| Functionality | 8 <p>Close offers most of the functionality that SMB sales team will need. Besides allowing you to manage contacts, leads and your sales pipeline, Close also allows you to create automated sales sequences (email, calls, SMS), and best-in-class call functionality.</p><p>However, it lacks some advanced features such as automated lead scoring, and being able to directly add contacts from LinkedIn.</p> | 10 <p>Salesforce is one of the most powerful CRMs on the market. Its core functionality will be more than sufficient for most companies, and it also offers advanced capabilities that should satisfy even the most complex enterprises.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Close is designed for power users, so you need to know what you're doing. Setting up filters to target the right leads can feel overwhelming due to the extensive options, and there are no templates for automation workflows. Once familiar, Close becomes user-friendly with standout features like smart views, which keep targeted lists accessible via one-click. You can easily create workflows, edit deal cards without extra clicks, and get AI summaries of all contact activity, which will all save a lot of time for sales reps.</p> | 1 <p>Salesforce has the steepest learning curve and most complex user experience out of all CRM experiences. Built for large sales teams, everything (e.g. editing pipeline stages, adding an opportunity) takes longer to get done. There are foreign terms for technically proficient, power users everywhere, especially in the automations modules. Be prepared to invest weeks to learn the basic operations, and months to master the advanced features.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>We find Close visually acceptable, though the lack of colour-coding and labelling of icons can make it a bit plain at times. Page loads are acceptable (~2 seconds per page).</p> | 4 <p>Even with the latest Salesforce Lightning, the user interface still feels cluttered and dated compared to newer CRMs out there—it’s definitely not a joy to use.</p> |
| Customisability | 8 <p>Close offers significant customization for fields, workflows, and pipeline stages. You can create custom data objects to track items beyond people and companies, such as partnerships. It also supports extremely granular custom filters to target contacts and leads. However, Close is squarely a CRM for sales teams, and we don't think you can adapt Close to other use cases.</p> | 10 <p>With Salesforce's Apex programming language, you can customise almost anything you can think of - from user interface, sales workflows to how Salesforce integrates with other software.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p>Close offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, fully setting up the platform and upskilling your reps can take up to a week, given Close's powerful and rich outbound functionality.</p> | 1 <p>Salesforce offers a self-serve free trial, but as an enterprise-focused platform, the initial setup is a lot more involved. Even the simplest configurations can take over 20 minutes, with basic tasks, like customizing pipeline stages, requiring more steps compared to other CRMs. Fully customizing and implementing Salesforce can take several months, and many teams end up hiring dedicated consultants or technical experts (at significant expense) to handle setup and data migration.</p> |
| Customer Support | 7 <p>You can only contact Close's support team via email, however the team is often helpful and replies within 15 minutes. Close also offers a lot of helpful onboarding guidance and high quality self-help resources.</p> | 4 <p>Salesforce offers personalized Q&A through live chat, but it’s only available during business hours and often feels sales-y. We wish the coverage was greater and they held off on the upsell!</p> |
| Integratability | 5 <p>Close's library of pre-built integrations lacks a few key integrations. For example, Close has no pre-built integrations with Zendesk and Intercom for Customer Support, or Mailchimp for Email Marketing.</p> | 10 <p>Salesforce has the most extensive integration ecosystem of any CRM. It offers pre-built integrations with nearly all the key third-party tools and provides a robust API for building custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 8 <p>Close allows users to export key data via self-serve. Export of most other data is also available via API or on request.</p> | 10 <p>Salesforce allows users to export most data via self-serve or via an API. Exports of key data to relevant 3rd party vendors are also available via pre-built integrations.</p> |
