free trial.

Try Pipedrive

7. Freshsales: Best for Value

Freshsales is an SME-friendly sales CRM. It’s part of Freshworks, a large CRM suite. Like Salesforce, Freshworks has marketing, sales, and customer service tools.

Freshworks’ biggest advantage versus Salesforce is its low cost. Freshsales ranks as one of the cheapest sales CRM services around. But what makes it such great value is that it’s still packed with quality features. It has good sales automation and analytics tools. And it uses AI to help you build the best sales pipelines possible. 

Freshsales is very much a team tool. And at the heart of that is how it presents and shares data. You can build and sequence deal stages in any way you like. Including creating custom sales activities for your business. You can also customise views to prioritise the most important information. You can easily zoom in and out of the detail. With highlights cards flagging important tasks, deadlines, and messages. And individual sections within deals are easily expanded to reveal more.

Freshsales’ automation tools go beyond the basics of pipeline management. You can auto-complete lead data from information available online. With the Freshsales Suite, you can also connect pipelines directly to marketing campaigns. So you could run an automated campaign that picks out all the leads who click a link. And then automate follow-up tasks in your pipeline.

Freshsales also aligns automation closely with analytics and AI. Freshworks’ Freddy AI handles things like lead scoring and deal closure predictions. And your prospects then get automatically filtered into different workflows. You can set your own rules for how prospects are segmented and prioritized. Conversion probabilities are fed into sales and revenue forecasts. So all activity is clearly linked to business goals.

Freshsales starts at $9 per user per month. There is a free plan for 3 users that includes basic pipelines and email.

Try Freshsales

8. Zoho CRM: Best for AI-Powered CRM

Not many platforms can compete with Salesforce for sheer size. Zoho CRM is one of them. Like Salesforce, it’s a truly huge sales-focused customer relationship management platform. But it’s also part of a larger suite of business tools that even leaves Salesforce in the shade. 

Both Zoho and Salesforce have quickly adopted AI to improve the overall user experience. But versus Salesforce, Zoho CRM’s Zia AI is more accessible and more affordable. Salesforce charges separately for lots of different AI features. Its pricing is complex. And costs quickly add up as you access more tools. With Zoho CRM, once you unlock Zia AI, you get it all for a single, predictable cost.

There’s not much you can do in Zoho CRM that Zia AI can’t help with. If you want to automate a specific sequence of tasks, Zia will suggest a workflow. It can also analyze how your team works. And suggest how to use automation to improve efficiency. Find out where we rank Zoho CRM in our review of the best CRM platforms with email marketing. 

Zia helps directly with building customer relationships. If you want to reach out to a customer, Zia will generate personalized emails. Or recommend products. It will also power chatbots on your website. Powerful predictive analytics lets you see how a decision might pan out. You can predict the likelihood of a particular deal or lead converting. Or levels of churn and sales outcomes from a pipeline.

Zoho CRM pricing starts at $14 per user per month. Zia AI is not available until the Enterprise plan, starting at $40 per user, per month. There is a 15-day free trial for paid plans. And a free plan with basic CRM tools aimed at home businesses.

Try Zoho CRM

9. Monday.com: Best for Project Management

Customer relationship management and project management software share a lot in common. For example, sales CRM pipelines borrow directly from Kanban process management.

Monday.com is a workflow management software. It’s designed to help teams organize and collaborate around visual task boards. And it has a dedicated CRM.

As a CRM, Monday takes a very different approach versus Salesforce. It isn’t packed with specialist sales tools. But it lets you build, customize and automate sales and marketing. It has pre-made boards for pipelines, lead generation, and campaigns. A stand-out feature is that it has sector-specific board templates. Workflows are very easy to customize. And you can add automation to link processes and take over tasks with a single click. AI is used to interpret performance and make recommendations.

Monday CRM’s main strengths are flexibility and ease of use. Its kanban principles help sales and marketing teams work more efficiently. That’s its big strength as a project management platform. You can build a shared workspace with an exact representation of your project plan. And automate much of the administration. As well as track progress against project milestones and budgets.

Many types of business work on a project basis. From software development to construction to professional services. Monday.com helps them all work more efficiently. But these businesses have CRM needs, too. Aligning CRM with project management lets you do everything in one place. Find out where we rank Monday.com in our review of the best CRM tools with project management.

Monday.com pricing starts at $24 per month. That’s broken down as $8 per user, but there’s a minimum of 3 people. It has a free plan. But that only includes a very basic contact management board.

Try Monday.com

10. Microsoft Dynamics 365: Best for Larger Businesses

Dynamics 365 is a suite of cloud-based business applications from Microsoft. Comparing Microsoft Dynamics 365 versus Salesforce, there are arguably more similarities than differences. They both centre around CRM tools. They both offer tools for sales, marketing, customer service and commerce. They are both packed with features. This includes giant app marketplaces offering thousands of integrations and add-ons. They are both targeted at the same core audience. Namely, medium to large businesses.

I’ve included Dynamics 365 as a Salesforce alternative for larger businesses. The rest of my top 10 is aimed at SMEs. Features like automation, customization and data governance become more important as you grow. But they also become more complex. Salesforce and Dynamics 365 both offer tools for managing complex operations.

Dynamics has 3 main advantages over Salesforce:

1. It provides native, direct integration with all other Microsoft software. Including Office. Microsoft Office is still the most popular productivity platform for businesses. If your teams use Office day to day, Dynamics is an easy and natural CRM add-on.
2. Dynamics 365 is more than CRM software. It’s also a full Enterprise Resource Planning platform. That includes financial management and HR software. Plus supply chain and project management. 
3. Dynamics includes some unique CRM tools Salesforce doesn’t have. Such as a product for field service teams like repair and maintenance engineers. And Remote Assist and Guides, which use AR for remote service and training.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales CRM starts at $65 per user per month. All apps are priced individually. There is no free plan, but most apps have a 30-day free trial.

Salesforce Alternatives: Which Should You Choose?

In this top 10 list, I’ve focused first on ease of use and value. But after that, I’ve picked apps that stand out for quality, choice and features. SMEs don’t have to put up with second-rate software in return for lower costs. You should always pick a CRM that is best at doing the things your business needs most. 

Based on our tests the best Salesforce alternatives are ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, Engagebay, GetResponse, and Brevo.

Now it’s over to you. What are your priorities for a CRM? What features and functionality do you want most? What does value look like for your business? Happy picking. And please share your thoughts!

Frequently Asked Questions about Salesforce Alternatives

About Paul Newham

Paul Newham is a content writer specialising in business blogging, report writing, software reviews, and online copywriting. He has 5+ years of email marketing, marketing automation and software review experience. He tested over 60 business software including email marketing tools, CRMs, outreach services, SMTP providers, email verification, and AI writing tools.
With a background in journalism and PR, he understands business content from both sides. And knows what makes for great, engaging copy, but also understands that for businesses, the written word is all about driving value.

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