Salesforce vs Nutshell

Salesforce and Nutshell are two CRM platforms with distinct focuses, each suited for different business needs. Salesforce is a comprehensive and highly customizable CRM, designed for larger organizations that require detailed data tracking, automation, and advanced analytics across sales, service, and marketing. Nutshell, by contrast, combines CRM with email marketing and sales automation, providing an integrated, user-friendly solution for small to mid-sized teams focused on straightforward contact and sales management. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you decide which CRM best suits your needs. Or if folk might be a more flexible alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability.

Key features of Salesforce

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for the varied needs of large enterprises.
• Customization and scalability: Salesforce is highly customizable and scalable, allowing large organizations to tailor the platform to complex workflows and manage significant growth.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein offers AI-driven analytics and automation, providing insights that help large businesses optimize their strategies.
• Extensive integration capabilities: With Salesforce's AppExchange, large companies can integrate the platform with a wide range of third-party applications, ensuring seamless operation across different business systems.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Salesforce provides robust security measures and compliance features, critical for large organizations handling sensitive customer data.
  

What is Nutshell?

Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM specifically designed to help B2B teams close more deals. It combines contact management, pipeline tracking, and email marketing tools to support every stage of the sales process, from lead generation to deal closure. With features like customizable pipelines, activity tracking, and seamless integration options, Nutshell also enables sales teams to stay organized, collaborate, and drive results—all within a user-friendly platform tailored for B2B needs.

Key features of Nutshell

• Contact management: Centralizes customer information and tracks communication history to keep teams organized and informed.
• Pipeline management: Customizable sales pipelines to track leads and deals through every stage of the sales process.
• Email marketing: Built-in email campaign tools that enable targeted outreach and engagement with prospects and customers.
• Activity tracking: Logs all interactions, including calls, emails, and meetings, allowing teams to stay on top of follow-ups and engagement.
• Reporting and analytics: Provides insights into sales performance, forecasting, and team activity, helping to make data-driven decisions.

Salesforce vs. Nutshell: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

Salesforce's pipeline management feature, known as Pipeline Inspection, provides a comprehensive view of sales opportunities by consolidating key metrics, deal changes, and AI-powered insights into a single interface. This allows sales teams to efficiently track progress and identify potential bottlenecks.
Nutshell’s pipeline management offers tools for tracking leads and deals through various stages using customizable views like board, list, map, and chart. This flexibility enables users to organize and prioritize leads according to their workflow needs, enhancing visibility into deal statuses and priorities.

2. Ease of use

Salesforce offers a comprehensive but complex interface that may require training, so users face the risk of a steep learning curve. While Nutshell provides a more intuitive and user-friendly experience, making it easier for teams to adopt without extensive onboarding.

3. Contact enrichment

Salesforce's contact enrichment feature leverages tools such as the Data Cloud to automatically enhance and update contact records in real time, drawing from verified data sources like LinkedIn and InsideView to provide real-time updates. Nutshell’s contact enrichment feature is focused on minimizing manual data entry by allowing users to import contacts, emails, and calendar events from various sources.

4. Outreach

Salesforce's outreach solution is powered by its AI capabilities, particularly through the integration of Einstein AI and their Outreach list that allows users to see cross-sales paths and leads they need to engage with. Nutshell’s outreach feature includes built-in email marketing and automation capabilities, allowing users to create and send email campaigns directly within the platform, offering basic email tracking and engagement metrics.

5. Automation

Salesforce offers robust automation features designed to streamline business processes, including workflow rules, flow builders, and AI automation through Einstein AI. Nutshell’s automation focuses on basic sales and marketing tasks, supporting activities like sending follow-up emails and managing task reminders, with email marketing automation for drip campaigns.

6. Integration

Salesforce integrates with a wide range of third-party applications through its AppExchange marketplace, allowing users to connect tools for marketing automation, customer service, analytics, project management, and finance. Popular integrations include platforms like Slack for team collaboration and Mailchimp for email marketing. Nutshell offers integrations with a range of popular tools to enhance its functionality and streamline workflows. It connects with major productivity platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack, allowing users to manage emails, calendars, and team communication within their existing tools.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Salesforce CRM integrates AI through its Einstein platform, which enhances decision-making by providing predictive analytics, intelligent recommendations, and automated insights. It helps automate tasks such as lead scoring, opportunity forecasting, and data entry, while also offering natural language processing for customer sentiment analysis. Nutshell’s AI integration offers tools like timeline summarization, helping users quickly sort through historical records by summarizing past interactions and activities.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Salesforce and Nutshell.

Salesforce prices

Depending on the size of your business, and the features you're after, Salesforce provides a few price plans. The following is an overview of their Sales Cloud Pricing.

• Starter suite: $25/user/month.
• Pro suite: $80/user/month.
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month.
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month.

Nutshell prices

Nutshell offers several feature-rich plans tailored to different goals and team sizes.

• Foundation: $16 per user, per month.
• Pro: $42 per user, per month.
• Power AI: $52 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $67 per user, per month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Salesforce and Nutshell

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. What make folk unique is its ability to scale with you. You can use it as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, or large enterprise. folk can also support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, investment relations and more.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

Salesforce vs. Nutshell: What's the Verdict?

When it comes to choosing a CRM, it's clear that both Salesforce and Nutshell offer compelling features tailored to different business needs. Salesforce excels in providing a comprehensive, scalable solution ideal for large enterprises with complex requirements. On the other hand, Nutshell offers a user-friendly, cost-effective option for B2B teams looking to streamline their sales processes. However, for companies that need a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.