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Salesforce vs Other CRM Solutions

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Gartner CRM Quadrant

Gartner CRM Quadrant

This Magic Quadrant evaluates 16 CRM CEC vendors to help application leaders find the solution that best meets their current and long-term needs.

Oracle

Oracle is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Oracle offers CEC capabilities via Oracle Service — a set of customer service applications that is part of the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience suite. Oracle is one of the vendors most commonly mentioned by users of Gartner’s client inquiry service who are looking for a CEC solution. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Oracle Service enabled both private and public organizations to adapt quickly, sometimes in less than two weeks. Worldwide, B2C organizations supporting complex customer journeys and integration should consider Oracle for its CEC solution. Oracle is also used by B2B organizations, most notably in the high-tech and manufacturing sectors, for high-touch service interactions with a focus on collaborative account management.

Strengths

Vision: Oracle demonstrates continuous delivery of innovations, with a focus on proactive and predictive service in the CEC market. Its channel proliferation and convergence, ability to connect visual experiences and commitment to digital customer service are leading-edge.

Oracle Intelligent Advisor (OIA): Oracle has received praise from Gartner clients for features of its OIA (previously known as Oracle Policy Automation [OPA]). OIA, paired with strong integration capabilities, provides smart advice via self-service and conversational channels (including native digital voice and video channels).

Knowledge management: Among service suite vendors, Oracle offers one of the most scalable and functional knowledge management solutions. During the past year, Oracle continued to innovate, with an emphasis on how knowledge is consumed by both human and automated conversational agents.

Cautions

Licensing and contracts: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have reported that they find Oracle’s licensing structure and matrix complex. They also find that Oracle can be difficult to negotiate with because its processes are stringent and the approval process for contracts is lengthy.

Learning curve: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and Peer Insights reviewers have expressed concerns about the learning curve associated with Oracle Service and the ramp-up time needed to develop, support and administer the solution. Gartner clients frequently say that Oracle needs to offer more timely access to support resources and improve its product documentation.

Migration: Gartner clients have reported insufficient clarity of communication about how to migrate from Siebel CRM to Oracle Service, both from Oracle and its partners.

Microsoft

Microsoft is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. It offers CEC capabilities via its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Power Virtual Agents, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights applications. Microsoft has added hundreds of new features and enhancements to its CEC offering over the past year, including the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Voice offering (for which general availability is planned for 3Q21). Microsoft offers its service worldwide, mostly to enterprises. In response to COVID-19, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service was made available free of charge for up to six months for COVID-19-related implementations; the vendor also offered FastTrack support, discounted pricing and extensions of certain offers. Organizations should consider Microsoft for multichannel support, a case/ticketing system for customer service, and for internal or external service teams. They should also consider it if they are expanding a Microsoft technology footprint.

Strengths

Overall viability: Microsoft competes strongly in the CEC market, aided by strong year-over-year revenue growth in 2020. This growth was fueled in part by increased adoption of its CEC software in response to COVID-19 and the complementarity of cloud offerings, such as Microsoft Power BI, Office 365 and Azure, and collaboration products, such as Microsoft Teams.

Product strategy and vision: Microsoft’s strategy emphasizes key application capabilities with Power Platform, Dataverse (a unified data model previously called the Common Data Service), and AI capabilities such as those of Azure Cognitive Services and the Microsoft Bot Framework.

Platform capabilities: Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 CEC offering builds on the same codebase as the Power Platform (Power BI, Power Apps and Power Automate), a low-code platform that underpins all Dynamics products and Microsoft-related systems. The platform is well-suited to citizen development.

Cautions

Learning curve: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and Peer Insights reviewers have expressed concerns that deeper training and support are required in order to maximize the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service’s broad feature set. However, Gartner finds that new customers of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service are often unaware of the available implementation resources, such as FastTrack for Dynamics 365.

Support team synergies: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have reported mixed results when working with Microsoft’s support services. They indicate lower levels of user satisfaction with the resolution of support requests involving Microsoft Azure and Dynamics.

Varied partner-led implementation experience: More than 8,000 partners provide Power Apps and/or Dynamics 365 services, but they vary widely in expertise and scale. Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have reported mixed implementation experiences and that professional services are of variable quality. Prospective customers should undertake a thorough review before selecting a Dynamics 365 partner and keep abreast of Microsoft’s improvements to its partner training and certifications for Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. The ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) product helps companies unite customer-facing teams and communication channels with back-office teams, processes and systems to resolve issues, proactively identify and fix problems, and simplify engagement in order to quickly handle customer requests. ServiceNow offers strong case management and knowledge management deeply integrated with digital products and services monitoring. ServiceNow operates worldwide. The majority of its CEC clients are U.S.-based, but it has a growing presence in EMEA. ServiceNow should be considered by organizations that are, or are becoming, technological, asset-intensive and case-centric service organizations with a need for flexible and elaborate workflow options.

Strengths

Overall viability: ServiceNow serves more than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies. In the CEC market, it continues to show strong year-over-year revenue growth, having grown by 76% in 2020, according to Gartner’s estimate.

Platform capabilities: ServiceNow offers a robust platform with key capabilities within its IntegrationHub, and for asset management and real-time monitoring. This vendor’s platform is also embedded into RPA workflow actions (via partnerships and the pending acquisition of Intellibot). Notable 2020 enhancements included a Process Automation Designer supporting cross-enterprise workflows, and IoT threshold monitoring for customer service and field service management use cases.

COVID-19 response: ServiceNow launched a safe workplace suite in May 2020, followed, in December 2020, by a vaccine administration management solution using its low-code platform and agile delivery methods. ServiceNow’s response illustrates its Ability to Execute.

Cautions

Complexity of customization: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and Peer Insights reviewers have expressed concerns about the complexity of configuration, and that development requires the help of professional developers or other additional support. However, such help can enhance the value clients derive from ServiceNow’s product.

Licensing: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and some Peer Insights reviewers have reported that they find ServiceNow’s licensing model complex and confusing. Some have also expressed concerns about the contract negotiation process, which can be lengthy. Prospective customers evaluating ServiceNow should ask for the latest solution pricing.

Industry-specific focus: Although ServiceNow’s IT service management products are adopted by customers from various industries (including many of the world’s largest companies), ServiceNow CSM is best suited to the technology, service and government sectors. Prospective customers in other sectors should ask to speak with reference customers of similar size from the same or a similar industry.

Pegasystems

Pegasystems is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. It offers customer engagement and case workflow automation capabilities within its Pega Customer Service solution. Pegasystems has a worldwide presence. Two-thirds of its customers are in the financial services, government and healthcare sectors. In the past year, Pegasystems has transformed its sales and go-to-market strategy with a focus on the client experience, customer success, growth of revenue channels and attracting partners in new verticals. Notable pandemic responses include the COVID-19 Employee Safety and Business Continuity Tracker app and delivery of critical service solutions in less than a week. Organizations should consider Pega Customer Service when they need to make frequent changes to highly innovative and proactive customer service processes and journeys.

Strengths

Digital transformation partner: Pegasystems has grown steadily as a public company for many years and has a solid track record of impactful implementations at scale. Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and Peer Insights reviewers, particularly large enterprises, have praised Pegasystems for its involvement as a partner in their digital transformation initiatives supported by CEC technologies.

Focus on integration: Pegasystems’ low-code-supported approach to innovation makes it relatively easy to extend its solution, and to incorporate third-party technologies, customer touchpoints, workflows, AI and RPA to deliver differentiated, end-to-end customer experience journeys. Additionally, Pegasystems has extended its voice/interactive voice response integrations with connections to mainstream CCaaS vendors.

Focus on automation: Pegasystems focuses on automating fulfillment of service requests and on improving customer satisfaction and the agent experience. This is shown, for example, by its introduction of a “start my day” RPA feature, which makes it easier for advisors to prepare for the first customer engagement interaction of the day.

Cautions

Intricate product offering: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and prospective Pegasystems customers with whom Gartner has had contact have said they had difficulty understanding Pegasystems’ platform, and that this understanding was crucial to identify the most suitable type of implementation. In addition, Gartner clients have indicated that initial implementations can be complex.

Accessibility of specialists: Some customers and prospective customers of Pegasystems have expressed frustration about the difficulty of finding Pegasystems specialists with relevant technical and industry experience. Organizations considering Pegasystems should ensure they have an appropriate strategy to mitigate the potential risks of staffing and skills gaps.

Business model: Pegasystems has a higher proportion of professional service revenue associated with its CEC business than its competitors. Although some of these services are associated with transformational activities, users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have highlighted a need for prospective customers to budget for professional services to ensure successful CEC deployment.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its Zendesk Support application is part of the larger Zendesk Suite (also known as Zendesk for Service), which combines a customer communication hub with the engagement orchestration features that constitute the vendor’s CEC offering. With 170,000 customers, Zendesk has the largest customer base of the vendors in this Magic Quadrant. The vendor works globally, often with midsize customers, but increasingly also with large enterprises. The past year has brought notable pricing improvements from Zendesk in the form of prebuilt packages inclusive of omnichannel support, as well as new add-on options. Zendesk is known for high user adoption rates, an easy-to-use interface and SaaS-only deployment focused on the customer experience. Zendesk does not offer industry-specific solutions. It is suitable for organizations that do not require industry-specific customizations.

Strengths

Overall usability: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and Peer Insights reviewers appreciate the overall usability of Zendesk’s offering — they have praised its ease of use, customization and administration. Zendesk customers derive benefit from the fast time to value and agility that it delivers, which enable them to serve customers better.

Innovation: Zendesk innovates rapidly. In 2020, it launched key features in areas such as automated conversation orchestration across channels, with a mix of native and third-party bots and workforce management (through a partnership with Tymeshift). A notable roadmap item is Zendesk Integration Services, which is currently in preview for partners.

COVID-19 response: Zendesk has received praise from Gartner clients for its partnership with them and for the customer experience it has offered during the pandemic. The vendor’s response to the pandemic has included licensing relief, faster availability of digital customer service capabilities, and the release of a remote support bundle and the Zendesk Vaccine Management Solution (in partnership with TCS). Zendesk’s response illustrates its Ability to Execute.

Cautions

Support for larger enterprise customers: Zendesk has made progress toward meeting the needs of larger enterprise customers, and is still developing its solution. However, Larger enterprise users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and prospective Zendesk customers with whom Gartner has had contact have expressed concerns about Zendesk’s ability to support complex business processes and integration needs.

Product strategy for UI complexity: Zendesk’s CEC offering has been architected to ensure customers see fast initial time to value and find innovations easy to use. The vendor has a growing number of customers, with more than 500 users balancing the trade-offs of migrating to a more intuitive UI. However, larger customer service centers managing significant numbers of advisors and/or with intricate UI requirements are finding Zendesk’s offering less intuitive and, in certain cases, limited.

Vertical product strategy: Zendesk’s vertical product strategy is limited, compared with the product strategies of other Leaders in this Magic Quadrant. This is a consideration for customers looking for solutions with embedded functionality that reflects industry best practices, especially for highly regulated industries.

SAP

SAP is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant. It continues to pursue its transformation to deliver the next generation of CEC solutions with SAP Service Cloud by means of its Intelligent Enterprise and Experience Economy strategies. SAP’s roadmap highlights for 2021 focus on user experience and machine learning investments, and the extension of native digital channels and partnerships, such as that with Microsoft to integrate with Microsoft Teams. SAP works globally, with an even distribution of customers across the world. Notable COVID-19 responses have included new RPA solutions and accelerated deployment of contact tracing, vaccine production and distribution implementations for SAP customers. Large organizations with complex CEC processes and integration requirements, as well as organizations with an existing relationship or plans to use other SAP technologies, should consider SAP for their CEC.

Strengths

Geographical reach: SAP has the most geographically distributed customer base of any vendor evaluated for this Magic Quadrant. It has a robust partner network with thousands of authorized technology and implementation partners.

End-to-end service management: Supporting its Intelligent Enterprise vision, SAP Service Cloud has native integrations, hundreds of third-party connectors (called Cloud Elements), as well as partnerships with independent software vendors for smarter end-to-end processes. Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have mentioned that the native integration of SAP Service Cloud with SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) and SAP S/4HANA results in lower integration costs and enriched customer service functionality.

Industry focus: In 2020, SAP launched its Industry Cloud offering — a platform on which SAP and its partners will develop industry-specific applications under common data models, starting with industries such as energy and utilities, retail, consumer products and automotive. SAP’s industry strategy extends to all industries, so it should be expected to announce other industry-specific products in future.

Cautions

Strategic focus on SAP installed base: SAP’s vision for the CRM CEC forms part of its overall Intelligent Enterprise strategy, which is logically focused on addressing the needs of its existing 400,000 customers. As such, SAP’s CRM CEC application continues to be of less relevance to organizations outside SAP’s installed base.

Work in progress: In conversations with Gartner about SAP, customers of this vendor have expressed concerns that the SAP Service Cloud product is “unfinished” and “immature” in some areas. They have also indicated uncertainty about how the product’s roadmap can help them succeed.

Market presence: Despite having strong brand recognition, SAP does not appear on Gartner clients’ CEC shortlists as regularly as its main competitors. SAP lost CEC market share in 2020, which has slightly weakened its Ability to Execute.

Verint

Verint is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform is an omnichannel platform with centralized knowledge, case, workflow and customer history capabilities. Verint is a large, established, U.S.-based provider best known for its workforce engagement management offering, which accounts for more of its revenue. Verint executes globally, but most customers are in the U.S. Verint’s COVID-19 response introduced QuickStart programs: a set of 14 offers with discounted pricing and accelerated deployment times. Verint should be considered by organizations that want a new cloud or hybrid CEC solution that combines intelligent digital self-service, case management and workforce engagement management capabilities centered on knowledge management.

Strengths

Knowledge management: Verint innovates in the field of knowledge management from a solid foundation of strategic acquisitions, with an emphasis on contextual knowledge, cognitive intelligence and automation.

Workforce engagement management: Verint’s CEC offering is complemented by the company’s leading WEM solution, which enables optimal alignment, and interplay, of these two key building blocks of a customer service suite.

Product capabilities: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service and some Peer Insights reviewers have identified Verint’s real-time analytics and reporting capabilities as key to supporting end-to-end customer journeys. Gartner sees other Verint applications, such as Verint Desktop and Process Analytics and Verint Speech Analytics (including real-time speech analytics), adopted in the more mature Verint implementations.

Cautions

Limited visibility: Only a small percentage of Gartner clients have shortlisted the Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform in competitive situations. Verint’s CEC solution has limited visibility in the market.

Cloud architecture: Several components of Verint’s portfolio rely on containerization and the use of Kubernetes to repurpose existing code and make it available as a cloud offering.

Limited growth: Verint’s nominal growth in CEC and WEM revenue, partly due to its transition to the cloud and the associated deferral of revenue, combined with the requirement to enhance and better integrate its wide customer engagement portfolio, could curb its CEC ambition.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its primary CEC solution, Sugar Serve, was introduced in mid-2019 as a stand-alone offering (it was formerly part of the original Sugar Enterprise offering). The vendor has a presence in over 120 countries, but about half its Sugar Serve customers are from the Americas and one-quarter from EMEA. SugarCRM continues to strengthen its ecosystem portfolio with integrations with the likes of Amazon, Genesys and Twilio. Notable COVID-19 responses by SugarCRM have included accelerated migration of customers from on-premises solutions to SugarCloud. Midsize support organizations that are looking for a capable customer engagement solution, or that are already using, or planning to deploy, sales automation, should consider SugarCRM.

Strengths

Ease of implementation: SugarCRM’s solution is easily configured and customized. No special training or proprietary scripting languages are needed to achieve results.

Focus on integration: SugarCRM focuses on the ability to integrate with contact center platforms and legacy contact center environment technology. It now offers integration platform as a service (iPaaS) capabilities with hundreds of connectors. It has also launched SugarLive, a new integration with Amazon Connect voice, chat and text messaging.

Customer support: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have shown consistent satisfaction with SugarCRM and its dedication to customers postdeployment.

Cautions

Limited visibility: Only a small percentage of Gartner clients have shortlisted SugarCRM (for Sugar Serve) in a competitive situation. The vendor’s CEC solution has limited visibility in the market, in contrast to its Sugar Sell solution.

Innovation: In the past year, SugarCRM’s releases have focused on improvements to its core product set, and fewer cutting-edge technologies, compared with the Leaders in this Magic Quadrant. Consequently, its built-in native digital engagement channels, for example, remain limited, as do its AI-based predictive analytics, although enhancements are on its short-term roadmap.

Application marketplace: SugarCRM’s application marketplace, though growing, offers few CEC add-ons, extensions and third-party solutions that could enrich Sugar Serve. This limits the ability to derive more value from its solution.

Zoho

Zoho is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. It offers the enterprise scale of a global SaaS-plus-PaaS provider, but is mostly used by small and midsize businesses (SMBs). For the customer service market, Zoho offers Zoho Desk. Zoho has invested in its product in order to handle high-complexity customer support operations supported by relatively small teams (those with fewer than 50 users), a segment underserved by other vendors. Notable COVID-19 responses have included free Zoho Desk licenses for government agencies and departments leading pandemic-relief initiatives. Most of Zoho’s customers are in the Americas, the U.K. and Europe. Zoho should be considered by SMBs that need low-code platform capabilities and broad customer service functionality.

Strengths

Value for money: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service have praised Zoho for the value they derive from Zoho Desk, relative to its cost. In addition, Zoho does not impose long-term contracts and offers refunds to customers dissatisfied with its service.

Ease of implementation: Implementing Zoho Desk is easy to use and straightforward. Peer Insights reviewers have praised Zoho for the number of customization options built into its product. Zoho appeals to a wide range of developer personas, from citizen developer to professional developer, thanks to its low-code application platform (Zoho Creator).

Ease of integration: Zoho Desk can be integrated with other Zoho products in the vendor’s portfolio, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho Forms and Zoho Analytics. Additionally, the solution is integrated with popular products like Atlassian Jira and Trello, Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Cautions

Limited visibility: Only a small percentage of Gartner clients have shortlisted Zoho in competitive CEC situations. Zoho has limited visibility in the CEC market.

Differentiation: Despite its innovation in the low-code application platform market, Zoho shows limited innovation in terms of CEC-specific capabilities and lacks competitive differentiation. Prospective customers should expect to have to customize the solution to their own advanced CEC requirements using Zoho’s low-code development tools and/or Zoho marketplace extensions.

Vertical product strategy: Zoho’s vertical product strategy is limited, compared with the strategies of Leaders in this Magic Quadrant. This is a consideration for customers looking for solutions with embedded functionality that reflects industry best practices, especially for highly regulated industries.

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