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DEX-450 Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience learner | http://babelouedstory.com/
DEX-450 learner - Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience Updated: 2023
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DEX-450 Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience
Exam Details for DEX-450 Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience:
Number of Questions: The exam typically consists of multiple-choice questions, with a total of approximately 60 questions.
Time Limit: The total time allocated for the exam is usually 105 minutes.
Passing Score: The passing score for the exam varies, but it is generally set around 65% or higher.
Exam Format: The exam is usually conducted in a proctored environment, either in-person or online.
Course Outline:
The DEX-450 Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience course covers the following key areas:
1. Apex Development:
- Introduction to Apex programming language
- Apex syntax, data types, and variables
- Control statements and loops in Apex
- Exception handling and error management
- Apex triggers and trigger context variables
- Apex classes and object-oriented programming
- Apex unit testing and code coverage
2. Visualforce Development:
- Introduction to Visualforce framework
- Visualforce markup and components
- Controller classes and controller extensions
- Standard and custom Visualforce controllers
- Visualforce binding and expression language
- Visualforce page navigation and actions
- Visualforce component development
3. Lightning Component Development:
- Introduction to Lightning Component Framework
- Lightning component architecture and design principles
- Component markup and styling
- Lightning Data Service and data access
- Component communication and event handling
- Lightning Aura components vs. Lightning Web Components
4. Integration and Web Services:
- Apex integration with external systems
- Web service callouts and SOAP/REST integration
- Integration patterns and best practices
- Authentication and security considerations
Exam Objectives:
The objectives of the DEX-450 exam are to assess the candidate's understanding of the following:
1. Apex programming language and its features.
2. Visualforce framework and component development.
3. Lightning Component Framework and component development.
4. Integration and web services using Apex.
5. Best practices for programmatic development in Salesforce.
Exam Syllabus:
The exam syllabus for DEX-450 includes the following topics:
1. Apex Development
2. Visualforce Development
3. Lightning Component Development
4. Integration and Web Services
Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce in Lightning Experience SalesForce Programmatic learner
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SalesForce
DEX-450
Programmatic Development using Apex and Visualforce
in Lightning Experience
http://killexams.com/pass4sure/exam-detail/DEX-450 Question: 88
In a single record, a user selects multiple values from a multi-select picklist.
How are the selected values represented in Apex?
A. As a String with each value separated by a comma
B. As a Set with each value as an element in the set
C. As a String with each value separated by a semicolon
D. As a List with each value as an element in the list Previous Answer: C Question: 89
What is a benefit of using an after insert trigger over using a before insert trigger?
A. An after insert trigger allows a developer to bypass validation rules when updating fields on the new record.
B. An after insert trigger allows a developer to insert other objects that reference the new record.
C. An after insert trigger allows a developer to make a callout to an external service.
D. An after insert trigger allows a developer to modify fields in the new record without a query. Answer: B Question: 90
Why would a developer consider using a custom controller over a controller extension?
A. To increase the SOQL query governor limits.
B. To implement all of the logic for a page and bypass default Salesforce functionality
C. To leverage built-in functionality of a standard controller
D. To enforce user sharing settings and permissions Answer: B Question: 91
Using the Schema Builder, a developer tries to change the API name of a field that is referenced in an Apex test class.
What is the end result?
A. The API name is not changed and there are no other impacts.
B. The API name of the field and the reference in the test class is changed.
C. The API name of the field is changed, and a warning is issued to update the class.
D. The API name of the field and the reference in the test class is updated. Answer: C Question: 92
Which set of roll-up types are available when creating a roll-up summary field?
A. COUNT, SUM, MIN, MAX
B. AVERAGE, SUM, MIN, MAX
C. SUM, MIN, MAX
D. AVRAGE, COUNT, SUM, MIN, MAX Answer: A Question: 93
Which two number expressions evaluate correctly? (Choose two.)
A. Double d = 3.14159;
B. Integer I = 3.14159;
C. Decimal d = 3.14159;
D. Long l = 3.14159; Answer: A,C Question: 94
How should a developer prevent a recursive trigger?
A. Use a �one trigger per object� pattern.
B. Use a static Boolean variable.
C. Use a trigger handler.
D. Use a private Boolean variable. Answer: D Question: 95
A developer needs to create a Visualforce page that displays Case data. The page will be used by both support reps
and support managers. The Support Rep profile does not allow visibility of the Customer_Satisfaction__c field, but the
Support Manager profile does.
How can the developer create the page to enforce Field Level Security and keep future maintenance to a minimum?
A. Create one Visualforce Page for use by both profiles.
B. Use a new Support Manager permission set.
C. Create a separate Visualforce Page for each profile.
D. Use a custom controller that has the with sharing keywords. Answer: D Question: 96
How can a developer determine, from the DescribeSObjectResult, if the current user will be able to create records for
an object in Apex?
A. By using the isInsertable() method.
B. By using the isCreatable() method.
C. By using the hasAccess() method.
D. By using the canCreate() method. Answer: B Question: 97
A newly hired developer discovers that there are multiple triggers on the case object.
What should the developer consider when working with triggers?
A. Developers must dictate the order of trigger execution.
B. Trigger execution order is based on creation date and time.
C. Unit tests must specify the trigger being tested.
D. Trigger execution order is not guaranteed for the same sObject. Answer: D Question: 98
Which two statements are true about using the @testSetup annotation in an Apex test class? (Choose two.)
A. The @testSetup annotation cannot be used when the @isTest(SeeAllData=True) annotation is used.
B. Test data is inserted once for all test methods in a class.
C. Records created in the @testSetup method cannot be updates in individual test methods.
D. The @testSetup method is automatically executed before each test method in the test class is executed. Answer: D Question: 99
A developer has the following query: Contact c = [SELECT id, firstname, lastname, email FROM Contact WHERE
lastname = �Smith�];
What does the query return if there is no Contact with the last name �Smith�?
A. A contact initialized to null.
B. An error that no rows are found.
C. An empty List of Contacts.
D. A Contact with empty values. Answer: B Question: 100
Which SOQL query successfully returns the Accounts grouped by name?
A. SELECT Type, Max(CreatedDate) FROM Account GROUP BY Name
B. SELECT Name, Max(CreatedDate) FROM Account GROUP BY Name
C. SELECT Id, Type, Max(CreatedDate) FROM Account GROUP BY Name
D. SELECT Type, Name, Max(CreatedDate) FROM Account GROUP BY Name LIMIT 5 Answer: B
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Salesforce wants to make machine learning development more automatic.
The company filed a patent application for "automatic machine learning model generation." To put it simply, if you want an AI model, this system would do pretty much everything for you, as long as you have the data to back it up.
First, Salesforce's system will take data from a user, performing analysis on it as well as the metadata associated with it, then generating a "prediction field" of what the model would even be capable of with the given dataset. The system would then create a set of features for the data, weeding out those that may "cause inaccuracies in the model."
Once that's done, the system would select and train a machine learning model from a set of "candidate models," based on an evaluation of their predictive accuracy. At the end of it all, the user is given a locked and loaded predictive machine learning model, all from just handing over data and prompting a user interface.
While many sectors have tons of data that can be leveraged by machine learning – especially on a customer relationship management platform like Salesforce -- building AI can often be expensive and unapproachable. "Without specialized statistical training, knowledge of (AI) parameters may be unknown to a user," the company noted.
"In some cases, the user may manually enter data into the input fields that may be incorrect or incomplete, and may result in the system providing an inaccurate prediction." Salesforce said. "or, in some cases, the system may be unable to provide a prediction altogether, given the input."
Photo via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Automatic machine learning has been of interest to developers for nearly a decade, said Vinod Iyengar, head of product at AI training engine ThirdAI. On the patent side, both Oracle and JPMorgan Chase have thrown their hats in the DIY AI ring with filings for chatbot-generating chatbots and no-code AI capabilities, respectively. And Salesforce itself has been toying with automatic machine learning capabilities within Einstein, its umbrella of AI activities, for a few years.
"(Salesforce) has been talking about this for a while, not to mention other vendors in the space," said Iyengar. "So it's not that unique."
Salesforce doesn't necessarily have the AI clout that Google, Microsoft or Meta have. But the company has been hard at work building out AI tools for things like analytics, customer data and automation. Though the tech in this patent has been around for a while, this filing lays out ways to make it even easier for the layman to take advantage of machine learning with a seamless user interface.
However, some of its capacities may already be out of date, said Iyengar. A lot of the capabilities that Salesforce lays out in this patent are already achievable using just a large language model.
Large language models are great at putting together a "chain of thought reasoning," he said, which breaks down large complex issues into manageable problems to find solutions. With the right prompts and the right data, "you just have a GPT agent go ahead and solve these problems for you," said Iyengar. "You may not want it to go and make a business change, but you can give the results to someone who can then make those decisions."
Good thing Salesforce has an enterprise-focused language model in the works under its Einstein umbrella, too.
Mon, 23 Oct 2023 04:01:00 -0500Nat Rubio-Licht from The Daily Upsideentext/htmlhttps://www.fool.com/investing/2023/10/23/salesforce-looks-at-ways-to-simplify-machine-learn/Salesforce Starter
Salesforce is regarded as one of the best customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for large-scale enterprises, with its Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional tool earning our Editors' Choice award. However, that enterprise-grade CRM is too complex and costly for smaller businesses. On the other end, the company's entry-level Salesforce Essentials offered limited features at a steeper price than its competitors in the small to medium size business (SMB) space. That brings us to Salesforce Starter, a streamlined version of the award-winning platform designed to replace Essentials on Salesforce's menu of CRM options. Starter is specifically targeted toward SMBs, giving Salesforce a seat at the table with HubSpot CRM, Freshsales, and Zoho CRM (our Editors' Choice pick that features deep third-party integrations).
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
How Much Does Salesforce Starter Cost?
Like its predecessor, Salesforce Essentials, Salesforce Starter costs $25 per user per month, billed annually. That's on the higher end of the affordability scale. Still, Starter does a better job than its predecessor of merging usability and scalability with a comprehensive set of sales, marketing, and service tools that won't overwhelm new CRM users.
The most notable bone that Salesforce has thrown to its SMB customers is that you can onboard up to 325 users on Starter, compared with Essentials' 10-user limit. Salesforce aims to make Starter flexible enough to grow with small to medium businesses, so you won't need to jump to a pricier, more complex solution before you're ready.
As with many of its competitors, you can test drive Salesforce Starter for 30 days without a credit card before diving into a yearlong commitment.
If you need more advanced features, Salesforce Professional is the next tier at $80 per user per month, billed annually. This plan adds tools like sales forecasting, quotes and contracts, and third-party API access. Then there are Salesforce's Enterprise tiers that range in cost from $165 to $500 per user per month, billed annually. These include the sophisticated features, high-level customization, and robust library of add-ons that make Salesforce one of the top CRMs.
How does Salesforce Starter fare against its rivals? Let's take Zoho CRM, for example. Zoho's Standard plan costs $14 per user per month, billed annually, making it notably more affordable than Salesforce Starter. Although it lacks the case management and artificial intelligence-optimized tools found in Salesforce Starter, Zoho compensates by offering lead scoring and sales forecasting. Both platforms are evenly matched when it comes to customization, reporting, and ease of use. Ultimately, your choice boils down to your budget and business needs.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
How to Set Up Salesforce Starter
Salesforce Starter's setup process is one of its most impressive features. In contrast to earlier Salesforce products, Starter practically holds your hand (in a good way) through onboarding. There's still a noticeable learning curve, but you won't need to outsource onboarding to a Salesforce expert. This will save your business money.
To begin, you fill out a brief form and take a short survey regarding your business goals, which will then bring you to a two-minute video. (The video is merely a Salesforce commercial, so you won't lose much by skipping it.). When you're ready to purchase a plan, click the "Buy Now" button in the application's top-right corner to begin the three-step checkout process.
Then you'll see a homepage split into two main areas. The top section, Quick Look, features shortcuts to essential sales, marketing, and service tools. Click on these for a guided walkthrough of those elements, complete with on-page prompts and a sidebar checklist you can either move, minimize, or snooze as needed. The homepage's bottom half highlights your accurate sales activities and suggests the next steps based on those metrics.
The top tabs highlight the Accounts, Contacts, Sales, Service, Marketing, Calendar, Dashboard, and Reports sections. Above these tabs are a universal search bar and a notifications button. Guidance Center and Quick Settings offer setup checklists and admin tools, such as adding users or managing your Salesforce subscription.
These are all welcome features, and they make it clear that Salesforce Starter aims to provide SMBs with a turnkey CRM. Starter doesn't support what Salesforce calls "custom objects," which let third-party vendors integrate their software with the platform. That's in contrast to Saleforce's earlier Essentials product, but the benefit here is a less time-intensive setup. This is ideal for companies new to CRMs or smaller teams that lack the resources to allocate for a lengthy onboarding process.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
Data Transfer and Syncing Options With Salesforce Starter
There are two ways to sign in to Salesforce Starter: the usual email-and-password method or syncing to your Google or Microsoft account. The latter method streamlines the login process and lets you directly upload contacts, emails, and calendar events to the CRM. Salesforce's Einstein Activity Capture automatically links synced data to appropriate deals, granting you more time to focus on revenue-generating tasks. ("Einstein" is Salesforce's catch-all branding for any feature it claims is powered by AI.)
To import sales data, leads, or opportunities, you must upload a CSV file. You can opt to populate your contacts that way, as well.
Salesforce Starter's Pillars of Sales Success
The Guidance Center focuses on three main pillars for selling on the platform: Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities. These serve as the backbone of your Starter sales operations, housing all the essential information and functions you'll need to initiate and advance deals.
An unobtrusive pop-up walks you through manually entering data for each section. After saving the data, you're taken to an overview page divided into three parts: personal details, accurate activities, and other related CRM data such as Cases and Files. This hub streamlines vital sales activities like sending emails, scheduling meetings, and logging calls, eliminating the need to toggle tabs or swap screens.
You can filter Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities with preset or custom list views. Tailor these lists for targeted marketing campaigns or generate quick sidebar charts to track specific metrics on the fly. You also can switch between table, Kanban, and split view formats, whichever suits your workflow best.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
Maximizing Lead Generation in Salesforce Starter
Although Salesforce Starter's target audience is SMBs, many of which will have little or no experience with CRM software, it offers many features that aid growing companies in executing an efficient lead generation strategy without devoting too much time to grunt work (read: data entry). These tools are found in the Marketing hub. They don't rival what's available from standalone email marketing and marketing automation products, but they'll be a boon to smaller companies that don't want to navigate learning multiple applications for their sales functions.
Cadences, a feature also present in Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, guides you through the prospecting process by mapping out activity sequences. These sync up with Tasks, which automatically update as leads progress through the pipeline.
Sorting leads and automating tasks is seamless, thanks to Segments and Flows. These sections have a visual interface with drag-and-drop elements and dropdown menus, leveling the playing field for people new to CRMs who don't want to be inundated with lines of unfamiliar, confusing code.
The Campaigns tab has an email builder with customizable templates and myriad components for businesses wanting to level up their outreach. Whether you're sending one email or preparing an email blast, the Einstein Send Time Optimization suggests the best times to hit send (you can disable this if you prefer manual timing).
The Performance tab offers a comprehensive view of your ongoing email campaigns so you'll know what's working and what's not. Notably, this component was often the slowest to load during our tests. (For context, we tested the software against the latest version of Chrome on a 2019 Intel-based MacBook Air.)
Salesforce Starter lets you send up to 2,000 emails per month, which should suffice for most small businesses. However, if you need to up that allowance, you can pay an extra $10 per month for another 1,000 sends.
Advanced options, such as lead scoring and sales forecasting, aren't part of the package, which is expected given Salesforce Starter's focus on user-friendliness for smaller businesses. Nor is there any integration with social media networks, which is something to keep in mind if you promote heavily on such platforms. However, Zoho CRM is worth investigating if you're looking for such features at a fair price.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
Keeping Clients Happy With Salesforce Starter
In addition to its Sales and Marketing tools, Salesforce Starter also has a Service hub to help manage customer queries. The central feature here is Cases, where you log and view every interaction that a customer had with your company about a given issue. This way, any team member can easily step in and pick up where someone else left off for a smoother transition. (Once again, you can think of this as a subset of what you'd get from a standalone help desk product.)
There's also the Knowledge tab, where you write and publish articles about common customer problems and their solutions, all within the CRM. These articles are searchable and accessible right within each customer case, so you can resolve things quickly and keep things moving.
The last Service feature is Quick Text, designed to speed up outreach by letting you create preset email messages for occasions like birthdays or special promotions. We couldn't fully test this due to a minor bug. Still, it's worth noting that at the time of our test, Salesforce Starter was a just-launched product. As of this writing, it's still only available in a limited number of geographic regions, mainly owing to language localization issues.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
Measuring Success With Dashboards and Reporting
Salesforce Starter has the weakest reporting capabilities among the full family of Salesforce Sales products. However, compared with most CRM competitors in the small business space (like Freshsales or HubSpot CRM), it's robust without the overkill of advanced features better suited for large enterprises.
Salesforce Starter comes with over 60 customizable report types across 11 categories, such as sales, marketing, service, and admin. You'll also have a range of nearly a dozen chart types, giving you the flexibility to present your data in the most meaningful way. You can organize dashboards according to report types and tailor the formatting to your liking.
You can make reports and dashboards public, private, or limited to specific users. With the Subscribe feature, you can opt to receive notifications for report or dashboard updates in real-time or at scheduled intervals.
(Credit: PCMag/Salesforce)
Is Salesforce Starter Easy to Use?
Salesforce Starter aims to be accessible for newcomers to the Salesforce ecosystem or CRMs in general. While the platform is feature-rich, which could potentially steepen the learning curve, the on-page guidance and easy access to the Guidance Center are a boon for smaller teams that may not have the means to bring in a Salesforce expert to train them. There's also the Trailblazer Community, where you can find resources and answers to any questions you may have.
Salesforce is known for its high level of customization, and Salesforce Starter also delivers on that front. You can tweak the interface to your liking, which could range from something as basic as choosing between a wide-spaced or compact layout, or going all-in and incorporating the colors and logo of your company for a personal touch.
On the other hand, unlike its predecessor, Salesforce Essentials, Salesforce Starter doesn't support the platform's custom objects. As mentioned above, this restricts the range of third-party app integrations that are available. But once again, this is likely intentional given the platform's focus on simplicity for small businesses. If building a tech stack is necessary for your small business, look at HubSpot CRM instead.
Salesforce Starter syncs with the Salesforce mobile app, which is free to obtain on Android and iOS. While it lacks access to the advanced remote features available in Salesforce's Enterprise tiers, the core functionality should meet the needs of most small to medium businesses.
A User-Friendly Gateway to the Salesforce Platform
Salesforce bills Salesforce Starter as a platform for small- to medium-size businesses seeking a turnkey CRM. It succeeds in that regard, thanks to a straightforward setup process and a focus on core sales, marketing, and service tools. Its scalability and ease of use make it a suitable choice for companies that want to streamline their operations, minus the burden that often accompanies the introduction of new technology. For most SMBs, Salesforce Starter is a fine introduction to the Salesforce ecosystem (or CRMs in general).
There are concessions you must make if you opt for Salesforce Starter. Notably, a lack of support for third-party objects and fewer AI-powered tools than other Salesforce products. The trade-off is a CRM that's essentially ready to use out of the box, barring any tweaks you'll want to make to the interface. Editors' Choice winner Zoho CRM is a better value for your money, but the entry-level Starter is an excellent gateway into the broader Salesforce platform that offers room to grow.
Mon, 23 Oct 2023 23:30:00 -0500en-gbtext/htmlhttps://uk.pcmag.com/crm-software/149272/salesforce-starterWhat is Salesforce and What Does It Do?No result found, try new keyword!Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software that helps businesses connect with and get more information about their customer base. Salesforce is a cloud-based ...Mon, 13 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0600text/htmlhttps://www.thestreet.com/technology/what-is-salesforce-14796378Salesforce CRM Review and Pricing
Editors Score:9.5/10
The Salesforce CRM offers an impressive selection of features, customization options and tailored workflows within a single ecosystem, making it our pick for the best CRM for growing businesses.
The Salesforce CRM is highly customizable; with time, you can modify almost every element to fit your specific business needs.
The lowest-priced plan includes advanced features such as mass emails, marketing campaign management, a drag-and-drop app builder, and lead auto-assignment.
Salesforce has an immense selection of support materials, videos and tutorials, as well as a helpful online community.
Due to the sheer volume of customization and automation options, setting up the Salesforce CRM to match your business's specific processes and needs can be time-consuming. It may require training for your in-house marketing team and administrators.
You must know CSS, HTML and other coding languages to customize specific elements within Salesforce.
Salesforce's pricing model can be confusing; there's a lack of clarity around add-ons, which can drive up costs.
Businesses must successfully convert leads and manage and grow customer relationships to succeed. Salesforce CRM features myriad customization options to achieve these goals, empowering businesses of all sizes – and across various industries – to better understand and support prospects and customers. You can adapt nearly every aspect of the software’s interface and performance to help sales, marketing, customer service and technical support teams succeed. Salesforce CRM features thousands of fully integrated apps, plug-in scripts, and a superior API interface to help businesses create a flexible, customized solution. Once implemented, you’ll enjoy a beautifully designed product that’s speedy, powerful, and perfectly tailored to your company’s specific needs and processes.
Salesforce CRM Editor's Rating:
9.5 / 10
Customization, add-ons and integrations
9.8/10
Why We Chose Salesforce as the Best CRM for Customization
Salesforce is arguably the best-known CRM provider on the market. It has an established community and a well-earned reputation for being a leader in the customer relationship management field. While it was created to meet the needs of enterprises and large businesses, Salesforce has expanded its scope and now actively targets businesses of all sizes.
Unlike more rigid competitors, Salesforce CRM provides countless personalization and customization options, giving businesses a high level of control over how the system looks and acts. We were particularly impressed by how Salesforce handles workflow automation and by its pioneering integration of AI in CRM customization.
Notably, Salesforce was one of the first CRM platforms to open itself up to third-party developers, giving it more apps and customization options than any other provider. If Salesforce doesn’t have a built-in function you need, there’s almost certainly an app to compensate. If not, a developer can create and deploy a specific solution.
Salesforce CRM’s initial setup requires time and IT skills. Its learning curve is far steeper than those of many other CRM providers we reviewed. However, you’ll enjoy flexible CRM software guaranteed to accommodate all custom processes and meet the changing needs of your business. For all these reasons and more, Salesforce is our top CRM choice for customization.
Salesforce CRM’s pipeline management feature gives an overview of your sales opportunities. Source: Salesforce
Salesforce may not be the best choice for businesses with less complex operational needs. If your SMB’s CRM needs are straightforward, check out our review of monday.com CRM and monday.com comparison to learn about a well-executed system designed for SMBs.
Ease of Use
Despite its complexities, Salesforce is surprisingly easy to implement and use. Here are some notable ease-of-use factors we discovered.
Salesforce’s navigation process is straightforward. We like that Salesforce keeps the navigation process simple. The upper tab-style layout is typical across business and personal software, making it easy to grasp; categories like “Home,” “Contacts,” “Accounts,” “Leads,” “Tasks,” “Reports” and “Opportunities” need no explanation. You can get instant help from the question mark icon in one of the corners of the screen – a handy feature we’ve seen on many other CRM packages.
You can use Salesforce at a limited level out of the box. Because of its numerous features and customizations, setting up the Salesforce CRM takes more time and expertise than other solutions we reviewed. However, we appreciate that Salesforce’s smart default setup options help businesses use the CRM out of the box. You can gradually modify contact, opportunity, account, task and workflow elements as you explore the software’s full scope over time.
Salesforce doesn’t provide practice data. Note that you’ll need data to practice on during onboarding; Salesforce doesn’t supply this. To get practice data, you can duplicate and isolate existing data or use a service like Mockaroo to create dummy data.
Salesforce’s onboarding and support resources are robust. We were pleased to see that Salesforce offers a wealth of support materials, webinars and guides to facilitate the CRM implementation process and resolve usability issues. Its global Trailblazer community is also an excellent resource. Additionally, the vendor promises a two-day query response time.
Onboarding users and updating permissions is straightforward. While in-house administrators may need specific training, we appreciate that Salesforce provides excellent admin controls. Setting up various permissions based on groups or individual users is simple. This is notable because some CRMs allow only admin settings by group. Creating different displays and workflows for various departments and employees is also straightforward. If you have even moderate technical expertise and admin experience, you should have no trouble onboarding users, updating permissions or managing this CRM daily.
Salesforce’s visual dashboards help your team pinpoint problems and work on solutions. Source: Salesforce
Salesforce’s upper-tier plans give business owners access to live support, coaching sessions and adoption guidance for an additional fee. This may be useful if you’re considering switching CRM systems to Salesforce.
Salesforce Features
The Salesforce product boasts an impressive array of CRM features that make it one of the best on the market. Here are some of the most notable features that provide excellent CRM software benefits.
Comprehensive Business Ecosystem
We like that Salesforce’s business products seamlessly integrate. Businesses can grow with the Salesforce CRM and gradually adopt new features as needed. Additional Salesforce product categories include:
Sales Cloud
Service Cloud
Marketing Cloud
Commerce Cloud
Safety Cloud
Heroku (Heroku is an app development platform.)
Quip (a collaboration tool)
Salesforce Platform (with high-level development, customization, analytics and built-in AI)
You can use Salesforce’s impressive range of third-party apps to run many aspects of your company, from marketing to fulfillment. HR, data analytics, workforce collaboration and finance apps plug directly into Salesforce CRM. You can even add ERP apps to Salesforce to build a system close in function to the ERP platform described in our review of Oracle NetSuite CRM.
We also like how Salesforce’s AppExchange breaks down apps by industry. There are 12 sector-specific areas on AppExchange, including communications, financial services, manufacturing and professional services.
Salesforce is a capable solution for companies that want to Improve customer service performance. Read our review of Salesforce Service Cloud to discover how it helps supervisors and teams manage ongoing customer relationships.
Customization
We were impressed by Salesforce CRM’s vast customization capabilities – an area where it truly stands out among the competition. While many CRMs we reviewed offer options for customizing deal and contact fields, email templates, and dashboards, Salesforce lets you do much more.
Here are some of our favorite customization options:
Change how pages look and function. You can change how pages look and function to suit your specific needs. Use the CSS settings to adjust the spacing between page elements, colors and fonts. You can modify customer records to show just the lists, sections and fields you want particular co-workers to see, improving employee collaboration.
Use object control to customize the system. The Salesforce CRM’s object control is superior to that of other CRMs we tested. Objects are “fields” within databases (like name, address, email, etc.). Salesforce makes it easy to add objects so you can record exactly the information you want on accounts, contacts and leads. You can set permissions on records and fields to determine who else can view and edit fields. You can even make objects actionable by adding buttons, actions, triggers and links to create processes for adding a new customer, supplier or co-worker to the database.
Use the developer console to create custom apps. We really liked Salesforce’s developer console. Many businesses, particularly SMBs, won’t have in-house programmers but may use freelance developers to develop specific functions within Salesforce. Salesforce gives these developers a dev console where they can write, test and debug code for your custom applications. We found the inclusion of Apex triggers within the dev environment particularly helpful because it will shorten the development cycle in most instances. A developer sandbox and an app builder are included with every plan.
Sales managers can customize their dashboards with specific objects. Source: Salesforce
Integrations and Add-ons
We like that CRM users can build customizable systems and integrate their favorite business apps via the Salesforce AppExchange store. Other CRM software companies we reviewed have similar online stores for add-ons, but Salesforce’s is far more comprehensive, with thousands of available integrations.
The company makes it easy to search for add-ons based on the product name and view industry-specific product bundles. Because Salesforce is such a huge company, its industry-specific add-ons are expansive. There’s even a separate section for small business-specific add-ons, many of which are free.
On the AppExchange, you’ll find five different solution categories:
Apps: Similar to mobile apps on Apple’s App Store or Google Play, AppExchange apps are direct, preprogrammed plug-ins that interact with Salesforce. You can customize most apps via their settings. Apps add new functions or Improve and augment existing functions on your platform.
Lightning Bolts: Lightning Bolts are prebuilt templates providing extra features to employees, partners, suppliers and anyone accessing your Salesforce CRM. Hundreds of Lightning Bolts have various use cases. For example, there are supply chain management bolts for suppliers, project management tools for employees and tools to access client account information.
Flow solutions: Salesforce incorporates Flow Builder, a tool that simplifies workflow automation via a simple drag-and-drop approach. Flow solutions are prebuilt workflows or processes you can import directly into the Salesforce Flow development tool.
Lightning data: These are customer tracking tools that can enrich customer and prospect data and keep them updated regularly. We saw four such tools during our review process.
Components: Components are reusable features you can deploy to build your own apps within Salesforce. There are nearly 300 free components and around 30 paid ones.
Salesforce is embracing the “low code” and “no code” trends with its Lightning App Builder and Salesforce Flow drag-and-drop tools. Read our HubSpot review to learn about another CRM with drag-and-drop functionality.
New apps are added to the AppExchange daily, further enhancing its appeal. Source: Salesforce
Intuitive Productivity Tools
We were pleased to see Salesforce’s intuitive productivity-boosting tools, particularly its built-in project management features. (Freshworks has similar tools; read our Freshworks CRM review to learn more.) Once implemented, sales and marketing departments – as well as managers – will find it easy to manage and build workflows, assign and follow tasks, and check off permissions.
Salesforce’s visual dashboards allow sales reps to check KPIs and track their progress toward quotas, facilitating productivity and accountability. We like that you can add meetings straight from the calendar tab and see an instant overview of your schedule.
Additional add-on productivity tools are available through the AppExchange.
Artificial Intelligence
Salesforce’s artificial intelligence (AI) strides impressed us with capabilities beyond those of the competitors we reviewed. Salesforce was a CRM-AI pioneer, launching its high-profile AI tool, Einstein, in 2016. Today, the company has picked up the pace amid breakthroughs in the generative large language model AIs (like ChatGPT and Bard) that power tools like Einstein. Einstein is available on Salesforce’s upper-tier plans or as a paid add-on.
Einstein can do the following after gathering data from system use and user input:
Einstein, in its current form, is amazing, and we look forward to seeing its next iterations. We expect AI (and the solutions other CRM providers develop) to be integral to corporate life and CRM adoption in the coming years. We’re not awarding best use of AI in this round of CRM reviews; however, if we were, Salesforce would win.
Einstein can flag emails in which leads express critical concerns that could prevent a deal from moving forward, allowing a sales rep to prioritize those messages and act fast to grow and sustain customer relationships.
Salesforce’s Einstein tool can help with sentiment analysis so you understand how your brand is perceived. Source: Salesforce
Trailblazer Community
Nearly every CRM vendor we reviewed has some form of an online community. However, Salesforce’s Trailblazer community is particularly impressive, replete with documentation invaluable for admins. You can find step-by-step guides on everything from creating custom CRM reports to turning on user notifications.
There’s also an extensive user-only forum for direct communication with other admins and CRM users and a comprehensive Trailhead learning platform with various product-related courses, upskilling opportunities and official certifications.
Salesforce Pricing
You can purchase Salesforce’s Sales Cloud CRM via one of four subscription tiers:
Essentials
Professional
Enterprise
Unlimited
Unlike Salesforce competitors monday and HubSpot, there’s no free plan.
Only Essentials is available on a month-to-month basis; all other plans require an annual contract. Bear in mind that annual contracts often require you to pay for the whole year upfront, which may not be ideal for some businesses.
All costs below are applied when billed annually. All plans allow you to send 5,000 email marketing messages daily from the platform, which is much more generous than many other providers we reviewed.
Essentials
Price: $25 per user per month; available for up to 10 users
Features: Account, contact, lead, task and opportunity management; lead auto-assignment; prevention of duplicates; automatic capture of a lead’s available web information; mass email; marketing campaigns; customizable reports and dashboards; email integration with Gmail and Outlook; and Salesforce mobile app
Professional
Price: $75 per user per month
Features: Everything in the Essentials plan, plus pipeline management, lead registration, rules-based lead scoring, collaborative forecasting, a forecasting mobile app, quote and order management, roles and permissions, and a developer sandbox
Enterprise
Price: $150 per user per month
Features: Everything in the Professional plan, plus workflow and approval automation, sales teams and territories, opportunity scoring, and advanced reporting
Unlimited
Price: $300 per user per month
Features: Everything in the Enterprise plan, plus a sales engagement hub, AI-powered sales insights with Einstein, sales cadences and 24/7 support
Other Charges
Salesforce is pricey compared to other CRM solutions we reviewed. It’s a massive product with many add-ons and customizations; the subscription costs listed here should be considered jumping-off points.
You can spend considerably more on Salesforce. For example, CPQ & Billing, which allows you to quickly configure, price and quote complex solutions, costs $75 per user per month. Other add-ons include Pardot, Quip, Einstein AI and Sales Dialer – all sold separately. There are additional costs if you opt for training or help with implementation.
Many other SaaS products offer free versions and low-cost, entry-level subscriptions that can be used indefinitely. While $25 per user per month isn’t exorbitant, it’s not a realistic long-term option for most small businesses because only 10 users are supported at that level. The next plan jumps to $75 per user per month – significantly more expensive than the competition.
We recommend taking advantage of Salesforce’s 14-day free trial to ensure this CRM is worth the investment.
Onboarding and Implementation
Implementing CRM software always takes care and patience. But due to its breadth of customization options, Salesforce CRM’s implementation process can vary drastically, taking anywhere from a few days to several weeks. While that may seem alarming, users will quickly see that this CRM is worth the effort once it is set up.
Salesforce and third-party agencies can manage your initial implementation and launch for you. Still, this help comes at a cost, depending on your company size, number of employees, data volume and complexity, third-party integrations, and customization level.
Fortunately, you don’t necessarily have to create a complex solution immediately. You can use the software out of the box and modify it as your business needs evolve. Thanks to the Salesforce CRM’s intuitive design and overall sophistication, the learning curve isn’t steep for non-admin users after implementation.
In addition to a vast library of training materials, Salesforce offers adoption guidance and coaching services for an extra cost. That may be worth it for business owners concerned about setting up the CRM and onboarding users.
Use the Data Import Wizard from the Setup menu to import up to 50,000 standard objects – like contact, lead and account information – from a CSV file.
Customer Service
While Salesforce is a market leader in CRM technology, integrations and capabilities, we found that it falls short in the customer service department. When we reached out for information about the company’s services, the response was delayed.
When we did communicate with customer support reps, they were very helpful and used real-life situations to explain the product’s features and answer questions about the program. They were very clear and offered several solutions to help further our understanding. However, compared to other providers we called, their answers could have been more detailed.
Unfortunately, Salesforce has a C-minus rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and isn’t an accredited BBB business. It earned 1 out of 5 stars and closed 55 complaints within the last three years. That’s disappointing and surprising for a company that’s so well regarded in the industry.
On the plus side, Salesforce provides an extensive selection of self-guided resources, access to the Trailblazer community and basic technical support. Additionally, its Unlimited package comes with 24/7 assistance.
For an additional fee of 30 percent of your total monthly service fees, users can access 24/7 phone support, expert coaching and a dedicated account manager.
Limitations
Salesforce CRM is an excellent solution; however, we did identify some limitations:
Customizations can be complex. Salesforce’s biggest strength – its customization capabilities – is also a potential downside. Setting up a fully customized CRM tailored to your business’s specific sales funnel, structure and workflows requires time and, ideally, a dedicated IT team. Entrepreneurs and smaller companies might be better off with an easy-to-use yet still customizable solution like Zoho. (Learn more in our detailed Zoho CRM review and Zoho comparison.)
Salesforce requires technical knowledge. Most of the Salesforce CRM’s customizable elements require some basic technical knowledge of CSS and HTML. This is slowly improving since the introduction of the Lightning App Builder and Salesforce Flow tools. For example, the Lightning Email Templates use a more interactive drag-and-drop functionality, similar to some rival CRMs we reviewed. Salesforce is getting simpler and more intuitive over time. However, it’s not there yet.
Pricing can be challenging to understand. Due to the number of available add-ons and platforms, it can be difficult to estimate the final price of your desired CRM solution. However, Salesforce’s sales and support teams are happy to provide a unique quote for your business.
Methodology
When evaluating the best CRM software, we conducted extensive comparative research of dozens of software solutions in the category. Our product review process was designed to help you find the right CRM for your business. It included customer support team communication, trials to evaluate product functionality, and an evaluation of each provider’s tutorials, webinars and support materials. We also took pricing into consideration. When looking for the best CRM for customizability specifically, we examined customization options, available integrations, reporting and analytics, and sales automation.
Salesforce FAQ
Though the Salesforce system has an extensive collection of CRM features and add-ons, its intuitive design and standard CRM lingo make it easy to learn. The vendor also provides various training materials and courses on Trailhead, the company’s free online learning platform, to get you started.
Salesforce doesn’t have a free plan; its pricing starts at $25 per user per month. However, the company offers a 14-day free trial so you can assess whether it’s a good fit for your business.
Bottom Line
We recommend Salesforce CRM for …
Businesses that need a flexible and highly customizable CRM solution.
Companies that want access to a large collection of integrations and add-ons to suit their processes and industries.
Businesses looking for a CRM that can expand with their evolving needs.
We don’t recommend Salesforce CRM for …
Businesses that want a free CRM solution or advanced CRM functionality at an affordable price.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses with limited IT resources.
Companies that need a straightforward CRM system that works right out of the box and is easy to customize with no technical skills required.
Nadia Reckmann contributed to this article.
Tue, 07 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0600entext/htmlhttps://www.business.com/reviews/salesforce-crm-software/The Learning NetworkNo result found, try new keyword!By Jeremy Engle A filmmaker’s animated ode to her 107-year-old friend. What can we learn from their remarkable friendship? By The Learning Network We invite students to play critic and submit ...Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:58:00 -0600entext/htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/section/learningMeet 12 generative AI startups that are primed to transform advertising and marketing
Adventr
Adventr CEO and founder Devo HarrisAdventr
Funding: A $5 million seed round in 2021 led by Paladin Capital, with participation from Reinventure Capital, In/Visible Ventures, and music artist John Legend.
Number of employees: 22
What it does: New York-based Adventr is essentially like a Siri for video. Its "SmartListen" feature uses patented AI-powered voice control to allow users to interact with videos in real-time.
Adventr founder Devo Harris was previously a Grammy award-winning producer and music executive, who worked with artists like Kanye West and John Legend. Legend, who was also Harris's college roommate, is now an investor in Adventr.
In 2010 Harris put out a video from the band R!ot in Paris for its "Attack of the 5 ft. Hipster" track. It didn't get a good reception in the YouTube comments. The following week, Harris uploaded the same video but added interactive buttons so users could choose which scene to watch next. It was a hit.
"The next thing I know, all these media companies reached out to me and I then spent the last decade diving into video tech," Harris told Insider.
Adventr offers cloud-based software that lets anyone create what it calls "smart media," to let users interact with videos to ask questions, purchase products, or initiate text messages or phone calls. It also offers an enterprise product that's been used by clients including Chevy, Disney+, Shopify, AWS, and X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — who integrate their databases or apps so that their videos can provide real-time responses to queries.
23andMe used Adventr to let its customers ask a video of a genetic counselor whether they're likely to inherit a disease their parent has, for example. Or they can use their voice to play a DNA quiz gameshow.
In the next six to 12 months, Harris says Adventr wants to incorporate more large language models and generative AI technology to make its voice controls more sophisticated. Users will be able to ask a video ad for a retailer, "I like this jacket, but do you have it in blue?" Harris said. Adventr also wants to be able to incorporate the checkout into that process so customers don't need to leave the video they're watching to make a purchase.
Anoki
Anoki cofounder and CEO Raghu KodigeMichael Priest
Funding: Anoki raised a pre-seed round during the first quarter of 2023, but declined to say how much because it is in the middle of raising its next round.
Number of employees: 30
Anoki uses generative AI to personalize video ads. Its technology can identify the context where ads are being shown and make tweaks so that the ads are more engaging for the intended audience. For instance, Anoki's tech can change the accent or appearance of a person in a video, or make it seem like he is wearing the jersey of a local sports team, or swap out the background or the type of product being shown.
Anoki uses a combination of generative AI technologies, including ChatGPT, to create ads. Anoki's team of human staffers approves the final results.
Anoki has built out its technology said cofounder and CEO Raghu Kodige and is working to bring its solution to market, with the goal of launching at CES 2024. Anoki plans to sell its product to both agencies and brands, and is working with media companies that sell ads to make sure it has access to inventory.
Kodige previously cofounded the TV data company Alphonso, which was acquired by electronics company LG in 2021 and rebranded as LG Ads. Kodige headed up that division until last December.
Chalice Custom Algorithms
Chalice cofounders Ali Manning (L) and Adam Heimlich (R)Chalice
Funding: $1.8M in two pre-seed rounds from Aperiam Ventures and The Trade Desk's TD7 Ventures.
Number of employees: 20
What it does: Chalice was founded in 2020 by a husband-and-wife team: longtime ad agency exec Adam Heimlich and former Google and Snap exec Ali Manning.
Chalice is a software company that builds algorithms for advertisers to use in their demand-side platforms, which is the software used to buy digital ads. Chalice's algorithms can Improve ad targeting. It is similar to AI tools like Google's Performance Max or Meta's Advantage Plus, though unlike Google and Meta, the data that advertisers give to Chalice isn't used to power other companies' ads across a vast network.
Chalice and its advertiser clients don't have the large amounts of data that Google and Meta use to power their algorithms. This means that, before the advent of generative AI, Chalice couldn't help smaller or mid-sized businesses that don't have large data sets, or large advertisers that wanted to run smaller campaigns.
Last summer, a few months before OpenAI's ChatGPT monopolized the newscycle, Chalice began building a solution that used generative AI to create synthetic data to power algorithms for clients with small data sets. The solution was built from open source code on the programmer website Stack Overflow, using a machine learning algorithm called a "generative adversarial network," which is commonly used to create deep fakes.
"We're trying to create a deep fake of the customer's data that's not significantly different and almost unrecognizable from the original," said Tylynn Pettrey, Chalice's head of data science who spearheaded its generative AI solution.
This tool has improved Chalice's speed at working with clients, from three to six months down to as little as one to two weeks. It has also helped Chalice increase the number of clients it works with, from five to six a couple of years ago to about 30 today.
Its clients include Hershey's and Hyundai through the agency Canvas Worldwide.
GraySwan Systems
GraySwan founder and CEO Zeev NeumeierGraySwan
Funding: $1 million from investors including LiveRamp Ventures and Aperiam Ventures.
Number of employees: 4
What it does: Adtech entrepreneur Zeev Neumeier founded GraySwan Systems to use generative AI to make it easier for marketers to spot anomalies — like when the same ad shows to someone multiple times in a row or when there's an unexplained jump in website traffic that could be due either to a successful ad campaign or bot traffic.
Neumeier said that GraySwan Systems uses generative AI to look holistically at the factors running an ad campaign.
It pulls data from the demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms that are used to run programmatic campaigns. The data then runs through the company's AI and is put into a dashboard. The dashboard allows marketers to quickly identify problems with ads in a couple of minutes, Neumeier said.
GraySwan plans to pitch its technology to media companies and publishers and will later pitch it to adtech firms and advertisers. He said GraySwan Systems has one customer using its product and plans to launch it during the first quarter of 2024.
Neumeier sold his previous startup, Cognitive Networks, to TV manufacturer Vizio, where it was rebranded as Inscape and formed the basis of the company's ad business.
Memorable
Memorable cofounders Camilo Fosto (L) and Sebastian Acevedo (R)Memorable
Funding: $2.75 million in pre-seed funding from investors including adtech exec Brian O'Kelley and MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan.
Number of employees: 19
What it does: Memorable cofounders Sebastian Acevedo and Camilo Fosto have backgrounds in machine learning from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Memorable uses AI to help brands like Unilever, L'Oreal, and NotCo build the creative that performs best. Its machine learning models predict how likely someone is to click on an ad or remember a brand after seeing a social, display, or streaming TV ad.
Memorable's models are first trained on creative assets for specific brands, and that model is fed into Memorable's own generative AI tool to develop new images for ads. Then the startup tests which creative assets work best. For example, an ad with a logo in the bottom corner of the screen may perform better than an ad with a logo in the center.
For NotCo, a model predicted engagement for ads on Meta, then used the generative tool to create 48 creative assets in five minutes. The generative ads had a 16% increase in engagement and a 32% increase in click-through rate compared to human-made creative.
The idea is to cut down the amount of time that advertisers spend testing creative, said Acevedo. "If you think of the old ways of optimizing creative, you need humans, you need maybe surveys to pre-test them and so on," he said.
Brands pay an annual fee to use Memorable's tools that varies based on the amount of ad spend, Acevedo said. Memorable also has partnerships with adtech firms like tvScientific, Vistar Media, and Kargo. Memorable is working on developing tools that will help brands predict the best-performing creative without needing to pay for ads to test the performance.
Omneky
Omneky CEO and founder Hikari SenjuOmneky
Funding: $11.4 million in seed from individual investors like Conde Nast Chief Business Officer Craig Kostelic and former Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher. Omneky also raised from VC firms like Softbank's DeepCore, Village Global, AIX, and Orbit Venture Partners among others.
Number of employees: 54
What it does: Omneky uses generative AI to create ads based on what type of creative will perform best.
It uses what founder Hikari Senju calls a "fine-tuned Midjourney" that's trained on an advertiser's existing content to generate marketing material. It uses a separate predictive model to guide the creation of that content, based on how the design — like the layout, text size, image used — will drive clicks or other performance metrics.
Omneky integrates with companies like Oracle, Snowflake, and Databricks to get first-party data from its advertiser clients, and it also plugs into platforms like Reddit, TikTok, Google, LinkedIn, and The Trade Desk to both distribute the ads and get insights into how they performed.
Omneky has an ad generation tool that all marketers can use, and that currently drives around $3 million in revenue, Senju told Insider.
In the coming months, Omneky will release a workflow tool so that large agencies and enterprises can easily generate thousands of variations of ads, and test which ones will do best. This tool is in beta with a handful of Omneky clients, and will be available in the coming months.
"The productivity gain of our tool is such that it's a thousand X improvement," Omneky CEO and founder Hikari Senju told Insider. "The reality of how people make ads is they're still making ads one at a time."
Senju, who founded Omneky in 2018, studied computer science with a focus on AI and machine learning at Harvard.
Omneky currently has about 100 clients, including Sony Music, Japan Airlines, and StartEngine, which lets people invest in startups.
OpenAds
OpenAds cofounders Steven Liss (L) and Michael Bishop (R)OpenAds
Funding: $1 million from investors including irrvrntVC.
Number of employees: 5
What it does: OpenAds cofounders Steven Liss and Michael Bishop want to build an AI ad network for publishers.
The technology serves ads in generative AI chatbots that are embedded on publishers' websites. The idea is to help publishers make money from the boom of AI-generated content. Users type in prompts to OpenAds' chatbots and are served ads relevant to their searches. Publishers will be able to sell the ads similar to other native formats that mirror editorial content with high CPMs, brand-safety controls, and contextual targeting using first-party data.
Bishop formerly worked at Oracle-owned Moat and developed technology that publishers use for tracking metrics like viewability and ad fraud.
"It feels a lot like search advertising, but with a dynamic copywriter," Liss said.
The company has onboarded data from 10,000 advertisers to train its AI and partners with AI and chatbot companies.
OpenAds also participated in AWS' Generative AI Accelerator program this year, receiving $300,000 in AWS credit.
Quilt.AI
Quilt.AI's cofounder and CEO Anurag BanerjeeQuilt.AI
Funding: $9 million in Series A funding led by Nadathur Estates and with participation from Spearhead Capital.
Number of employees: 77
What it does: Quilt.AI launched its first generative AI product in 2019, which used its platform to understand data and convert that into marketing copy, slogans, and creative.
"We dropped the product on Product Hunt and about nine people signed up," said Anurag Banerjee, Quilt.AI's cofounder and CEO.
Quilt.AI has gone on to work with huge companies like Procter & Gamble, De Beers, and Mastercard who use Quilt.AI to convert big data signals from video, image, and text across the web into meaningful insights about both customer and broader human behavior.
Quilt.AI also offers a "marketing AI" that uses those insights to generate image and text content. Video will come next year.
The company also works with nonprofits like The Gates Foundation and The World Bank to help them understand patterns around subjects like mental health or climate change and donates 5% of its revenue to charity each month.
Banerjee said he wants the company to be plugged into every one of the large language models available from big technology companies. He also wants Quilt.AI to create 100 of what he describes as "mini foundational models" around categories like beauty, travel, and football, as well as more nuanced indices around Topics like "British humor." Quilt.AI also wants its generative AI model to be "fully transparent," so its clients know which data points are driving certain actions and what the parameters of the model are.
Rembrand
Rembrand CEO and cofounder Omar TawakolRembrand
Funding: Raised $8 million seed round in June 2023 from investors like Greycroft, United Talent Agency's VC arm UTA Ventures, and L'Oréal's VC fund BOLD.
Number of employees: 40
What it does: Rembrand uses AI to place animated virtual products in creator videos. A bottle of shampoo, for instance, might dance across the host's desk.
"We use AI generative techniques to photo-realistically fuse brands into the content that people really want to watch, without interruption," said Rembrand cofounder and CEO Omar Tawakol.
The placements don't require a physical product to be present, nor does it require a VFX team to insert a digital object in post-production. Instead, advertisers can choose from a library of animations that determine how the digital product moves through the video.
Rembrand's AI segments out people and moving objects in the video, so a product that appears on a shelf in the background is always behind the host and doesn't, for instance, obstruct her face if she moves in front of it. Rembrand generates a lot of synthetic data about the environment in the video to determine how the product should interact within that space.
Clients can work with Rembrand in three ways. First, advertisers can give Rembrand their creative assets and pay it to run an ad campaign. Second, advertisers can use Rembrand's technology to build their own campaign with creators of their choosing. Third, Rembrand is trying to work with movie studios and premium content creators, so they can use Rembrand's technology to execute their own product placement deals.
Rembrand partners with around 15 creator agencies including UTA (which is also an investor) to access their full talent rosters, and it has worked with about a dozen brands and executed four global brand campaigns that Tawakol declined to name.
Tawakol sold his previous two startups, BlueKai and Voicea, to Oracle and Cisco, respectively.
Tastewise
Tastewise cofounders Alon Chen (L) and Eyan Gaon (R)Tastewise
Funding: $21.5 million from investors including Disruptive AI and PeakBridge.
Number of employees: 75
What it does: Israel-based Tastewise helps food and beverage companies spin up new ideas quickly for products and create marketing campaigns, without using consumer focus groups and surveys.
CEO and cofounder Alon Chen, former CMO of Google in the Israel and Greece regions, is a self-taught engineer and came up with the idea of Tastewise after realizing at his mother's Shabbat dinner that consumers' tastes are changing faster than brands can develop new products.
The six-year old startup has proprietary generative AI tech, called TasteGPT, that giant consumer packaged goods brands like PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, and Campbell Soup Co. use to create ads, images, packaging design, blog posts, and recipes that brands use to market their products.
While Tastewise initially focused on helping companies with developing products, it is expanding to help food and beverage brands cut down on advertising costs. For example, Tastewise's AI can create a product based on a food term like "hamburgers" and generate the marketing around that new product.
Typeface
Typeface founder and CEO Abhay ParasnisTypeface
Funding: $165 million from investors like Salesforce Ventures, Lightspeed, Madrona, Menlo Ventures, Microsoft's investment arm M12, and Google's investment arm GV.
Number of employees: Around 75
What it does: Typeface was founded in 2022 by Adobe's former CTO and Chief Product Officer Abhay Parasnis, and came out of stealth in March. Parasnis was also on the team that built Microsoft Azure more than ten years ago.
Typeface uses generative AI to let brands and agencies build content cheaply and very quickly. This content can also be personalized at scale. "The paradox for most companies is they can choose either high-quality content, which is slow and expensive, or fast content which isn't on brand," Parasnis told Insider.
Because Typeface is trained on assets that its advertiser clients own, it avoids copyright issues and ensures that it can accurately capture things like the brand's voice, or the details of its logo or products.
The company does this with what it calls "personalized AI," which is a blend of large language models from companies including OpenAI and Google, and injects content and rules specific to the advertiser using it. Users can then use either a prebuilt template or prompts to ask Typeface to generate creative content.
Parasnis said Typeface is not trying to replace high-end creative tools like Photoshop or Canva. Instead, Typeface is meant to help marketing staff get content out as quickly as possible.
Typeface clients include LG and Sequoia Consulting Group.
Despite its accurate launch, the startup has already amassed some major partnerships. For instance, it partnered with Google to launch a campaign creation solution that was announced during the Google Cloud Next conference in August.
It partnered with Microsoft so people using Teams can build content — for instance if staffers want to quickly use its AI to automatically convert a webinar or video into an email campaign or blog post. That capability was announced in August.
And Typeface also partnered with Salesforce to launch a solution that can create images and drop them into email marketing campaigns — which was announced in September at the Dreamforce conference.
Waymark
Waymark CEO Alex Persky-SternWaymark
Funding: $6.9 million from investors including Draper Associates, Rise of the Rest, Detroit Venture Partners, North Coast Technology Investors, and Invest Detroit.
Number of employees: 27
What it does: Founded in 2017, Waymark's AI technology pulls information from a company's website URL and its social media to quickly spin up a ready-to-air TV commercial.
It uses a proprietary system of AI models, including ChatGPT and other non-language models, to collect creative assets to build a custom commercial and voiceover script. Users can then edit any of those elements.
Waymark has signed deals with major TV companies and cable operators such as FOX TV, Gray Television, Morgan Murphy Media, and Australian media company Nine. In 2022 Charter Communications' ad sales arm Spectrum Reach created more than 4,000 ad spots that generated $11.5 million in ad revenue from small and medium-sized businesses, according to Waymark.
Waymark's ad creation technology is also integrated into self-service ad platforms, such as those offered by Spectrum Reach, Hulu, and Roku.
In 2024, Waymark is looking to use a more robust and advanced LLM to enhance its script-writing. It also wants to expand its production capabilities to more languages beyond English and Spanish.
Fri, 03 Nov 2023 08:23:00 -0500en-UStext/htmlhttps://www.businessinsider.com/generative-ai-adtech-startups-2023-11Salesforce Tower Camera 4
David DePape found guilty of federal charges in Paul Pelosi assault
David DePape, accused of bludgeoning former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer at the couple's San Francisco mansion last year, was found guilty of the charges in a federal court Thursday.
Sun, 28 May 2023 13:28:00 -0500en-UStext/htmlhttps://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/salesforce-tower-cameras/HubSpot vs Salesforce (2023) – Which CRM Is Best and Why?
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Our research shows that HubSpot is better than Salesforce for sales and marketing, as well as being one of the best CRMs for small businesses, thanks to its robust free plan. On the other hand, Salesforce is better than HubSpot for customer service because it offers more communication channels to reach customers.
If you're in the market for CRM, you've almost certainly heard of Salesforce, as its easily the most popular CRM in the world, boasting a whopping third of CRM market share. Subsequently, Salesforce offers a lot of pricing plans for different sizes and types of businesses, which is why getting a quote for your business is likely your best move.
Still, the HubSpot vs Salesforce matchup is a lot closer than you might think. In this guide, we'll cover all the specifics about these two CRM providers — from features and pricing to customer support and ease of use — and explain when and why one might be a better fit for your business.
We'll be pitting HubSpot vs Salesforce head to head throughout this article. Of course, these aren't the only CRM tools to consider. Check out some of these further alternatives, below. Or, scroll on to learn more about Salesforce and Hubspot.
HubSpot vs. Salesforce – Which Should You Choose?
Before we get to all the nitty gritty details of HubSpot vs Salesforce, understanding the fundamental differences between the two popular CRMs will help you make a decision when it comes to choosing for your business. Here are some basics about the differences between HubSpot and Salesforce:
HubSpot is better for small businesses than Salesforce
Salesforce is better for larger businesses than HubSpot
HubSpot offers an easier to use interface than Salesforce
Salesforce offers better analytics and reporting tools than HubSpot
HubSpot has better sales and marketing features than Salesforce
Salesforce has better customer service features than HubSpot
HubSpot offers a free forever plan, and Salesforce doesn't
In earnest, Salesforce and HubSpot are a lot more similar than many other popular CRM providers in the market, but the free forever plan is a big differentiator between the two. Salesforce not only has no free plan, but also has a higher price tag than most HubSpot plans, which is why the former is better for larger businesses, and the latter more focused on smaller businesses.
Read to compare CRM providers?
Salesforce isn't the only name in the game.
HubSpot vs Salesforce Pricing
Both HubSpot and Salesforce can become very expensive, very fast, which can be concerning for businesses trying to navigate the looming recession. That's why it's essential to only sign up to the tiered plan that's right for the needs of your business. You can use our simple CRM tailored quotes form to narrow it down and get a price quote to help you decide.
Of course, HubSpot has one advantage over Salesforce – there's a free tier to HubSpot CRM. This isn't a short-term trial, either – you can use HubSpot free forever, should you choose. But, on the paid plans, you'll have far more HubSpot features – and these paid plans aren't always better value than Salesforce equivalents.
Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer industry-specific options, each with their own set of plans. This means that entry-level plans for sales businesses, for example, could be a different price than those of marketing businesses. Take note of that while checking out the breakdown below.
HubSpot Pricing
First off, we'll start with the Hubs. HubSpot offers three different types of service, or Hubs, aimed at the different purposes of CRM: sales, marketing, and customer service.
The Sales Hub and Service Hub are priced similarly, but the Marketing Hub is a bit more expensive, which is commonplace for marketing-focused CRM providers. Take a look at how these HubSpot Hubs match up against each other below and read on for an in-depth look at each Hub.
Check out our complete guide to HubSpot pricing for more information
HubSpot Sales Hub pricing
The HubSpot Sales Hub starts off quite affordable, but as you can see from the table below, it gets expensive pretty fast. The entry price is enticing, particularly considering the free plan is available, but the advanced features — like lead scoring and custom reports — don't unlock until you hit the Professional plan, which is far above the industry standard on price.
It's also worth remembering that the Sales Hub pricing plans have a minimum number of users required and per user pricing, so you'll definitely be paying more than the per month price listed. Here's how all of the HubSpot Sales Hub plans match up against each other:
Unlimited (minimum 2 users)
Unlimited (minimum 5 users)
Unlimited (minimum 10 users)
Predictive scoring
HubSpot Service Hub pricing
As is also the case with Salesforce, the Service Hub is identically priced to the Sales Hub. This means that the prices start pretty competitive in the entry-level plans, but they get expensive fast. While the Starter plan is quite competitive in the industry, substantially undercutting Salesforce, the Professional plan ramps up the price by a lot, with the Enterprise sending it up even further.
Like the Sales Hub, the HubSpot Service Hub also has the same minimum user requirement and per user pricing, so your monthly cost is going to be higher than these listed prices. Here's how the HubSpot Service Hub pricing plans match up against each other:
Unlimited (minimum 2 users)
Unlimited (minimum 5 users)
HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing
If you thought the Sales Hub and Service Hub options were expensive, just wait until you see the Marketing Hub options. Prices are decidedly higher compared to HubSpot alternatives, although the Starter plan still stays below the comparative Salesforce plans by quite a bit.
The Marketing Hub does away with the per user pricing, and instead charges users based on the number of marketing contacts they would like to reach, starting at 1,000. Here's a breakdown of the Marketing Hub pricing plans:
Salesforce Pricing
Similar to HubSpot's Hubs, Salesforce offers different types of services depending on your needs, dubbed Clouds, for sales, marketing, and service. Each one offers a different set of pricing plans, but Salesforce offers some mix and match options that can save you some money if you want dual functionality.
Much like HubSpot, the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are priced similarly, and can be combined for a cheaper option. Again, the Marketing Cloud is much more expensive, as it provides a wide range of additional features that are more valuable.
The Sales Cloud is arguably the most popular option from Salesforce, despite being quite expensive compared to other Salesforce alternatives. The starting price is well ahead of the industry average (around $15 per month), and the more expensive plans are indeed far ahead of the market. Still, as one of the more feature-heavy options on this list, you're definitely getting what you pay for.
Unlike HubSpot, Salesforce does not have user minimum requirements for its plans, so what you see is what you'll pay for all options. Check out how these plans match up against each other below:
File storage: 1GB Data storage: 10GB + 20MB per license
File storage: 10GB + 2GB per license Data storage: 10GB + 20MB per license
File storage: 10GB + 2GB per license Data storage: 10GB + 20MB per license
Filestorage: 10GB + 2GB per license Data storage: 10GB + 20MB per license
$15/user/month
Salesforce Service Cloud
In the same way that the Sales Hub and Service Hub cost the same for HubSpot, the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud from Salesforce also have nearly identical pricing, although the Service Cloud offers a few more pricing options, with five plans instead of four, adding an Unlimited+ plan that costs quite a bit more for advanced functionality like generative AI features.
The Service Cloud also doesn't have a minimum user requirement, so you'll pay the amount you see on the table below. Check out how these plans match up against each other now:
Website Live Chat Comms Channel
Requires Telephony Integration
Requires Telephony integration
Requires Telephony Integration or Service Cloud Voice Add-on
Yes – but limited to 1 license
Additional cost
Yes (Maximum of 2).
Yes (maximum of 2)
Yes (maxium of 2)
Yes (maximum of 2)
Yes (maximum of 2)
Internal knowledge base
Agent monitoring
Unified Case Queue
Task Dashboard
Team Comms
Manual Ticket Routing
User hierarchy
Int. knowledge base
Team SLAs
Agent monitoring
Ind. Targets
Unif. Case Queue
Calendar
Task Dashboard
Team Comms
Manual Ticket Routing
User hierarchy
Int. knowledge base
Team SLAs
Agent monitoring
Ind. Targets
Unif. Case Queue
Calendar
Task Dashboard
Team Comms
Manual Ticket Routing
User hierarchy
Int. knowledge base
Team SLAs
Agent monitoring
Ind. Targets
Unif. Case Queue
Calendar
Task Dashboard
Team Comms
Manual Ticket Routing
User hierarchy
Int. knowledge base
Team SLAs
Agent monitoring
Ind. Targets
Unif. Case Queue
Calendar
Task Dashboard
Team Comms
Manual Ticket Routing
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement
The prices in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud are a bit jarring at first, but trust us, it's for good reason. The outrageously high prices stem from the fact that the Marketing Cloud is filled with a wide range of automation features that can handle operations in a streamlined way. Still, that doesn't change how expensive these plans are, making them clearly aimed at larger businesses than small startups.
Thankfully, these plans don't have a minimum user requirement either, but at this prices, you're going to be paying a lot no matter what. Here are how the Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing plans match up:
Custom automation builder
30 days
30 days
30 days
HubSpot vs Salesforce: Head-to-Head
Now that we understand the basics about how Salesforce and HubSpot differ on pricing and functionality, it's time to dig a little deeper. In this section, we'll explore how HubSpot and Salesforce compare on everything, including features, integrations, ease of use, customer support, reporting and analytics, automation, and training.
Salesforce and HubSpot both have a lot of features
Because Salesforce and HubSpot are both considered high-end CRM options, they both offer a vast array of features for a myriad of purposes. As we've said a few times now, it all comes down to what you need those features for, which is what we'll breakdown in this section.
Marketing features
When it comes to the specific features on Salesforce Marketing Cloud versus HubSpot Marketing Hub, we found that it's honestly not even close. HubSpot Marketing Hub is our top choice for CRM for marketing, thanks to its vast array of marketing channels, including content, social, email, and paid. Salesforce offers some very rudimentary options for channels like social, paid, and content, which is why we give HubSpot the advantage on this one.
Additionally, we found HubSpot offers more when it comes to customer support, providing onboarding for new users and better customer support when you run into a problem.
Personalization in Email Marketing on HubSpot Image: Tech.co testing
Sales features
You'd think with a name like Salesforce that the popular CRM would easily take the cake on sales features. However, we found that HubSpot absolutely holds its own, offering plenty of options for your business. In fact, HubSpot beats Salesforce on features like lead capture and lead conversion. Still, Salesforce offers better customer support, so it's pretty much a toss-up between these two popular options.
The sales forecasting dashboard in Salesforce Image: Tech.co testing
Service features
Here is where Salesforce really shines. We found customer support CRM features thoroughly embedded in the Salesforce Service Hub, giving it an edge over HubSpot's Service Hub. It provides more communication channels, more ticketing channels, and more offline functionality than HubSpot.
The only weak spot we found for Salesforce when it comes to customer service features is customer feedback functionality, like surveys, as the CRM offers none to speak of. Still, that shouldn't deter you, as the other features more than make up for this small oversight.
Service Cloud dashboard in Salesforce Image: Tech.co testing
HubSpot is easier to use than Salesforce
While a massive feature catalog is a huge benefit for Salesforce, we found that it does create a lot of extra work, which can seriously impede ease of use – particularly for beginners. We found that the platform is laden with very specific terminology that needs to be learnt before it makes any sense, which could create a substantial learning curve for those unfamiliar with the software.
With HubSpot, you're getting a comprehensive, intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, even if you aren't familiar with CRM software. The biggest highlight with managing business contacts with HubSpot is the tidy user-interface where you view all the information related to a contact. HubSpot has designed a clear way of providing a holistic view of who your contact is, what interaction you’ve had, and where they work.
Simply put, HubSpot is built for ease of use, with a simple layout that will let you easily access all the tools available on the platform. There's even a little help icon at the bottom of some screens, which will provide you with tailored advice on how to move forward (pictured below).
In fact, HubSpot is so dedicated to improving ease of use that it tested its software on drunk users to be sure it's as straightforward as possible, no matter how impaired you might be.
Pop up Help Options in HubSpot Image: Tech.co testing
Which features do you need?
See how well each top CRM service functions now:
Salesforce has better customer support
While Salesforce may be lacking in the ease-of-use department, we found the customer support options to be quite robust, which can make it worth the hassle. Not only does Salesforce offer a huge catalog of online documentation and tutorial videos that can help you figure out any issues, but you'll also become part of the massive Salesforce community of users, who can help you solve any problems.
Our researchers found that HubSpot does not offer 24/7 live support on any of its plans, even the ones that cost thousands of dollars per month. Salesforce, on the other hand, provides it for an additional cost, and includes it for all Unlimited plans.
If you require an actual person to walk you through the complication of Salesforce, you're all set there too. Once you're logged into the platform, you can phone, email, and live chat with representatives to hammer out the details of your problem, so you don't have to rely on forms and forums to get it done.
As you might expect, Salesforce's robust feature catalog comes with equally robust reporting and analytics functionality. We found the built-in system to be widely customizable, just like the rest of the platform, giving you complete control over what you track and how you track it. We found that the best part of Salesforce analytics was that it allows you to store large levels of information, including emails, tasks, call logs, contact information, outreach campaign data and lead information.
Plus, with the new analytics add-on Tableau, you'll be able to get a full 360-degree view of how your customers interact with your business, giving you more actionable insights for improving sales.
HubSpot also offers a lot of reporting tools, and they're quite comparable to Salesforce actually. However, the only metric you get in every plan is to view revenue data, while other features like custom reports and sales forecasts are only available in the more expensive plans, which means you'll have to pay a lot to get access to the same features.
An example Sales Rep dashboard in Salesforce Sales Cloud Image: Tech.co testing
HubSpot and Salesforce offer lots of integrations with other software
While both HubSpot and Salesforce are considered two of the most robust CRM options on the market, they can't do it all. In that case, you might be interested in integrating these platforms with other third-party apps that can, in fact, do it all. Fortunately, both Salesforce and HubSpot offer a lot when it comes to integrations, so no need to worry there.
Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer massive app stores that can unlock a wide range of functionalities for your business. They can integrate with Google Workplace, WordPress, FreshBooks, Eventbrite, and dozens of others.
HubSpot Salesforce Integration
If you really can't decide between the two, HubSpot has a peculiar feature that allows you to sync information from Salesforce into HubSpot and then back again. This is very different from the usual features that let you import data from Salesforce in order to migrate to a new platform. It seems curious to offer deep integration with a competitor, but there are situations where this integration could become useful. If you already use HubSpot's Marketing Hub, for example, but the sales team is on Salesforce, then this integration could help bridge the gap between the data held by the two teams.
HubSpot's integration is bi-directional, which means you can send information to Salesforce as well as pull information from it. There are limits to how much data you can pull from Salesforce on any given day, depending on how many API calls your contract with Salesforce allows.
This feature is nice enough if you need it, though having both teams on the same platform would be much easier and offer more seamless data sharing. Salesforce integration is not available on the free or Starter tiers, requiring at least Sales Hub Professional.
Provides sales, marketing, and service functionality
Tidy, easy to navigate interface
Cons
Limited customization
Basically no customer support
File storage limit to 5 documents
HubSpot has simpler implementation and training
Because HubSpot is easy to use, the setup process is pretty easy. You won't have to spend hours setting up your metrics, your analytics, or your integrations, as most of them will be set up for you upon installation. If you do need a bit of help, you can sign up for onboarding sessions for between $1,500 and $5,000 for your whole team, which is obviously not very cheap.
More specifically, the first part of the onboarding process for HubSpot — where you’re following a demo — is quite easy to follow and provides hands-on information on how to use the platform.
With Salesforce, you're a lot more likely to need the help getting started, and the company offers a wide range of helpful tools to do so. Between the online community of users and the robust support team, you'll be taken care of – and you'll need it, too, due to the complicated nature of the CRM. Salesforce even offers training seminars, which typically cost approximately $4,500. Again, definitely not the cheapest option.
In fact, our research found that the setup process for Salesforce was a full three minutes longer than that of HubSpot, mostly due to the clunkiness of the Salesforce platform and the ease of customer data import on HubSpot (pictured below).
Customer Data Import in HubSpot Image: Tech.co testing
Salesforce has better automation
One of the primary reasons why a business would sign up for CRM software is the use of automation to make business life a bit easier. Powered by artificial intelligence, these features can make a huge difference in freeing up time and resources for human employees to really get work done.
This matchup is a close one, but in the end, Salesforce's Einstein takes the cake. The AI-powered tool can help you automate a wide range of processes, from lead management to customer onboarding, with a world-leading company's resources behind it. Even better, these automation features are available at a much lower price than HubSpot, which is always beneficial.
Salesforce does, however, have a trick up its sleeve with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. This functionality – which is a part of the wider Salesforce Marketing Cloud – can automate sales funnels for new prospective customers and gives a killer edge to Salesforce's marketing capabilities.
Because CRM software is built on automation, HubSpot has solid options as well, although they're a bit less consolidated. Tools like lead and contact management features automation capabilities, with simple “if this then that” functionality, allowing you to automate where you see fit. Still, our research found HubSpot automation workflows to be complicated, which is unfortunate due to their invaluable nature for sales and marketing teams.
Cases page on Salesforce Lightning Image: Tech.co Testing
Other CRM Alternatives
While HubSpot and Salesforce are considered two of the best options out there when it comes to CRM, they aren't the only providers available. In fact, there are plenty of great alternatives to HubSpot and Salesforce out there for everything from marketing to sales to customer service. Take a look at some of the options below or check out our guide to the best easy CRMs for a different perspective on the market.
Best CRM for Sales
Yes, it's hard to beat Salesforce when it comes to sales, as you may have guessed from the name. Still, it's an incredibly robust option that can be a bit intimidating for smaller businesses or just businesses that don't need all those features. If you're looking for a provider that's a bit more manageable, like Zoho CRM, we've done a bunch of research on the Topic and can help you find a better CRM for sales.
Best CRM for Marketing
HubSpot is truly a top-tier CRM for marketing, mostly because it offers a robust set of marketing features in its free plan. Even better, our research found that it offers great marketing integrations, like one with Canva that will allow you to design email elements straight from the email editing space.
Still, HubSpot is not perfect for everyone. The high prices and the massive feature catalog can be too much for some, which means that another alternative could be a better fit. Fortunately, we've done the research to find some of the best options out there for CRM for marketing, including options like Pipedrive. Take a look and get started today.
Get started
Click to get started and compare prices for your business
A very expensive option that provides robust email and omnichannel features
The best option for businesses looking to scale
A good option for email, but not great for scalability
A bit too expensive for most, but great for managing teams closely
A good budget option for covering multiple marketing channels
A suitable all-in-one platform for sales and marketing but a bit expensive
Best CRM for Customer Service
Neither HubSpot nor Salesforce are ideal as CRM for customer service, although they certainly provide some robust options to handle it. Salesforce is definitely better than HubSpot for customer service, mostly because we found it to provide a single hub that houses communication, so you can more effectively stay in touch with potential customers, while seeing all the information you need.
Still, we've done the research and found a wide range of other options that might be a better fit for your business. Zendesk is one of our favorite but take a look at some of the other CRM alternatives to get started today.
Website Live Chat Comms Channel
Get started
Click to get started and compare prices for your business
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
30 days
30 days
21 days
15 days
30 days
30 days
An fully-featured yet pricey CRM solution with excellent team management tools.
A robust platform aimed at businesses looking to scale
A practical option with lots of channels but no survey functionality
An affordable option with plenty of features for smaller businesses
A great, customizable platform aimed at larger businesses
A solid budget option with low costs and few features
A weak offering with few native service channels available
Requires Telephony integration/Voice add-on on all plans
Requires Telephony integration on Support plans, available on Suite plans
Available with Omnichannel plans
Available with Enterprise plan
Limited to 1 license (Essentials), unavailable (Pro), additional cost (Enterprise)
Available with Omnichannel plans
Available with Enterprise plan
About Our Research
If you've made it this far, you've likely realized that Tech.co takes our recommendations quite seriously. For all our business software reviews and guides, we've spent hours and hours doing in-depth research to bring you the most valuable, insightful, actionable information that ensure your business makes the right choice on the first try.
For CRM, we had a specific set of metrics by which we rated and ranked eleven different providers to give you a clear picture of which ones are the best. The metrics we use are pricing, features, customization, team infrastructure, customer support, and scalability.
If you want to learn more about exactly what goes into our process here at Tech.co, feel free to check out our thorough research guide for a peak behind the curtain.
HubSpot or Salesforce: - Which CRM Is Better?
If price is an issue and HubSpot's basic CRM is all you need, then you might get by with that, and if you need HubSpot's added features, the CRM's pricing is pretty good. Though for smaller teams with five or less, HubSpot doesn't beat Salesforce Essentials' pricing.
As far as features go, they both offer the key tools you need from a CRM, and both have third-party integrations and deep online support pages. If you don't have Gmail or Outlook as your corporate email of choice, then HubSpot is probably easier to deal with. In terms of interface, HubSpot is a little simpler compared to Salesforce, making the learning curve a little steeper with the latter.
That concludes our basic look at HubSpot and Salesforce – but the best way to find the CRM that's right for your team is to get a customized quote based on your company's needs. Click the Get Quote button below to get started and find the CRM that's right for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not exactly – they're both CRMs, but the functionality of each is decidedly different. Salesforce is a robust CRM with lots of features and a large company behind it to provide unparalleled customer support for users, making it perfect for larger companies. HubSpot, on the other hand, is aimed at smaller businesses, featuring an easier to use platform that's intuitive even for beginners. Plus, HubSpot offers a free plan, which Salesforce does not.
This truly depends on what you're looking for. Salesforce is considered the industry standard for CRMs, but it isn't perfect for every business. If you're a smaller company looking for an easy-to-use platform with a gentle learning curve, HubSpot is going to be the better option. However, if you need a robust CRM with lots of features, Salesforce is the most popular option for good reason.
HubSpot does offer users a free plan, rather than a trial, which can last forever – but it's understandably pretty weak. You'll have access to basic features, like contact management, task tracking, and forms, but you'll miss out on essentials like reporting and analytics. Still, it's a great way to test out the software before committing to a premium plan.
Salesforce has a somewhat affordable starting price of $25 per user, per month, which makes it within the budget of many small businesses. Still, with its robust functionality and sometimes hard to use interface, it can be a bit overwhelming for small businesses. HubSpot is a better option we've found, given its ease of use and affordable plans, not to mention a free forever option.
Salesforce does not offer a free forever plan, which means you'll have to pay $25 per user, per month minimum to use the platform for an extended period of time. Salesforce does, however, offer a 30-day free trial, which should be plenty of time to get a feel for the software before you commit.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2018 02:16:00 -0500en-UStext/htmlhttps://tech.co/crm-software/salesforce-vs-hubspot-crmBest Learning Management Systems (LMS) Of 2023
Docebo is one of the best learning management systems for corporations, thanks to features such as social learning, Salesforce integration, mobile learning, e-commerce, free extensions, custom domains and artificial intelligence. Its more than 400 integrations include Adobe Connect, Confluence, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, G2, GitHub, Google Analytics, PayPal, Stripe, Trello and WordPress.
Who should use it:
Businesses that need social learning features will appreciate Docebo.
Wed, 08 Nov 2023 05:06:00 -0600Katherine Haanen-UStext/htmlhttps://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/best-learning-management-systems/Latest News Mentioning Salesforce
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