Salesforce vs Instantly

When it comes to managing customer relationships and boosting outreach efforts, Salesforce and Instantly offer two distinct solutions. Salesforce is a powerful, all-in-one CRM platform designed to handle the needs of businesses of any size, with advanced features for managing sales, marketing, and customer service. Instantly, however, focuses on automating cold email outreach and lead generation, providing a more targeted tool for businesses aiming to scale their outreach quickly. In this blog, we’ll compare Salesforce and Instantly, breaking down their unique strengths to help you determine which platform is the right fit for your business. Additionally, we'll introduce folk as a popular alternative.

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 Instantly?

Instantly is a newer player in the market that focuses on automation and email outreach, helping teams send high-volume personalized emails and track responses. Instantly CRM is geared more toward businesses looking to maximize lead generation and email outreach campaigns, often used by outbound sales teams and marketers.

Key features of Instantly

• Email outreach automation: One of Instantly’s standout features is the ability to automate and send thousands of personalized cold emails at scale.
• Advanced email warm-up: Instantly ensures that your emails land in inboxes rather than spam by providing email warming and reputation management tools.
• AI-based insights: Use AI-powered analytics to gain insights into the success of your outreach and optimize future campaigns.
• Multi-account management: Run multiple email accounts and campaigns seamlessly from one dashboard.
• Performance tracking: Track open rates, click rates, and other key metrics to measure campaign performance in real time.
• Integrations: Instantly CRM integrates with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, and other productivity apps to help streamline workflows.

Salesforce vs. Instantly: 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.
Instantly, on the other hand, doesn't offer a clear kanban of all your deals. You can view your leads' status with the email campaigns, but there isn't a clear pipeline management view.

2. Ease of use

Salesforce offers a complex interface with a steep learning curve, suitable for large enterprises needing extensive customization. Instantly, on the other hand, provides a more intuitive and user-friendly experience, ideal for small to medium-sized businesses focusing on quick setup and ease of use.

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.

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. Instantly provides a strong cold outreach solution, allowing users to connect unlimited email addresses, rotate them for deliverability, and send multiple emails in campaigns, tailored for outreach at scale.

5. Automation

Salesforce offers robust automation features designed to streamline business processes, including workflow rules, flow builders, approval processes, and AI automation through Einstein AI. Instantly CRM focuses on automating email outreach and follow-up processes, enabling users to send personalized bulk emails and schedule automatic follow-ups based on recipient behavior.

6. Integration

Salesforce integrates with a wide range of third-party applications through its AppExchange marketplace, allowing connections with tools for marketing automation, customer service, and more. Instantly CRM integrates with various third-party applications primarily through Zapier, available from their Hypergrowth plan, enabling connections with tools like Google Workspace and Slack.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Salesforce CRM integrates AI through its Einstein platform, providing predictive analytics, intelligent recommendations, and automated insights, helping automate tasks like lead scoring and opportunity forecasting. Instantly CRM uses AI to optimize email outreach by automating tasks such as email personalization and follow-up sequencing, dynamically adjusting campaigns for better engagement.

Price and plans comparison

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

Salesforce prices

• Starter suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses
• Pro suite: $80/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises

Instantly prices

• Growth CRM: Starts from $37.90 per user, per month.
• Hyper CRM: Starts from $77.60 per user, per month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Salesforce and Instantly

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is a multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system.

Key features

• 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.
• Notes and reminders: Create notes that can be attached to each lead's profile, and assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow up.

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. Instantly: What's the verdict?

When comparing Salesforce and Instantly, it's clear that each offers unique advantages tailored to different business needs. Salesforce is ideal for large enterprises requiring extensive customization and integration capabilities, while Instantly excels in email outreach and automation for businesses focused on lead generation. However, for companies seeking a more personalized and flexible CRM solution, folk emerges as a strong alternative. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, folk caters to diverse business functions, providing an efficient and cost-effective CRM experience. Try folk today, free.