About Salesforce Essentials











Salesforce Essentials pricing
Salesforce Essentials does not have a free version but does offer a free trial. Salesforce Essentials paid version starts at US$35.00/month.
Alternatives to Salesforce Essentials
Salesforce Essentials Reviews
Feature rating

- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Great helpdesk and customer communication option
Pros
Way better option for customer support than just a basic email account. Really nice options for setting up a support site
Cons
Really poor live chat option. No customer website traffic integration. This ultimately caused our move to Intercom
- Industry: Financial Services
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Salesforce as a Database
As it is a massive and comprehensive product, I don't need such an overwhelming software. Overall, it didn't meet my company's needs, but if a company has tech department, this could be a fantastic product.
Pros
I like that the product has the ability to be completely customized to one's needs.
Cons
As it can be an expensive and time consuming set-up, it was not necessary for me to have such a customizable software. There was very little customer service and it was overseas. It took too much of my time and the only way to get customer service is to hire a third party vendor to help with all aspects of the software.
- Industry: Financial Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Do Not Assume Anything
The best advice that I can give to a company considering purchasing Salesforce's Desk.com is to document every single expectation and need regarding a CRM tool. Do not assume any functionality exists, regardless of how simple and standard that functionality may seem. There are definitely features and functionalities that the average person might expect any modern system to offer which it does not.
Examples:
List Views - Cannot sort by most fields, cannot add custom fields to list views, and cannot modify the number of records per page
Reporting - Cannot modify fields displayed in a report, cannot edit criteria for metrics, and cannot include custom fields in reports aside from picklists, and cannot export more than 2500 records at a time
Email - Does not include standard modern emailing functions such as underlining, highlighting, modifying font color, or pasting images/tables
Also, while some more complex workflows and automation can be built in Salesforce to update fields which are then passed back to Desk via Desk Connect (native sync between Desk and Salesforce), I strongly recommend against relying on Desk Connect for any business processes. Desk Connect can and has been turned off by Desk.com for all customers without first ensuring this is okay with the customer, interrupting daily business on a large scale. It is also extremely easy to break or surpass its capabilities of Desk Connect to the point that any modification, regardless of size, made to your Salesforce org must be communicated to Desk to ensure that Desk Connect will continue to function as expected.
If you are a small-scale organization/team with very basic case tracking and reporting requirements capable, Desk may very well be the answer for you. But you still better be prepared with extensive documentation of all requirements and expectations for a tool like Desk, no matter how small or obvious they may be.
Pros
Simple UI
Simple workflow building and management
Cons
Extremely limited in its capabilities
Desk Support reps are not thorough when reading emails
ETA's on fixes/patches pushed back for months
- Industry: Paper & Forest Products
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
It will help you improve your customer experience
Salesforce Essentials is the best way to provide better service to our customers. I highly recommend it!
Pros
I'm so glad that Salesforce Essentials makes it easy to collect customer feedback. This feedback has been invaluable in helping me improve our product quality and customer service.
Cons
The learning curve for inexperienced users may be somewhat challenging.
- Industry: Wholesale
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Works Great! Increases our Closing Percentage by 20%
So far its been very good. We also use other modules from Salesforce. After demoing about 4 packages, we went with Salesforce. Knowing that they are the primary leader in CRM, helped in that decision, as most of our other applications have APIs to intergrate with.
Pros
The integration with all of our other systems and software.
Cons
The setup is a little tricky when using other software with Salesforce. It really helps to have good support from any other vendors products you want to integrate with Salesforce. Examples being Quickbooks, ShipRush, Verizon Connect, etc. We have many departments and different software in each. So being sure you have API support is critical.