Pros & Cons
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- Best-in-class sales tools
- Easy-to-use interface
- Robust commerce hub
- Minimal setup
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- Pricey
- Lacks AgentForce AI chatbot functionality
Salesforce Starter Suite Specs
| 24-Hour Support | |
| Analytics | |
| Custom Dashboards | |
| Email Routing | |
| Integrated Email Marketing | |
| Phone Support | |
| Pipeline Management | |
| REST API | |
| User Forums |
Salesforce Starter Suite, a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for SMBs, offers its renowned parent platform’s core sales and reporting capabilities in a more approachable package—while also bundling a suite of e-commerce, marketing, and service tools. Formerly known as Salesforce Starter, this version now features a modernized interface and enhanced Slack integration for seamless collaboration with clients and teammates. Salesforce Starter Suite is a worthwhile option if your business isn't ready to use the full-scale Salesforce platform, although it doesn't offer advanced AI tools and remains expensive. Zoho CRM remains our Editors' Choice winner for CRMs, thanks to its affordability, comparable feature set, and flexibility.
Pricing: Costly, But Packed With Features
Despite introducing new features since our last review, Salesforce Starter Suite continues to cost $25 per user per month, billed annually. That’s on the higher end for the category, but in return, you get a comprehensive set of tools for commerce, marketing, sales, and customer service. Specifically on the CRM front, this plan includes account, contact, and opportunity management; customizable reports and dashboards; and lead assignment and routing.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)One change involves the user cap for onboarding. Salesforce Starter allowed you to add up to 325 users at a time, while the even older Salesforce Essentials supported just 10 seats. Salesforce Starter Suite strikes a middle ground of 66 users; if you need more seats, you must contact Salesforce directly. This might seem like a minor detail, but this limit appears to be a practical sweet spot for SMBs that need a CRM that’s a step above entry-level functionality.
Teams that require more advanced tools can opt for Salesforce Pro Suite ($100 per user per month, billed annually). That’s a $20 increase over the previous Salesforce Pro plan. Along with everything in Salesforce Starter Suite, it includes access to Salesforce App Exchange, custom apps and objects, omnichannel ticket routing, process automation, and sales quotes and forecasting. A Sales Enterprise tier ($175 per user per month, billed annually) includes advanced pipeline management and forecasting, as well as limited access to the Agentforce AI application and conversation and opportunity sorting intelligence.
For comparison, Zoho CRM's Starter plan goes for $14 per user per month, billed annually. Its case management and commerce tools don't go as deep as those of Salesforce Starter Suite, but it does offer lead scoring and sales forecasting. Many integrations are also available for it. Both platforms are comparable in terms of ease of use, customization, and reporting, so your choice ultimately comes down to your budget and business needs.
Meanwhile, HubSpot Smart CRM offers a free platform that includes Breeze AI for general data requests and research, but it’s limited to two users. HubSpot’s flagship Sales Hub starts at $9 per user per month for basic reporting and automation, but can climb to $90 per user per month for features comparable to what’s in Salesforce Starter Suite Pro.
Like many of its competitors, Salesforce Starter Suite offers a 30-day trial that doesn't require a credit card. And now, you can pay month-to-month at the same rate as the annual plan. That’s a rarity in this industry, where yearly plans typically cost less per month to encourage a long-term commitment.
Interface and Ease of Use: Updated Looks, Good Support
Salesforce Starter received a makeover with its evolution to Starter Suite. The interface features a spectrum of blue hues against a white backdrop, along with a more spacious layout, regardless of the display density setting. A Dark Mode is now available, as is a System Color Mode that respects your computer’s settings.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)Although the Salesforce Starter Suite still requires a learning curve, the onboarding process is impressively streamlined, even more so than before. To get started, just fill out a brief survey about your business goals. Then, the site directs you to a home page featuring a variety of Home Cards that track recent activity, filter contacts, and monitor leads, among other functions. You can add and organize cards as needed. This home page provides an effective overview of your business.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)At the top of the home page is a trio of Explore Cards, which are shortcuts to recommended tools based on your survey responses. Clicking a card launches a guided walk-through with on-page prompts and a sidebar checklist you can move, minimize, or snooze. You can expand the home page to view more Explore Cards, as well as mark tasks complete or bookmark them for later.
The sidebar provides access to the (in order) Contacts, Accounts, Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, and Accounts hubs, each of which has dedicated tools. Every page has an App Navigation menu at the top, where you can add and organize the CRM tools you use the most.
Salesforce Starter Suite targets SMBs that lack the time and resources for extensive onboarding. Thus, it doesn't include access to Salesforce AppExchange for third-party integrations, nor does it support custom apps and objects. However, a native Slack integration is available, which I discuss later. (Salesforce owns Slack.)
I’m surprised that Salesforce’s Agentforce AI isn’t available in Starter Suite as a chatbot, especially since other CRMs are leaning into this functionality, including Freshsales, HubSpot, HoneyBook, and Zoho CRM. In my experience, AI assistants serve as another avenue for learning the operations of a platform (in addition to performing quick tasks and retrieving data, of course). It’s possible Salesforce thinks its accessible user interface and Explore Cards already serve that purpose.
As for support, all plans include the Standard Success Plan, which provides access to documentation, knowledge base articles, and other resources. Add-on plans introduce 24/7 support and other educational material.
Sales: The Heart of Salesforce Starter Suite
The Sales component of Starter Suite, which encompasses accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities, has all of the essential information and tools you need to initiate and advance deals.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)You can enter your data manually or import it from a CSV file. When I uploaded a mock list of contacts, I appreciated the ability to match fields from my file with existing Salesforce fields via a drop-down menu, especially since the system is particular about formatting. (For example, I had to match a field labeled “EMAIL” with Salesforce’s standard “Email.”)
For more complex uploads involving multiple objects (standard and custom), there’s the Data Import Wizard, which also allows you to add and update details in the process. For contacts, you can sync your Gmail or Outlook data, and even add your calendar and related emails.
Contact pages include standard details (such as contact information and work status), along with links to related opportunities and customer service cases in the CRM. You can track each contact’s activity (including call logs, emails, and event attendance), and then filter these items by date or activity type. You can also add custom fields, tweak the profile layout, and upload relevant attachments.
The Salesforce redesign does its data management hubs a real service. Information is well-organized and easy to access, but what’s especially impressive is how well all four Sales categories integrate. You can add a new opportunity directly from a contact page or progress a lead to another sales stage with just a couple of clicks.
You can add leads manually, via a spreadsheet, or through email marketing campaigns and web forms. (The latter tools are in the Marketing hub.) Like contact records, lead pages are highly malleable, allowing you to format the layout so the most essential information is front and center as you convert prospects into customers. You can assign leads based on dozens of parameters to ensure they end up in the correct channel or with the right rep.
When it comes to the sales pipeline, you can organize it in a list, Kanban, or split view—whichever best fits your workflow. You can also add or rename sales and lead stages as necessary.
Service: Customer Support Without the Silos
The Service hub is where you manage customer queries; think of this as a subset of what you get from a dedicated help desk product. While the interface redesign makes the Service hub feel more efficient, the core functionality hasn’t changed drastically. In any case, it’s still very useful.
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The central feature is Cases, where you log and view every interaction a customer has had with your company about a given issue. Integrating your support email automatically populates cases with relevant details and can even trigger responses. Any team member can step in and pick up where someone else left off. Much like deals in the Sales hub, a case moves through a pipeline that clearly displays where a customer is in the support process, along with who’s handling it.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)The Knowledge tab is where you write and publish articles about common customer problems and their solutions, all within the CRM. These articles are accessible and searchable directly within each customer case, allowing you to resolve issues quickly and keep things moving.
Quick Text speeds up outreach (and not just related to Cases) by letting you create preset email messages for occasions like birthdays, special promotions, and follow-ups via email, messaging, and even as snippets you can include in articles in your knowledge library. I couldn’t fully trial Quick Text during my time with the previous Salesforce Starter, but the experience is now free of bugs. Quick Text supports a broad range of merge fields—cases, contacts, deals, and leads, to name a few—that you can drop into a message for a personal touch with minimal effort. You can preview messages before saving them to your library and sending them out.
Upgrading to Salesforce Starter Suite Pro adds support for macros (to automate repetitive tasks such as data entry and sending stock emails), a messaging hub (to view and respond to web and in-app conversations within the CRM), and omnichannel routing (to ensure queries reach the right person).
Marketing: Bare Necessities, But Enough for SMBs
The Marketing Hub offers accessible tools that help growing companies execute basic lead-generation campaigns without getting bogged down by complex analytics or mundane tasks (such as data entry). I had to activate the Marketing Hub tools through the Advanced Setup, which took about an hour. If that’s standard, it feels like an unusual choice, given that marketing is a key component of lead generation.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)Once active, the Campaigns tab lets you create or update campaigns across multiple channels, including email, paid ads, and seminars. The drag-and-drop designer simplifies the process of building email templates and web forms. Enable the Einstein Send Time Optimization for suggestions on the best time to send or publish.
Flows remain the automation engine for your lead generation efforts. The visual interface makes it easy for newcomers to create workflows without needing to deal with code. You can build a Flow from scratch or customize an existing template.
Segments closely tie in with consent management, which is a major benefit for automatically managing unsubscribes and ensuring compliance. You need to upload opt-in and opt-out lists in the Consent Import tab before creating email lists. Note that you can filter only by basic contact or lead fields.
Salesforce Starter Suite allows you to send up to 2,000 emails per month, which should be sufficient for most small businesses. However, you can pay an additional $10 per month for an extra 1,000 sends if necessary. Note that these credits don’t roll over month-to-month.
Advanced features, such as lead scoring, native social media integrations, and sales forecasting, aren’t included in the Starter Suite package. Zoho CRM is worth investigating if you're looking for such tools at a fair price.
Commerce: A Win for Small Online Businesses
The Commerce hub is the most notable addition to Salesforce’s entry-level CRM. You can accept payments with Stripe, build a product database, create and manage an online store, and run promotions.
The integrated website builder is surprisingly capable and nearly on par with the best website builders. It produces sleek, professional e-commerce sites without requiring complex coding. Everything is pre-designed, and a visual builder allows you to add banners, images, and other custom touches. You can even optimize for SEO and configure privacy and security settings.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)Creating promotions is also seamless. The CRM collects your product data and generates a series of preset money-off discounts and BOGO offers. You can go in and fix the finer details, such as qualifiers and run dates, or create a promotion for your online store from scratch.
It's possible to add products to the CRM manually or import your catalogs in bulk. That said, Salesforce is fussy when approving required entities. Even testing this feature with Salesforce’s sample templates wasn’t without a hitch. The files included more data points than my demo of Starter Suite could support, and the system flagged items such as “Price (original)” and “Price (special pricing)” as duplicates. You need to be precise when building your catalogs for uploading.
Slack Integration: A Practical Partnership
Salesforce heavily pushes Starter Suite’s native Slack integration. If your company relies on Slack, this pairing should help you significantly simplify your workflow.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)Practically, Salesforce Starter Suite pulls your external Slack conversations into your record pages, allowing you and your team to communicate with clients. In Slack, you can access tasks, add contacts and opportunities to the CRM, and share articles from your knowledge base (for example, a company handbook for onboarding new employees).
Slack is the only app integration that Salesforce Starter Suite supports. Upgrading to Salesforce Starter Suite Pro unlocks access to the Salesforce AppExchange, albeit at a significantly higher monthly cost. The more affordable Freshsales, HubSpot, and Zoho CRM, thus, might appeal more if you want to build a healthy tech stack for your small business that plays nicely with your CRM.
Reports and Insights: Powerful Without the Enterprise Bloat
Salesforce Starter Suite might have the weakest reporting capabilities among the full family of Salesforce Sales products, but compared with most SMB CRM competitors, such as Freshsales and HubSpot CRM, it's quite robust. Importantly, it doesn't inundate you with advanced features that are better suited for large enterprises.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)The platform comes with dozens of customizable report types across all four main pillars of the Salesforce Starter Suite, including commerce business reports. You also have a range of nearly a dozen chart types, giving you the flexibility to present your data in the most meaningful way. You can organize dashboards by report type and tailor the formatting to your preference.
It's possible to make reports and dashboards public, private, or limited to specific users. Use the Subscribe feature to receive real-time or scheduled notifications for report or dashboard updates.
Mobile Experience: A Worthy Companion
Salesforce Starter Suite syncs with the Salesforce mobile app, which is available for free download on both Android and iOS. Although it lacks access to the advanced remote features available in Salesforce's Enterprise tiers, the core functionality should meet the needs of SMBs.
(Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)You can control your organization’s access to the Salesforce Mobile App through Starter Suite’s Advanced Setup by caching data (for offline use), configuring notifications, customizing the branding to match your company's theme, and removing irrelevant features. These higher-level functions, while useful, aren’t a necessity for most small and medium businesses.