Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the backbone of modern businesses, helping companies manage customer interactions, streamline sales, and increase revenue growth. Salesforce dominates this CRM market, holding a 21.7% market share as of 2024. [1]
In FY 2025, Salesforce reported $37.89 billion in revenue, with a gross profit of $29.25 billion. The United States remains its largest market, contributing nearly 67% of the total revenue.
However, Salesforce’s high costs, steep learning curve, and complex setup often make businesses look for alternatives. While the platform is designed for large enterprises, it can be overwhelming for smaller businesses, making it an impractical choice. Users frequently struggle to navigate its extensive range of features, which can hinder efficiency rather than enhance it.
Although Salesforce serves over 150,000 businesses worldwide, many companies are now turning to competitors offering more affordable pricing, stronger AI capabilities, and industry-specific CRM solutions.
Below, I highlight the top Salesforce competitors, analyzing their pricing, features, strengths, and market position. Whether you are a mid-size company needing a scalable solution or a small business looking for an easy-to-use CRM, this article will help you evaluate the leading alternatives to Salesforce.
Did you know?The global CRM market is expected to surpass $163.16 billion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 14.6% from 2025 to 2030. This growth is primarily driven by businesses increasingly seeking cost-effective and specialized solutions. [2]
Table of Contents
17. Nutshell
Launched: 2010Starting Price: $13/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Competitive Edge: Customizable pipelines & workflows
Nutshell is a cloud-based CRM platform designed to simplify sales processes and enhance team collaboration. It is known for its intuitive interface, all-in-one CRM and email marketing capabilities, and strong sales pipeline management tools.
The platform offers in-depth reporting and analytics with visual dashboards, along with sales and contact management featuring detailed customer profiles, notes, and interaction history. It also supports auto-captured leads from emails, web forms, and third-party integrations.
It seamlessly connects with various SaaS services, including native integrations and connections through platforms like Zapier and AppConnect, ensuring compatibility with existing tech stacks.
In 2025, the company introduced Nutshell Quotes, a feature that streamlines the process of creating, sending, and tracking sales quotes directly within the platform. This enhancement allows sales teams to generate professional quotes efficiently, monitor their status, and maintain a centralized record of all client communications, thereby improving workflow and reducing reliance on external tools. [3]
The same year, they also launched Nutshell’s Suites, which provides users with bundled feature sets tailored to specific business needs. These suites offer a cohesive collection of tools and functionalities, enabling businesses to leverage their CRM data more effectively and drive greater growth through integrated solutions.
16. SuiteCRM
Founded: 2013Starting Price: $170 for up to 10 users | Free core features
Trial Period: 30 days
Number of users: 5.8 million+
Competitive Edge: Open-source flexibility
SuiteCRM is a fully open-source CRM platform designed to provide enterprise-level CRM functionalities without the high costs associated with proprietary solutions like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
It is 100% free and open-source, allowing businesses to download, install, and customize the CRM at no cost. However, SalesAgility (the company behind SuiteCRM) offers paid services, hosting, and enterprise support to generate revenue.
SuiteCRM’s contact management tool provides 360-degree customer views, custom fields, and engagement history. Its sales automation includes multi-pipeline management, lead tracking, quotes, invoices, and sales forecasting with Kanban and list views. [4]
For customer service, it offers case management, self-service portals, and knowledge bases, with telephony integration for call centers. It also provides analytics with custom reports, real-time dashboards, and ROI tracking for valuable pipeline insights.
As of 2025, SuiteCRM has been downloaded over 1.7 million times, boasts a community of 126,124+ members, and serves 1.78+ million users worldwide. The platform is available in 70+ languages, highlighting its global reach and popularity. [5]
15. Monday.com
Founded: 2012Starting Price: $12/month for up to 3 users
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 245,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Highly customizable & No-code
Monday CRM is a customizable work operating system (Work OS) that allows businesses to manage their sales pipelines, customer relationships, and team workflows on a flexible, no-code platform. It offers a visual, drag-and-drop interface, making it easy to tailor the system to unique business needs.
The platform comes with a powerful contact management system with unlimited contacts, custom fields, and 360-degree views, including activity logs and social enrichment. Its pipeline management supports unlimited customizable pipelines (e.g., sales, onboarding) with Kanban, list, and chart views for tracking leads, contacts, and deals. [6]
The platform features no-code automation for lead assignment, status updates, and notifications, ranging from 250 to 250,000 actions/month based on the plan. Plus, it integrates with 200+ native apps (Slack, Zoom, Google Workspace, HubSpot) and offers Zapier and API access for expanded connectivity.
Users appreciate Monday.com’s intuitive interface and flexibility, which allow teams to customize workflows to their specific needs. The platform’s seamless integration with popular email services and its robust automation capabilities contribute to improved productivity and streamlined operations.
14. Agile CRM
Starting Price: $9/month/user | Free plan for up to 10 users
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 15,000+ companies
Competitive Edge: Affordability and All-in-one solution
Agile CRM is a comprehensive, all-in-one CRM platform that combines sales automation, marketing automation, customer service tools, and analytics in a single system. It offers a free plan for up to 10 users, making it a great entry-level option for small businesses.
Its marketing automation features allow you to design email campaigns, track website behavior, and manage social media interactions for better customer engagement. Its customer support capabilities include ticketing, feedback management, and knowledge base creation to enhance service quality.
The platform seamlessly integrates with third-party apps like email platforms, telephony services, and billing systems, ensuring a smooth workflow. It also features direct integration with AWeber, allowing users to import all their AWeber data into Agile CRM using the built-in AWeber widget, streamlining marketing efforts and ensuring efficient data synchronization.
Users often praise Agile CRM for its comprehensive feature set and cost-effectiveness. Its integration capabilities and automation features are highlighted as significant benefits. However, some users have reported occasional glitches and a desire for more advanced customization options. [7]
13. Copper CRM
Founded: 2012Starting Price: $12/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 30,000+ companies
Competitive Edge: Google-native CRM
Copper is a relationship-focused CRM platform designed primarily for businesses that rely on Google Workspace. Unlike other CRMs, Copper is deeply integrated with Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, and other Google apps, making it an ideal solution for teams that want a lightweight, automation-driven, and easy-to-use CRM without complex setups.
With Capsule, you can visualize and manage sales opportunities through customizable pipelines, enabling you to track progress and forecast revenue effectively. The platform recently redesigned its list views, introducing fresh colors, intuitive icons, and a grid layout, making it easier to navigate and interpret data. [8]
Its workflow automation streamlines business processes by automating tasks such as emails and assignments, reducing manual effort. Plus, its custom reporting features enable you to identify customer trends, monitor team activities, and make data-driven decisions with greater accuracy.
12. Capsule CRM
Founded: 2009Starting Price: $18/month/user | Free plan available
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 10,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Extensive integrations and scalability
Capsule CRM is a simple yet powerful cloud-based CRM platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Known for its ease of use, clean interface, and affordability, Capsule offers contact management, pipeline tracking, task automation, and email integration.
The contact management tool provides centralized storage for contacts and companies, offering auto-enriched profiles and full-text search for quick and easy access. The sales pipeline includes customizable Kanban views, milestone tracking, and deal status updates.
The platform supports task management with reminders, recurring tasks, and Tracks (predefined task sequences). Automation features include basic sales triggers and email forwarding to log communications.
Plus, Capsule integrates with Gmail and Outlook for email management and uses its own Transpond tool for email marketing. It also provides analytics with sales reports, team performance tracking, and export options to Google Data Studio on higher-tier plans.
The company has partnered with Import2 to facilitate seamless data migration from other CRM systems. This integration simplifies the process of transferring contacts, opportunities, and other essential data into Capsule, streamlining the onboarding experience for new users. [9]
As for pricing, Capsule offers a free plan for up to two users, making it ideal for freelancers and small startups. The plan includes 250 contacts, a single project board, and a Sales Pipeline, providing basic CRM functionality without any cost.
11. Apptivo
Founded: 2009Starting Price: $20/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 200,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: All-in-One business management solution
Apptivo offers affordable and customizable CRM solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. It serves over 200,000 businesses worldwide across various industries, including consulting, real estate, and e-commerce.
Its business model combines a freemium approach with affordable subscription tiers, offering over 60 customizable apps to manage sales, marketing, projects, and operations, positioning it as a cost-effective alternative to Salesforce and Zoho CRM.
Apptivo’s marketing capabilities enable targeted campaigns, lead segmentation, and email and SMS automation to boost customer engagement. It also includes project management tools for organizing tasks, setting milestones, and collaborating with team members to ensure timely project delivery.
Plus, Apptivo simplifies invoicing and estimates by allowing users to generate quotes, manage invoices, and track payments directly within the platform.
While Apptivo provides a robust set of features, some users have noted a learning curve associated with its customization capabilities. The interface, though functional, has been described as dated, and certain customizations may require developer assistance. [10]
10. Bitrix24
Founded: 2012Starting Price: $61 per month for up to 5 users | Free plan available
Trial Period: 30 days
Number of Clients: 15 million+ organizations
Competitive Edge: Generous unlimited-user free plan
Bitrix24 is an all-in-one business management and collaboration platform that integrates CRM, project management, communication tools, and automation into a single ecosystem.
The company operates on a freemium business model, targeting budget-conscious businesses. Its free plan supports unlimited users and includes 5 GB of cloud storage. Impressively, this free plan includes core CRM, task management, and document management capabilities. Communication tools such as activity streams, workgroups, instant messaging, group chats, email, and telephony are also available for free to unlimited users. [11]
Its project management features cover tasks, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, time tracking, and workload planning. For collaboration, Bitrix24 provides chat, video calls (up to 48 participants free), an activity stream, and file sharing with 5GB to unlimited storage.
The platform also supports automation for sales, marketing (email/SMS campaigns), and HR processes like onboarding. Its AI assistant (CoPilot), introduced in 2024, offers task suggestions, content generation, and analytics insights.
Furthermore, Bitrix24 features a website builder with drag-and-drop functionality and CRM integration for lead capture, along with 500+ app integrations (Zoom, QuickBooks, Google Drive) and a REST API for custom connections. [12]
While these extensive functionalities offer significant benefits, they can also present a steep learning curve for new users. The interface, though customizable, may initially feel overwhelming due to the sheer number of features and options available.
9. ActiveCampaign
Founded: 2003Starting Price: $15/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 180,000+ companies
Competitive Edge: Extensive integrations and scalability
ActiveCampaign combines CRM, email marketing, and AI-powered automation to help businesses improve customer engagement, sales, and retention. Unlike conventional CRMs, ActiveCampaign focuses heavily on marketing automation, making it a strong alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot.
Its marketing automation features allow you to design automated workflows that nurture leads, segment contacts, and trigger actions based on customer behavior, ensuring timely and personalized engagement.
With machine learning capabilities, the platform enhances decision-making through features like predictive sending and win probability, helping businesses optimize engagement and improve their sales strategies.
ActiveCampaign supports more than 900 integrations with popular applications such as Shopify, WordPress, and Salesforce, making it easy to unify business tools and create a seamless workflow.
In 2024, it introduced integration with OneSignal, a leading customer engagement platform, enabling businesses to automate push notification engagement. This integration helps companies enhance their messaging strategies by combining push notifications with email and other communication channels for a more cohesive customer experience. [13]
8. Freshsales
Launched: 2016Starting Price: $9/user/month | Free plan for up to 3 users
Trial Period: 21 days
Number of Clients: 67,000+ business
Competitive Edge: Affordability and predictive insights
Freshsales (a product of Freshworks Inc.) helps businesses streamline sales processes, automate workflows, and improve lead management. It is a direct competitor to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho CRM, offering a simplified yet powerful AI-driven CRM solution.
The platform leverages AI-powered insights to prioritize high-intent leads through predictive contact scoring and deal insights. It incorporates Freddy AI to assist sales teams in identifying and prioritizing leads, offering insights to improve sales strategies and outcomes.
With sales pipeline management, Freshsales provides visual tools to monitor sales processes, track opportunities, and forecast revenue, enabling data-driven decision-making. Its email integration seamlessly connects with popular email platforms, allowing users to manage communications directly from the CRM while maintaining a complete history of interactions.
For data analysis, Freshsales offers reporting and analytics with customizable dashboards and reports, allowing businesses to track key metrics, evaluate sales performance, and identify areas for improvement.
7. Keap
Starting Price: $300/month for 2 users
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 31,500+ companies
Competitive Edge: Personalized onboarding and ongoing assistance
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) focuses on automation-driven sales and customer engagement, helping businesses generate leads, automate follow-ups, and manage sales pipelines.
Like most other CRM tools, Keap operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription model (per user, per month). It supports a broad range of small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs, with significant adoption in North America and a growing international presence.
The platform has a centralized hub where businesses can manage and maintain brand consistency across all communications and customer interactions. It even offers pre-built templates that enable users to quickly implement effective automation strategies, reducing setup time and ensuring best practices are followed.
In 2024, Thryv Holdings announced the strategic acquisition of Keap. For existing Keap users, this acquisition means continued access to Keap’s CRM features, with the added benefit of forthcoming products and services from the Thryv ecosystem. [14]
6. Insightly
Founded: 2009Starting Price: $29/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 25,000+ companies
Competitive Edge: Integrated project management
Insightly helps businesses manage leads, projects, and customer relationships efficiently. It focuses on seamless project management, workflow automation, and deep integrations with popular business applications.
The platform features customizable sales pipelines with Kanban views and real-time tracking. It includes workflow automation for tasks, emails, and deal conversions, with support for webhooks and AWS Lambda.
It also provides robust analytics with dashboards, calculated fields, and configurable reports, and integrates with over 2,000 apps via AppConnect (Google Workspace, Office 365, QuickBooks, Slack) and a REST API.
The company conducted a study revealing how more than 500 sales, marketing, and customer service professionals leverage their CRM to ensure a best-in-class customer experience. The research highlights the importance of team alignment in driving customer experience and growth. As of today, Insightly has more than 1.5 million users and serves 25,000+ global companies. [15]
5. Pipedrive
Starting Price: $14/month/user
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 100,000+ companies
Competitive Edge: Highly visual pipeline management system
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM platform developed to help businesses streamline deal management, automate sales processes, and increase conversions. With over 400 integrations (e.g., Slack, Zoom, QuickBooks, WhatsApp) and an open API, Pipedrive offers extensive customization and connectivity.
It excels in sales pipeline management and automation. Its visual, drag-and-drop pipelines allow easy deal tracking and customization. The LeadBooster add-on (chatbot, web forms, prospector) enhances lead capture and qualification with smart contact data enrichment.
Pipedrive automates tasks, email sequences, and follow-ups, while its AI-powered Sales Assistant offers deal recommendations. It provides real-time analytics, sales forecasting, and customizable dashboards, though lower-tier plans have limited access.
In 2024, Pipedrive launched Pipedrive Pulse in beta, an AI-driven tool to streamline prospecting workflows and prioritize high-potential deals. It also introduced the ability to set up automation triggers based on specific dates. This allows users to automate tasks such as sending emails on clients’ birthdays or scheduling reminders for upcoming meetings, enhancing efficiency and personalization in customer interactions. [16]
4. Zendesk Sell
Released: 2018Starting Price: $19/month/agent
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 120,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Simplicity and Zendesk integration
Zendesk Sell is a sales-focused CRM software designed to streamline sales processes, improve pipeline visibility, and enhance customer interactions. It centralizes customer information and sales opportunities, offering a comprehensive view of interactions and deal statuses.
Agents can monitor sales activities such as emails and meetings, identify potential customers, and automate repetitive tasks to focus on high-value activities. The platform also provides insights into future sales performance, aiding in strategic planning and decision-making.
Zendesk Sell serves over 120,000 businesses worldwide, primarily targeting small-to-medium-sized businesses and mid-market enterprises seeking a simple, intuitive, and automation-driven sales CRM.
Users have reported notable improvements, including a 15% increase in overall growth rate, a 91% reduction in time spent logging emails, an 84% boost in reporting accuracy, and a 20% rise in sales productivity. [17]
3. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Released: 2016Starting Price: $65/month/user (Sales plan)
Trial Period: 30 days
Number of Clients: 200,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Seamless integration with Office 365, Teams, & Azure
Microsoft Dynamics 365 combines CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP), enabling businesses to streamline sales, marketing, customer service, and operations. As a Microsoft product, it leverages AI, automation, and seamless integration with Azure, Office 365, Teams, LinkedIn, and other Microsoft services to enhance business operations.
Microsoft offers industry-tailored CRMs for sectors such as Healthcare, Finance, Retail, and Manufacturing. Its modular licensing system allows businesses to mix and match applications, helping them reduce unnecessary costs and pay only for the features they need.
The platform maintains a strong presence in enterprise and mid-market businesses, particularly in manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and government sectors. Impressively, around 90% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Microsoft’s enterprise solutions, including Dynamics 365.
As per estimates, over 90,400 companies use Dynamics 365 Sales, while the full suite’s customer base likely exceeds 200,000 organizations when including Finance, Customer Service, and other modules.
Dynamics 365 Sales receives monthly updates, introducing capabilities such as natural language Copilot for summarizing information, a new full-screen Copilot Home with curated insights, and AI-powered lead generation. These features enhance customer understanding and boost sales through data-driven insights and user-friendly experiences. [18][19]
2. Zoho CRM
Starting Price: $14/month/user | Free for up to 3 users
Trial Period: 15 days
Number of Clients: 250,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Significantly lower cost than Salesforce
Zoho CRM is designed to help businesses of all sizes streamline sales, marketing, and customer support. With a reputation for affordability and extensive customization, Zoho competes directly with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics.
Unlike traditional CRMs, Zoho CRM offers a modular approach, integrating AI-driven sales automation, workflow management, and advanced analytics. It seamlessly integrates with 1,000+ applications, enhancing its versatility. [20]
The platform operates on a freemium model, offering a free version of its CRM for up to three users, making it accessible to small businesses and startups. It serves over 250,000 businesses across 180 countries, contributing to Zoho’s extensive user base of over 100 million across its suite of applications.
In 2024, Zoho CRM launched “Kiosk Studio,” a no-code interface that enables users to create custom functionalities without needing developer assistance. This feature allows businesses to build capabilities using basic building blocks, import data from all CRM modules, and perform actions across the platform, enhancing customization and efficiency. [21]
1. HubSpot CRM
Starting Price: $50/month/seat | Free for up to 2 users
Trial Period: 14 days
Number of Clients: 248,000+ businesses
Competitive Edge: Freemium entry
HubSpot CRM focuses on inbound marketing, sales automation, and customer engagement. It emphasizes attracting customers through content (blogs, SEO, social media) rather than outbound tactics (cold calls, ads).
Unlike traditional CRMs, HubSpot provides an all-in-one suite with AI-driven automation, predictive analytics, and extensive third-party integrations, making it a preferred choice for over 248,000 businesses worldwide. [22]
The platform automatically enriches contact records with company details from a database of over 20 million businesses, facilitating more informed interactions. It consolidates sales activities, detailed company and contact records, and communication history in one centralized location, streamlining the sales process.
Plus, its “App Usage Insights” feature enables businesses to track how their teams engage with various apps, empowering them to make more informed decisions about tool integrations and overall usage.
In 2024, HubSpot introduced several AI-driven enhancements, including Breeze AI, to automate routine tasks, provide performance tracking, manage CRM entries, conduct business research, and maintain consistent brand communication.
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- Awards & Recognition, Salesforce ranked #1 CRM provider for 11th consecutive year, Salesforce
- Next Generation Technologies, CRM market size and trend analysis, GrandViewResearch
- Chris Cain, Close deals faster with Nutshell Quotes, Nutshell
- Addons, 360 view on Contact detail view page, SuiteCRM
- Homepage, Join the 5 million+ people using the platform, SuiteCRM
- Pricing, A CRM pricing plan that works for everyone, Monday.com
- Agile CRM, Agile CRM is a gamification-driven software, SaaSworthy
- Imed Bouchrika, Copper review: pricing, features, and ratings, Research
- Quarterly Product Newsletter, Import to Capsule directly from another CRM, Capsule
- Ritoban Mukherjee, An affordable and user-friendly CRM with a few caveats, Techradar
- Blog, Everything you need to know about Bitrix24, Bitrix24
- Integrations, List of Bitrix24 integrations, Bitrix24
- Press Releases, ActiveCampaign announces integration with OneSignal, ActiveCampaign
- Caroline Burk, Keap is now part of Thryv, Keap
- Blog, Top features of a professional services CRM, Insightly
- Newsroom, Pipedrive strengthens AI portfolio with the launch of Pipedrive Pulse, Pipedrive
- Sandra Petrova, Zendesk Sell review: features, pricing, pros & cons, CRM.org
- Dynamics 365, Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales overview, Microsoft
- Dynamics 365, Grow your revenue with next-generation AI, Microsoft
- Integrations, Zoho CRM works with the apps you love, Zoho
- Zoho CRM, Automating actions in third-party tools has never been this easy, Zoho
- Our Story, HubSpot by the numbers, HubSpot
