InfusionSoft vs Salesforce: Price, Features & What’s Best in 2019

InfusionSoft and Salesforce are customer relationship management (CRM) tools that can help teams manage marketing and sales activities. InfusionSoft is good for businesses wanting affordability without sacrificing either marketing tools or quote management. However, Salesforce is better for teams looking for comprehensive and customizable reporting functionality that empowers individual sales reps with actionable information.

When to Use InfusionSoft

InfusionSoft is an excellent choice for small businesses looking for an affordable CRM solution that is affordable, comprehensive, and more easily adopted than other, more complex CRM solutions. InfusionSoft can also offer a good fit for teams who do not need advanced features around partner management, nor a developer’s sandbox and web API.

When to Use Salesforce

Salesforce is a solid choice for businesses with the need for a powerful tool that provides individual salespeople with detailed information regarding contacts and opportunities in progress. Salesforce is also a good option for teams who want enterprise-level features such as partner management, opportunity registration, and web services API.

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InfusionSoft vs Salesforce at a Glance

How We Evaluated InfusionSoft & Salesforce

Both InfusionSoft and Salesforce are cloud-hosted CRMs that offer email integration, pipeline management, and even task automation. InfusionSoft is a good choice for teams who need to manage sales but not service activities, while Salesforce is a better option for small business sales teams who want a flexible tool for managing customer experiences end-to-end.

Therefore, we evaluated InfusionSoft vs Salesforce based on the following criteria:

• Price: We compared the monthly per-user prices for both CRMs.
• Ease of Use: Including initial setup, we compared the end-user experiences for both tools.
• Customization: We considered the degree of customization offered with each tool.
• Contact Management: We investigated the ability of each software to manage contacts and associated activities.
• Privacy: We considered each tool’s ability to help achieve compliance with domestic and international privacy laws.
• Reporting: We examined the reporting capabilities of both tools.
• Workflow Automation: Task automation can reduce bottlenecks and prevent things from slipping through the cracks, so we analyzed the capacity of each tool to automate workflows.
• Customer Support: Finally, we compared options from both providers for post-sale customer support and training.

We chose InfusionSoft as the best choice for small businesses due to its comprehensive functionality, affordability, and relative ease of use. Businesses looking to support large sales organizations in which individual reps are armed with information to act more autonomously may consider Salesforce a better fit.

InfusionSoft vs Salesforce: Pricing & Features

Both InfusionSoft and Salesforce offer most of the features expected of quality CRM tools and are even comparable in price. However, the inclusion of the ability to create sales quotes with its introductory software package gives InfusionSoft the slight edge.

InfusionSoft Pricing

InfusionSoft is available across three tiers, ranging in price from $29 per user per month to $99 per user per month. The introductory tier includes essentials such as contact and pipeline management, while features such as marketing automation and lead scoring are included with the more advanced packages.

InfusionSoft Features

Grow

For just $29 per user per month, the Grow plan enables users to manage appointments, contacts, and deals. They can also create quotes and manage invoices, features only available through Salesforce at a much higher price and fairly uncommon to small business-friendly CRM tools.

The plan also includes the ability to segment accounts and contacts by categories such as geographic location or business size. Because it includes the basics as well as customer segmentation with tags and the ability to produce formal pricing, the Grow package is ideal for businesses who want essential CRM functionality without sacrificing the ability to differentiate its customers and to provide them with official pricing.

Pro

The Pro package is offered at a price of $45 per user per month and, building on the features included with the previous tier, introduces marketing and sales pipeline automation. Administrators can also enact smart forms and internal forms comprised of custom fields that capture and feed information back into the CRM lead and contact records.

Not only can automation help teams simplify the implementation of email marketing campaigns, thus driving new sales, but it also enables routine customer follow-ups which can improve customer retention. For this reason, the Pro package is a good option for businesses looking to enhance customer outreach.

InfusionSoft

The InfusionSoft package is $99 per user per month and builds on the features included with the previous tiers. With the addition of lead scoring, leads are automatically distinguished by custom rules, allowing reps to prioritize lead follow-ups accordingly.

The plan introduces advanced reporting, including reporting on campaigns, leads, deals, call logs, and gross sales. Also included is a user’s dashboard that can be customized to show details the number of contacts added, leads added, and leads overdue per rep, making the InfusionSoft package a sensible choice for small businesses who want an affordable CRM plan for managing leads and tracking conversion rates.

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce offers a scalable CRM solution built to meet the needs of growing businesses as well as large corporations. The solution is available in three software packages with core functionality starting at $25 per user per month and more advanced packages ranging from $75 per user per month to $150 per user per month.

Salesforce Features

Essentials

Salesforce’s introductory plan is $25 per user per month and offers email integration with Microsoft and Google and enables users to automatically link email conversations with contacts and pipeline opportunities. This makes it easier for reps to manage updates quickly, reducing the time spent switching between applications.

The Essentials package also includes access to customizable dashboards and reports, enabling administrators to arm individual users with team and territory-specific metrics, highlighting pipeline health, deals in progress, and deals won, as well as activities like calls, emails, and demos. This can result in more self-sufficient salespeople, making it our overall pick for teams under 25 who want a CRM that drives autonomous sales management.

Professional

The Professional package builds on the features included with the previous tier with lead registration and rule-based scoring, helping teams better prioritize new inbound leads. At a price of $75 per user per month, users see a score that can help them determine the lead’s potential value to the company and plan the appropriate course of follow-up.

The plan also includes opportunity registration, allowing businesses to acknowledge partner involvement on specific deals with discounts or account exclusivity. For these reasons and because of its ability to prioritize inbound leads, we think the Professional package is ideal for sales teams who employ methodical lead follow-up and for teams who want to reward channel partner engagement.

Enterprise

The Enterprise package builds on the features included with the previous tiers. For $150 per user per month, the package builds in workflow and approval automation, smoothing processes and preventing common operational roadblocks. For example, discounted pricing requests can be approved automatically if certain conditions are met, reducing bottlenecks if approvers are unavailable and allowing new quotes to be fulfilled more quickly.

For businesses in need of these features and around-the-clock support, Salesforce offers an Unlimited package. For $300 per user per month, your team can access support and configuration services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

InfusionSoft vs Salesforce: Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of use, CRM software user reviews indicate that InfusionSoft and Salesforce offer customer experiences similar to those of other comparable platforms. Both tools boast somewhat complicated layouts which may necessitate regimented training for new users.

InfusionSoft Ease of Use

InfusionSoft employs a bright user interface that, despite its features, is still less intimidating than other Salesforce alternatives. This means that new users are more likely to adopt InfusionSoft quickly, reducing lulls in productivity commonly associated with new CRM implementation.

Salesforce Ease of Use

Salesforce is often thought of as solely an enterprise-grade solution simply because there is somewhat of a learning curve. New users can become easily discouraged by an interface with icons, images, banners, and buttons they may never need to use. For this reason, we consider Salesforce a better option for established sales organizations with experienced users who can better assist and train new employees.

InfusionSoft vs Salesforce: Customer Service

In our comparison of InfusionSoft vs Salesforce, we considered how well each platform provides ongoing customer support and training. While InfusionSoft makes helpful resources readily available, Salesforce provides more options that better fit customers with more types of users experiences.

InfusionSoft Customer Service

InfusionSoft offers industry-standard customer support via 24/7 chat and toll-free phone calls between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. Mountain time, plus additional hours for international customers. In addition to easily accessible product information and webinars, InfusionSoft also hosts a community forum in which users can exchange information, such as best practices and tips for troubleshooting.

Salesforce Customer Service

Salesforce is a large company with the resources to provide several avenues for obtaining assistance. Like InfusionSoft customers, existing Salesforce users can access product information such as release notes, as well as an entirely separate knowledgebase with previously answered user questions, directly from the Salesforce homepage. Customers can also use an email ticketing system to engage a technical support representative.

InfusionSoft vs Salesforce: Customer Reviews

In our evaluation of InfusionSoft vs Salesforce, we felt it was important to consider feedback from existing customers. Both platforms claim significant user bases who have shared their thoughts about what each tool does well and how each could be improved.

InfusionSoft Customer Reviews

Despite some accounts of challenges with initial set up, many InfusionSoft users consider the tool to be especially useful for automating workflows, thus reducing missed opportunities to impact deals in progress.

Salesforce Customer Reviews

Some Salesforce users suggest the platform can be overwhelming due to its robust feature set and that it is best for larger companies. However, most users rate the tool highly for its ability to integrate with other systems and for its reporting capabilities, thus helping to improve operational efficiency.

Bottom Line

Both InfusionSoft and Salesforce are quality CRM tools that can enable businesses to better manage the activities driving sales. Choosing one system over the other depends on your organizational structure and overall sales strategy.

We recommend InfusionSoft for small businesses who want all of the proper tools for managing customer relationships in one, comprehensive platform without a highly demanding learning curve. Visit their website for more information today.