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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. This way, 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 | $9 per user, per month (billed annually; minimum of three users) |
Sales forecasting features | Requires Pro Suite, Enterprise, Unlimited or Einstein 1 plan | Requires Pro or Enterprise plan |
App integrations | Over 4,000 | Over 200 |
Custom automations | Starting at five flows per flow type (increasing with higher tier plans) | Starting at 250 actions per month for Standard plans (increasing with higher tier plans) |
AI features | Requires Unlimited plan for full capacity (basic AI features available in lower tiers) | In beta testing (opt-in available) |
Ease of use | Challenging, requires more technical knowledge and/or admin support | Easy to use |
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; it can then 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 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.
Affordability is a huge concern for many small businesses. However, larger enterprises may find Salesforce’s features worth the extra costs.
Salesforce has five service levels for businesses:
Salesforce also offers various flexible add-on features for additional costs, including the following:
monday has four service plans:
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
AI 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 generative AI abilities that can improve the sales process by creating emails, summarizing calls and generating data-driven text. Businesses can also leverage Agentforce (formerly known as Einstein Copilot), an AI-based platform with autonomous agents that can handle sales, marketing and customer support tasks.
Einstein’s AI functions go even deeper; they 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:
Keep in mind that monday AI is still in beta testing, meaning you’ll need to opt in to leverage these features.
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 — especially with custom flows and integrations. Plus, 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. Plus, it’s easy to 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 AI features, which make organizations operate more efficiently and effectively. Its plans may be cost-prohibitive for small businesses. However, 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.
Danielle Fallon-O’Leary contributed to this article.