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Salesforce and Freshworks are two of the most popular and sought after CRM platforms at present. But how do you choose the right one for your business?
Don’t worry, this Freshworks vs Salesforce review will tackle all your questions by providing you the relevant information regarding various aspects.
In Freshworks vs Salesforce review we will be rating the platform on a number of factors including Freshworks vs Salesforce approach, pricing structure, key features, ease of use, contact support and more. 😍
Launched in 2010, Freshworks has its headquarters in San Mateo, California. The platform has 13 global operating locations and serves more than 50,000 companies from over 120 countries.
It develops and delivers software as a service (SaaS) designed for every department right from IT, to sales, customer service, to Human Resources and marketing.
Freshworks’ SaaS focuses on providing a better customer and employee experience as it is built for end users by making the services affordable as well as quick to implement. Freshworks’ services have been used by various businesses including Pearson, Trainline, Fiverr, Exabytes, Klarna, etc.
Some of the functionalities that can be expected from Freshworks include Customer Relationship Management, IT Service Management, Applicant Tracking System, Ticketing, Sales & Marketing Automation, Reporting & Analytics, Conversion Optimization Suite, SLA Management, and more.
Founded in 1999, Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Operating across different countries, Salesforce services are available all around the world.
Salesforce is one of the industry leading CRM platforms providing smart solutions across various business units including marketing, sales, service, commerce and IT teams.
More than 150,000 companies use Salesforce for their business operations some of which are Panasonic, Titan, Gemini Power Hydraulics, Hubilo, GenPact, and more.
Salesforce hosts an inclusive community called as “Trailblazers” which consists of more than 10 million innovators, community shapers, and disruptors.
Salesforce helps you discover potential clients, drive deals to conversions, nurture customer relationships, retain existing clients, organize customer’s data, view prospect information, and more. The platform specializes in Enterprise Cloud Computing and Customer Relationship Management.
Some of the functionalities that can be expected to help you greatly include Contact Management, Lead Management, Salesforce Einstein, Opportunity Management, Process Automation, Sales Collaboration, Pipeline And Forecast Management, Activity Management, etc.
Also Read: Dynamics 365 vs Salesforce: Which CRM Should You Prefer?
Freshworks is a fully equipped cloud based software solution designed and developed for end users. With Freshworks you get access to a unified user interface to increase work efficiency, automated workflows, rapid development and deployment with no code solutions, on-demand omnichannel customer support and so much more. 😊
The platform offers solutions for every business unit namely Freshdesk, Freshsales, Freshmarketer, Freshservice, and Freshteams.
With this feature you can automate all of your manual repetitive tasks, streamline workflow across various business units, assign tickets to most suitable agents based on filters, manage ticket dependencies efficiently, support sandbox functionality and sync it with live production, categorize contacts based on relevant criteria, etc.
In order for workflows to activate a series of appropriate actions you can set up notification triggers based on business rules, service item level customization, request prioritization and more
This functionality lets you streamline all your service requests and deliveries to be operated from a single interface.
With a unified service catalog you can create business rules and workflow automations, personalize end user experience, rebrand the service catalog to accomodate your business policies, allocate funds after analyzing service availability insights, and more. 😚
Freshworks is powered by an AI driven assistant called Freddy. It provides insights across the customer journey, recommends appropriate next actions after analyzing deals, finds high priority contacts using predictive scoring.
It also helps you identify high quality leads, provides reports to let you make data backed decisions, predict future sales and revenue opportunities, track your sales growth, automates chat conversations for your website, etc.
Freshworks is integrated with cloud telephony capabilities through which you can improvise and nurture customer relationships therefore boosting conversions. You can connect and engage with your clientele as well as prospects using email, phone and chat.
It lets you mask calls, record conversations with prospects, schedule a follow up appointment, segment prospects on the basis of previous interactions and more.
As a business grows, the CRM needs changes and has to be adjusted to accommodate then requirements. Freshworks lets businesses function across different regions with multi-language and multi-currency support.
You can manage global transactions and leverage the power of automation for monitoring currency exchange rates and auto converting deal values to your account’s base currency.
You can also customize your CRM by either setting up account language for your entire organization, or to some specific user accounts. 😉
Also Read: Hubspot Marketing Hub Vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce is a cloud based CRM software which provides solutions across various business departments. It is an integrated platform equipped with intelligent tools that provides personalized marketing campaigns, automates workflows, triggers predetermined actions, responds to customer issues across multiple channels, prioritizes leads, offers highly detailed analysis and so much more.
Salesforce Einstein lets you create and design AI powered apps and acts as a smart assistant. Salesforce Einstein brings AI to trailblazers and makes Customer 360 view a lot more efficient.
You have access to detailed insights about your customers’ past interactions, can prioritize leads and cases for you and provide personalized promotional campaigns.
Einstein provides an intuitive activity dashboard, identifies major business development opportunities, identifies business trends as well as pipelines, empowers your customer engagement services as bots are assigned for delivering responses, decreases response time, leverages the power of image recognition, automatically syncs email and calendar and so much more.
Activity management lets you connect business processes via Salesforce integrations, lets you bring closure to deals from inbox, syncs your Salesforce data such as contacts, calendars and email as well as organizes event related data.
You can make data driven decisions from the analysis reports, boost conversions from email tracking, and customize layouts.
You need more than just spreadsheets for effective contact management. With Salesforce contact management you can analyze critical customer data, track your customers’ history from contact to contract, collaborate across organization, share relevant documents, analyze intenal insights on prospects and customer issues, publish digital content, schedule and prepare for meetings and so much more.
This feature allows real-time visibility to your forecasts and provides an integrated view of your entire pipeline, offers AI backed insights for data driven decisions, identify and hone most promising deals with quick filters and out of the box KPIs, lets you access reports based on trends and so much more.
Coming onto the supported third party applications section of this Freshworks vs Salesforce review, it is to be noted that both the platforms are compatible with quite a number of apps. The details regarding the same is given below.
The platform offers tons of integrations available on its App Marketplace. Some of the natively supported third party applications and plugins includes Freshdesk, Zoom, Google Suite, Jira, Rescue, Freshbooks, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Harvest, Zapier, Dropbox, Amazon Web Services, Quickbooks, DNIF, Shopify, Catch and more.
Salesforce also offers a comprehensive app library some of which are as follows; HubSpot, SAP, Oracle ERP Cloud, NetSuite, Sage, MailChimp, Marketo, Zuora, WooCommerce, Magento, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Eloqua, Constant Contact, Acumatica, RingCentral and more. 😘
Also Read: ThriveCart vs WooCommerce: Which One Should You Join?
The pricing structure depends on the individual Freshworks product but you do have access to a 21 days free trial period.
Support Desk – You can either use the free version or any of the paid plans. “Growth” package costs $15, “Pro” costs $49 and “Enterprise” costs $79 per agent per month when billed annually.
You can either use the Freshsales free version or subscribe to the “Growth” package for $15, “Pro” for $39 and “Enterprise” for $69 per user every month when billed annually.
Freshmarketer also offers a free version along with three other paid plans. The “Growth” package is available at $19, “Pro” at $149 and “Enterprise” for $299 on a monthly basis when billed annually.
You have access to the “Starter” plan for $19, “Growth” at $49, “Pro” at $89 and “Enterprise” for $109 per agent on a monthly basis when billed annually.
The platform offers four different pricing structures for both sales and service cloud, namely, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited.
Essentials – It costs $25 per user per month and offers you features like contact, account, lead & opportunity management, email integration and Salesforce mobile app.
Professional – It can be bought at $75 per user per month. In addition to the Essentials features you have access to lead registration & rules-based scoring and collaborative forecasting.
Enterprise – The plan can be subscribed for $150 each user for a month and you have access to additional functionalities such as workflow and approval automation.
Unlimited – The plan costs $300 for each user on a monthly basis and provides you the access to exclusive features like configuration services and 24/7 priority support.
Comparing Freshworks vs Salesforce ease of usability, Freshworks wins against this category single handedly. Both the CRM software offers immensely important, intelligent and intuitive tools, however, how easily you can use them to benefit your business differs greatly. 😇
Freshworks has a much rather simple working procedure in comparison to Salesforce where you might actually need professional training beforehand to leverage the services for your business operations.
Discussing the customer support aspect of this Freshworks vs Salesforce review, you should know that both the platforms offer professional as well as quick help.
The platform offers comprehensive self help resources such as elaborative knowledge base, blog posts, academy, video library, case studies, system status, reports, ebooks, etc.
To reach out to the support team you can either contact them via phone call or by submitting a support ticket. Connect with your peers via community channel and join Freshworks on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Glassdoor to stay updated.
The platform offers derailed documentation, dedicated blogs, webinars, extensive articles, demos, impact stories, project modules, and Trailhead Academy.
The Salesforce’s support team can be contacted via live chat, feedback form, Trailblazer community and assistance team. You can also connect with them on social forums such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, linkedIn and Instagram.
It is being used by the whole sales team including the support team. We have our support portal also connected with Freshsales so that we can customize our offerings as per the customer’s need (Full Review)
Freshworks has a young and dynamic workforce (Full Review)
Freshdesk’s in-house data lake provided data for processing and scrutiny, but the data was incomplete and difficult to analyze and understand without an engineering background (Full Review)
The user interface is very clean and simple and it takes very little time to make changes and have something to show. (Full Review)
Running separate Salesforce systems also meant paying more in license costs. (Full Review)
used Salesforce for 2 years in a nonprofit. I remember the transition was rocky, but the product was 10,000x better than the shitty system we used. This CRM is loaded with goodies and is intuitive once you are trained. (Full Review)
There’s no abstract answer to which is a better CRM platform, however, there’s an answer to which one of these two services can help you and your business more.
Go ahead with Freshworks if you want a beginner friendly experience, intuitive and modern dashboards, less learning curve in order to start with actual operations and fully equipped solutions instead of buying add-ons.
Salesforce is a great option for you if you need enterprise level services, do not mind learning the platform first and are ready to take up professional training and want to purchase add-on functionality packs according to your business requirements.
