Salesforce Sales Cloud or Microsoft Dynamics?

Salesforce Sales Cloud or Microsoft Dynamics?

The CRM industry is highly competitive, forming the biggest software market with expectations to grow up to $40.26 billion in size in 2023. Even though we can find numerous CRM products today, the most significant influencers are still the two giants; Salesforce and Microsoft.

While Salesforce holds 19% of the CRM market share, Microsoft Dynamics is also gaining its weight at almost 3%. Many digital transformation professionals could argue pros and cons of both CRM’s — but, we must take into account the speediness and interconnectedness of SaaS evolution. So, if today Salesforce offers a feature, it’s likely for Microsoft Dynamics to provide a similar capability soon after.

For this reason, we will differentiate the CRM’s by the following aspects:

– Implementation & Ease of Use
– Scalability & Customisation
– Price

Implementation & Ease of Use

Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a 100% cloud-based CRM fully optimised to work on any browser you prefer. As Salesforce holds the biggest market share, so does it offer a rich knowledge-base to support its customers through any possible challenges quickly.

Its free-for-all learning platform makes it straightforward for customers to learn and examine Salesforce functionalities as they come along.

To contribute to a smoother user experience, Salesforce has made improvements by moving from Classic to Lightning experience along with continuous advancements on Trailhead and Salesforce Mobile App. Furthermore, Salesforce’s Clicks not Code program contributes to easing the user experience by allowing non-developers to enhance the platform with the point-and-click method.

Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics has a couple of deployment options; businesses can choose whether they want on-premise or cloud-based implementation. For some companies, this can be the ultimate differentiator, but for most, it doesn’t play a significant role. Similarly to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics works well with mobile technology, and due to its association with Microsoft business apps, various teams find Microsoft Dynamics easy to use as well.

Scalability & Customisation

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce’s app market place (AppExchange) offers over 3,600 apps and components that are extremely useful to businesses looking to customise the platform to their needs and eventually scale. Moreover, if you are looking to connect Sales Cloud with non-native tools, you can comfortably do so. Most SaaS product offerings create Salesforce integration points due to its huge market presence.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics offers similar core functionality as Salesforce Sales Cloud and provides native connections to most Microsoft apps.. That being said Salesforce connects with Microsoft apps as well but its appreciated that native integrations can be useful. As per Salesforce, Microsoft also has an app marketplace known as AppSource which offers over 700 available apps which is significantly less than the AppExchange.

Price 

With both Salesforce Sales Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics, you will be able to build upon the basic functionalities, but this will affect the platform cost as well.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

For a Sales Cloud Essentials Licence, you will invest $25 per user/per month. As you level up with capabilities, the price can grow up to $300 per user per month – list price.  If you would like to analyse the difference between editions you can compare the features on the official Salesforce website, or sign up for a free 14-day long trial run.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics pricing has a significantly higher starting point, starting at $65 per user per month for a Sales Professional Licence. Similarly to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics comes in several packages with different features and they also offer a free trial.