The Affordable Salesforce Alternative

Salesforce is the undisputed market leader in CRM – a system that has grown over decades and was developed for enterprise companies with extensive requirements. This makes it extremely powerful, but also costly, complex, and demanding to implement. Customermates, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity, speed, and transparency – ideal for small businesses that want to get started immediately without struggling through licensing models, consultants, and weeks-long onboarding processes.

Setup & Onboarding

With Customermates, you're ready to go in two minutes. The interface is self-explanatory, intuitive, and immediately usable without training. You can work directly with real customer data without spending days on configurations.

Salesforce, however, is not designed for quick starts. Even the Essentials version, specifically developed for small businesses, requires training, configuration, and often external support. The system follows enterprise logic with lifecycle stages, complex workflows, object relationships, and a steep learning curve. What Salesforce advertises as "Quick Setup" often means weeks to months in practice before the system is truly productive.

Pricing & Cost Model

Customermates costs €12 per user – a transparent fixed price without hidden costs. Salesforce starts at €25 per user for the Essentials version but quickly rises to €75, €150, or even €300 per user for Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited. Additional costs for add-ons like Einstein AI, CPQ, or industry-specific tools often accumulate rapidly.

A company with just 10 sales employees can pay over €2,750 monthly for add-ons alone – in addition to licensing costs. While Salesforce makes sense for large companies with complex requirements, it quickly becomes disproportionately expensive for small teams.

Usage Limits & Flexibility

A critical point: Salesforce Essentials is limited to a maximum of 10 users. As soon as your team grows, you must upgrade to significantly more expensive plans. Custom fields and datasets are also heavily limited in the cheaper plans.

Customermates sets no artificial limits. Unlimited entries, unlimited custom fields, unlimited scalability – at a consistent, fair price per user.

Functional Differences

Both systems offer core CRM functions: contact management, deals, pipelines, tasks, email integration. The fundamental difference lies in complexity.

Salesforce is an all-in-one system with marketing automation, Service Cloud, analytics platforms, AI features, and countless integrations. This sounds impressive but also means: many features that small businesses will never use but still have to pay for. The operation is accordingly overloaded and requires constant training.

Customermates focuses on the essentials: a CRM that works without requiring you to become a Salesforce admin. Simple workflows, fast navigation, no unnecessary features.

Data Privacy & Hosting

Customermates hosts its systems exclusively in the EU or Germany and fully complies with GDPR requirements.

Salesforce is also GDPR-compliant and relies on extensive technical and organizational measures. Data processing occurs in a global cloud infrastructure, which means the data location can also be outside Germany depending on configuration.

Integrations & Automation

Both systems offer API access and automation capabilities. Salesforce has a massive AppExchange with thousands of integrations – but many are paid, tier-dependent, or complex to implement.

Customermates relies on n8n integration, enabling flexible, self-configurable workflows without requiring expensive consultants or additional licenses. Automation is simple, direct, and transparent.

Which System Is Right for You?

Salesforce is right for you if:

• You are an enterprise company with 100+ employees
• You have complex, global sales structures
• You have dedicated Salesforce admins on your team
• You have budget for expensive licenses, add-ons, and implementation
• You need industry-specific, highly specialized CRM features

Customermates is right for you if:

• You are a small business or startup
• You want to work productively immediately without weeks of setup
• You have a limited budget
• You need data privacy and EU hosting