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Pega CRM vs Salesforce Sales Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pega CRM
Ranking in CRM
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th)
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Ranking in CRM
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Opportunity Management (1st), Sales Force Automation (1st), Conversation Intelligence Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Pega CRM is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 9.0%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user735081 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 03, 2017
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Ganisetti - PeerSpot reviewer
Case management feature is valuable but the pricing is expensive
I would like to suggest the solution but it really depends on your specific requirements, your business use cases and future plans. There is a significant investment involved in this solution and therefore it is very crucial to reevaluate your future necessity including automation potential and modernization plans. I would suggest that you select any kind of solution and explore alternatives of similar functionalities at a lower cost. This might help you to achieve more with less. In my experience, I would rate it between seven to eight because it offers robust capabilities. But please be aware that other BPM tools are emerging with similar features at a lower cost. Pega CRM is perceived as bulk care compared to order tools, as many of its capabilities are potentially underutilized. I would rate it 7 out of 10.
Richard Mottershead - PeerSpot reviewer
Infinitely customizable, good end-to-end sales and customer management processes but lacks good documentation
Essentially, it's the CRM solution for managing customers and leads. The features that had the most significant impact on our sales efficiency include flexibility, regular updates, and very good end-to-end sales and customer management processes. AI and machine learning are on the agenda for next year. Initially, it will be very silo-based, but eventually, we'll be integrating MIBI data into our solution. Sales Cloud's reporting and analytics capabilities influenced our sales strategy quite a lot. We can build every report as a dashboard, and there are various sorts of things. We are using Tableau as our MIBI analytic solution, which is also owned by Salesforce these days.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It also reduces the duration per call, and it ensures a first time resolution of the issue."
"We can effortlessly manage the data within it, and it offers ease of use and high flexibility to present the data across various vendors."
"One of the most valuable features of Pega CRM for our team's productivity is its ease of setup, thanks to its configuration-driven approach."
"Pega offers a clear parent-child case relationship that's easily created and maintained. Dependencies can be configured, where reaching a specific stage in a parent case automatically triggers a child task in a child case, while the parent case remains on hold until a certain condition is met before moving forward. This configuration allows multiple users to work on cases in parallel. Many of these settings are readily available within Pega case settings. Overall, Pega's case management is unparalleled compared to other options."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to pull information about the customer on-the-fly so they feel the interaction is more personal."
"The product's deployment phase was easy."
"The case management feature is really valuable."
"Great flexibility and its locking mechanism enable multiple users to work on the same case seamlessly."
"The development cost, maintenance cost, everything will be drastically reduced - unlike traditional infrastructure where we maintain everything on our own."
"The type of customization that comes with Salesforce CRM gives me a lot of liberty and ease of access to add any information that I wish to add. For example, the name, email ID, designation, the name of the decision maker, when the client joined the company, and the amount of influence he will have on the product."
"The scalability is good."
"I like that Salesforce is ERP agnostic. In the past and at different companies, I have implemented new or replacement ERPs. It's best in class. I like that it's a SaaS. I like that it can work on any device—any Windows, Android, or Apple device."
"Contact records are most valuable."
"This is a stable product."
"The most beneficial aspect of Salesforce Sales Cloud is my development life cycle will have been shortened."
"It is a very stable solution."
 

Cons

"The solution has room for improvement around decisional and real-time data analysis."
"The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications."
"For many of the clients, they have a separate system or separate layer of UI and a separate layer of the business rules engine, which Pega has taken care of in the recent releases."
"The UI is lagging and needs to be improved."
"The UI should be improved."
"They should enable the data-driven streaming feature inside it."
"There has been a common acknowledgment among customers that this solution is an expensive tool and they often opt for cheaper tools like Comodo"
"It would be beneficial to enhance the pricing and support implementation options as they are currently quite expensive."
"I don't like the way parent-child relationships work in transactions between records in Salesforce Sales Cloud. NetSuite is a little bit more user-friendly in that sense. Salesforce Sales Cloud requires that you build everything from scratch. I don't like that. It leaves a lot of thinking and solutions to the consultants and the process is more prone to errors."
"The reporting formats could be better."
"Salesforce is a powerful tool and you need specialists to create or to develop new functionalities. It is a difficult platform to learn to manage and you need years to know the whole product."
"Sometimes, it is difficult to integrate it with my emails. I've had trouble integrating it with my emails. There were a couple of things I did try as well, but I wasn't able to do so. I've had difficulty in other areas too with integration. It was related to syncing my calendars. I want the tasks that I put in to automatically sync to my calendars and update my calendars, but I couldn't figure out how to do it."
"Compared to other CRM solutions, Salesforce is expensive. It is more affordable for enterprise users than for small businesses."
"The solution could improve the partner management and communities. For the enterprise licenses, we have the help, but it should also be extended with the features to the partner community."
"It could have a more user-friendly interface."
"The user interface could be more intuitive. I had some challenges with how to convert from a lead to an opportunity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have numerous uses of the solution in our organisation. Almost 72 applications are integrated with Pega CRM, and some of them are shutting down for various reasons including the high licensing costs. There is a strong focus in the market and offices on cost reduction."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"It is expensive."
"The overall price of Salesforce Sales Cloud could be better, it is more expensive than other competitors. There is an annual license for Salesforce Sales Cloud."
"You need to pay for the license per user per month. For example, you need to pay $100 per user. If you have 200 users using your Salesforce, that would be multiplied by a hundred, that's $20,000 per month and a quarter million per year."
"We pay a yearly subscription fee."
"The licensing fees are reasonable."
"The price of the product is very high. I rate the product price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means expensive."
"Implementation and add-ons may be additional costs."
"The price of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is expensive. We pay monthly for the solution but we are billed quarterly."
"The price is fair."
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Answers from the Community

it_user735081 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017
My advice is to compare the full investment of the CRM implementation - software, cloud and services - as from a general perspective, all top level "costs" are generally comparable. It is the cost-to-value ratio that you will want to focus upon. Also, you’ll want to assess whether you will be looking to deploy AI or not, as some vendors’ offerings are not quite as real and ready-to-deploy as ot...
See 2 answers
it_user70698 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 3, 2017
Hi thanks for your request. Each of the ERP CRM listed above has certain functionalities in common and comparing the cost between them will completely depends upon the need. Overall Salesforce and SAP CRM has CRM functionality and it is Tier 1 CRM product. Pega is not a CRM product and it specializes in BPM ( Business Process Management). Please email me and I can discuss over the phone with you for further details.
it_user747921 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 3, 2017
My advice is to compare the full investment of the CRM implementation - software, cloud and services - as from a general perspective, all top level "costs" are generally comparable. It is the cost-to-value ratio that you will want to focus upon. Also, you’ll want to assess whether you will be looking to deploy AI or not, as some vendors’ offerings are not quite as real and ready-to-deploy as others. Note that I am biased, as I am with Pega, running their CRM practice. With this said -- in terms of unbiased independent reviews, Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center for 2017, cites “Reference customers gave Pegasystems' overall package the best cost-to-value rating of any solution assessed for vendors in the Leaders quadrant.” A free copy of Gartner's report may be downloaded here: https://www.pega.com/gartner-crm-cec-2017 Best of luck in your research. Just let me know if I can be of any further assistance. Regards, Jeff Nicholson
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
77%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pega CRM?
The product's deployment phase was easy.
What needs improvement with Pega CRM?
The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications. In Siebel CRM, you have complete control over your database, you can do any datab...
What is your primary use case for Pega CRM?
Pega CRM uses a layer cake architecture. Basically, the tool is a convenient application to use even if you are not a technical person, like a business analyst. I use the solution for the CRM modul...
What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?
The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?
Improving system performance and processing speed would enhance productivity and allow for even smoother workflows according to my view. Additionally, introducing faster data retrieval and real-tim...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?
My primary use case for Salesforce is to streamline sales strategies, define key sales parameters, and manage focus areas effectively. I leverage Salesforce to record, track, and optimize our sales...
 

Also Known As

Chordiant
Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The State of Maine, Aegis, Aegon, AIG Japan, ING
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Pega CRM vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.