Software Reviews Report: Insightly vs. Salesforce

Best Practices | Business & tech | Company News | Product News

by   Val Riley February 12, 2024

Insightly vs. Salesforce can often feel like David vs. Goliath.

According to Statista, Salesforce spent 13.5 billion U.S. dollars on marketing and sales in the fiscal year 2023.

I won’t bore you with the specifics, but Insighty’s marketing budget does not start with a ‘B.’ Not even close. 

We’re small, and we’re scrappy, trying to get the good word out about a modern CRM that’s affordable, flexible and scalable. We also talk a lot about how switching from Salesforce to Insightly is really quite easy. 

So when an outside third party firm publishes data showing that Insightly stacks up pretty well against the pricer alternative, you take notice. 

Software Reviews – CRM category

Software Reviews is a division of Info Tech Research Group. Its mission is to “improve the B2B software experience for both buyers and providers.” 

To do so, they provide an experience-focused review platform helping businesses through the software selection process as it becomes increasingly complex. The firm gathers and disseminates data from actual software users with a mission of ensuring everyone has access to the right information to make better decisions.

Software Reviews recently published its Best CRM Software report and divides its findings among enterprise, mid-market, and small business. It includes a data quadrant for the category where it shows an axis for innovation, leadership, service and challengers. 

Software Reviews defines CRM as software that “enables an organization to manage the complete customer lifecycle and capture, integrate and analyze data across all customer touchpoints.”

In its 2024 report, Software Reviews shows data where Insightly outscores Salesforce for small businesses, and defines small businesses as having between $10 and $50 million in revenue.

The data shows that service experience, features, and capability are three areas where software users indicate that Insightly edges out Salesforce. 

Vendor Capabilities: Insightly wins over Salesforce

To measure vendor capability, Software Reviews examines 11 core vendor capabilities common across all Software Vendors. These capabilities represent table-stakes expectations for any software vendor, and are critical to driving a strong, long-term relationship between a vendor and a customer. The 11 core vendor capabilities that have been measured are quality of features, product strategy and rate of improvement, vendor support, ease of data integration, ease of administration, ease of customization, and ease of implementation.

Net Score: Insightly 83%, Salesforce: 82%

Why Insightly wins: All of these capabilities can be achieved within both Insightly and Salesforce, however, with Salesforce, complexity rears its ugly head. You’ll likely need to hire an integration firm, hire a dedicated Salesforce Administrator, or work with a pricey consultant in order to accomplish anything. Insightly is a highly customizable CRM, is easy to manage, and using AppConnect, is easy to integrate all with your existing team.  

When shopping for a CRM, be sure to speak to other clients who have successfully implemented the CRM solution you are purchasing, and ask specific questions about costs around administration, customization, and implementation. The responses will be enlightening.

Product Feature Summary: Insightly wins over Salesforce

To measure vendor capability, Software Reviews examines product features that have been chosen based on market relevancy and typical use within the category. Viewers can use this data to compare their primary use case and identify relative strengths and weaknesses across shortlisted vendors. The features that are examined by Software Advice include account and contact management, activity and workflow management, analytics and reporting, collaboration, customer service management, lead management, marketing management, mobile, quote contract and proposal, sales management, and telephony and call center management.

Net Score: Insightly 85%, Salesforce: 82%

Why Insightly wins: While all CRMs have similar features, Insightly’s ease of use helps it stand out. This means that not only do you have access to world class features, you’ll actually use them because Insightly is intuitive. Managing pipelines, tracking opportunities, creating proposals and quotes, and automating workflows are all table stakes in CRM, and Insightly puts them at your fingertips. Insightly’s mobile capabilities also shine in this report, since the Insightly mobile app (available for Android and Apple devices) is robust and convenient. 

Service Experience: Insightly wins over Salesforce

Software buyers know that good service matters. The last thing you need is to be disrespected by your software vendor or to get bogged down by their ineptitude or neglect. This section displays data related to quality and effectiveness of service, so buyers can know whether they’ll be treated well before and after they’ve made the purchase. Service is rated on the software provider being respectful, effective, caring, efficient and whether the team saves you time. 

Net Score: Insightly 90%, Salesforce: 87%

Why Insightly wins: Sometimes smaller is better. While there are likely hundreds of employees at Salesforce that provide support, they may not all be aligned. The team behind the software at Insightly is a tight-knit group of service professionals. They collaborate internally, consistently train and retrain, and drive each other to provide the best possible customer experience. Whether you choose to work on your own with periodic support, or choose a more hands-on support plan (e.g. Premier Support and Success), you’ll never feel alone when you need help with your Insightly instance. Insightly is also known for its guided onboarding program to ensure that CRM buyers are empowered from the beginning of the CRM implementation. 

Visit the Insightly website to read the full report and to see the data. 

Methodology and Data

Software Reviews is part of Info Tech Research Group. With practical advisory services and a data-driven approach, SoftwareReviews’ mission is to improve the B2B software experience for all software buyers and providers. Our pragmatic tools and detailed customer insights help software buyers maximize success with their technology decisions. We collect the most in-depth customer review data from both business and IT professionals to shorten the time to decision and action for software purchasers and improve overall buyer satisfaction. Combining deep buyer knowledge and experience, SoftwareReviews’ go-to-market practice helps technology providers better understand customer needs and accelerates planning and execution of go-to-market and product strategy. SoftwareReviews is a division of Info-Tech Research Group with over two decades of research-based IT advice and technology implementation.

Methodology for the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) head to head report

SoftwareReviews collects in-depth, first-party feedback from verified end users about their customer experience with their top enterprise software providers. Quantitative and qualitative feedback data is collected via SoftwareReviews’ proprietary online survey platform. The survey gathers over 130 data points on each product, allowing the end user to thoroughly evaluate their experiences over their full lifecycle using the software – from their selection experience through their purchase and service experience. Every review is meticulously checked through a robust quality assurance process to ensure it is submitted by a real person with valid credentials for using the software. End user experience and sentiment measures revealing product feature fit, perceived vendor capabilities, business value drivers, and the quality of the vendor relationship are accessible at both a high level roll up and a more detailed drill down. SoftwareReviews reports are available to download at SoftwareReviews.com/categories.

Considering a CRM? 

If a new CRM is in your future and Salesforce is on your list, you should also check out Insightly CRM. Start a free trial, watch a demo on demand, or get a personalized walk through of the platform from a team member. See what users and experts already know – that Insightly is a great alternative to Salesforce.