Why is Dynamics CRM better than Salesforce?

Editor's Note: As of November 1st, 2016, Dynamics CRM is now Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, part of the Dynamics 365 for Enterprise solution. Learn more about Dynamics 365.

Business managers frequently ask me why they should choose Dynamics CRM over Salesforce. Surprisingly, even though Salesforce has a strong standing in the marketplace, I find that business managers will almost always select Dynamics CRM over Salesforce.

There are a number of reasons why Dynamics CRM is nearly always a winner:

• Dynamics CRM costs less. Let’s be realistic. My clients are small and mid-size businesses, and cost is always a factor. Salesforce is one of the highest priced CRM systems in the industry. While Salesforce.com Contact and Group editions are cheaper, nearly every company needs more than basic contact management. Although Salesforce.com tries to convince customers that its total cost of ownership (TCO) is less than Microsoft Dynamics CRM, customers are frequently required to purchase additional services (such as additional modules or features, mobile capabilities, offline access, and sandbox licenses). In comparison, the list price of Salesforce.com Sales Cloud Enterprise Edition ($125 per user per month) is 184 percent more than Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online ($44 per user per month), and it doesn’t include all of the functionality of Dynamics CRM.
  
  Note: some pricing listed may be outdated. For current Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement pricing, check out our pricing page.

• Everything is included in Dynamics CRM. Dynamics CRM includes Sales, Marketing, and Service functionality out of the box. There are no surprise add-ons to purchase later.

• Dynamics CRM is simply Outlook on steroids. This is the one that always wins. Dynamics CRM is by far the easiest CRM software to train because everyone already knows how to use Outlook. If you know how to email, you can find your way around CRM. And you don’t need to open up a separate browser to work in it.

• Dynamics CRM is flexible. You can deploy it on your own servers, in a private cloud, or in the public cloud. You can extend it to replace home built applications built on Microsoft Access.

Interestingly, salespeople that have been trained on Salesforce.com frequently try to tell their bosses that Salesforce.com is the only way to go because they already know the software and it will be easy to adopt. However, when a business manager or business owner gets involved in the process, they will nearly always choose Dynamics CRM because it does so much more for the business than just sales. It actually powers many areas of the business, including Customer Service and Field Service.  And the additional functionality is FREE. Who can beat that?