The NetSuite vs. Salesforce battle isn’t new. Both are excellent computing software for accounting, planning, and inventory management for growing businesses.
But business management software is a significant investment—so it’s essential to get things right off the cuff. Trial and errors are costly and time-wasting.
Most reviews compare Salesforce vs. NetSuite based on one or a few functionalities—mainly because Salesforce is solely a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. At the same time, NetSuite is a more holistic approach to business management.
Unlike Salesforce, that’s a niche solution, NetSuite also provides ERP, business finance, and human resources solutions.
And that’s where the dilemma lies. On the one hand, Salesforce.com is a no-brainer for new businesses because of its strong brand recognition, low entry price point, and ability to do one thing well. But, CRM-only platforms tend to become redundant and inefficient as the organization and its processes evolve.
On the other hand, NetSuite is more expensive and includes several features that small and growing businesses may not require right away. Although it may not appear to be a wise investment at first, it has the potential to be helpful as the company grows.
When stakeholders ask, “Which is better: NetSuite or Salesforce?” it’s safe to say there are a lot of factors to consider.
We’ll attempt to do with this article: we’ll compare NetSuite vs. Salesforce based on the significant factors. This includes pricing, features, user experience, customer support, and assisted bookkeeping. We’ll also provide you with a clear buying decision—but the goal is to provide you with enough information to avoid making a costly error.
Let’s get started now, shall we?
NetSuite vs. Salesforce: Quick Summary
We’ll begin with a quick look at each platform and what they do.
NetSuite is a cloud-based business software suite. It’s designed to provide all the products and solutions a brand needs to succeed, especially at eCommerce.
NetSuite’s offerings include:
- An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system systematically handles day-to-day operations: financial management, order management, production management, supply chain, warehouse and fulfillment, procurement, and human capital management.
- Accounting
- Supply chain and inventory management
- Marketing automation plus email marketing
- Omnichannel commerce
- Reporting and analytics
- HR and payroll management
- CRM
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management system. Despite what you may see on the internet, it is a PaaS (or platform-as-a-service), not a SaaS (or software-as-a-service).
A PaaS gives people the tools they need to create, manage, and maintain business applications in the cloud without buying the necessary infrastructure.
Salesforce’s offerings include:
- Contact management
- Process automation
- Opportunity tracking
- Customer engagement tools
- Reports and analytics
- Quote and order management
- Lead management
Right out the box, this specs list makes it more obvious what’s peculiar to each service, but we’ll take a deeper dive in the sections below.
NetSuite vs. Salesforce: The Ultimate Comparison
Round one: let the fight begin!
1. Pricing
This is tricky because NetSuite does not provide pricing information on its website. Instead, the software company asks customers to contact them or a provider to get a tailor-made quote. Prices begin at $45/month, but the end price depends on which features you include in your final package.
Third-party websites provide pricing calculators to help you estimate how much NetSuite will cost depending on your specific needs. But these prices may differ from the original because they would include affiliate and other charges.
But a reasonable price for your initial license from NetSuite should be around $990+ (per month). Registering an additional user costs $99 per month. This figure may be lower depending on your selected tools. The level of support and storage you opt for will impact your final quote.
Salesforce, on the other hand, offers pricing plans via the internet. But like NetSuite, Salesforce also sells functionality in suites. The more complex the features you need, the higher the price.
Still, small businesses can get an all-in-one sales and support app for up to five users at $25. That entry price point is a bonus point for Salesforce. Small businesses looking for a trial can try out a paid Salesforce plan without risking their capital. Furthermore, Salesforce provides a 14-day free trial so that customers can get a feel for the software without making a financial commitment.
Finally, the fact that Salesforce has a transparent pricing structure could be a testament to the thoroughness of the brand.
The winner: Although both NetSuite and Salesforce offer custom quotes, Salesforce wins the Pricing round because of its transparency and affordability.
2. Features
Let’s see how NetSuite stacks up against Salesforce features-wise.
Accounts, Contacts, and Lead Management
NetSuite CRM gives you instant access to actionable information about potential customers and opportunities. It also enables effective opportunity/lead management based on status, revenue, notes, relevant documents, etc.
You get a 360-degree view of customers and their activity history with Salesforce Sales Cloud, including key contacts, customer communications, and internal account discussions. It also offers actionable data from popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
The Winner: Salesforce wins this round because it offers the added benefit of social media insights.
3. Customer Relationship Management
CRM isn’t NetSuite’s only specialty, so it’s not the platform’s strongest suit. However, NetSuite’s CRM features positively impact sales and marketing automation, pipeline communication, the sales process, partner relationship management, and analytics.
NetSuite offers a 360-degree overview of your customer portfolio, plus forecasting, upselling, and commission management tools. These give your business access to streamlined information throughout the customer’s lifecycle.
On the other hand, Salesforce is a standalone CRM solution, so it is optimized for that functionality. For starters, the platform’s Service Cloud is an efficient, advanced tool for connecting one-to-one with every customer across multiple channels on any device.
Salesforce also increased the completeness of their CRM toolset by offering social engagement tools, omnichannel support, AI-driven business analytics, and user engagement. To boot, Salesforce recently acquired Slack, a remote communications platform, and this integration gives it a competitive advantage in communications and collaboration.
The Winner: When it comes to CRM, Salesforce comes out on top because the platform is specifically designed for that purpose.
4. Email Integration
NetSuite CRM relies on integration with third-party applications for Outlook and Gmail functionality.
But Gmail and Outlook are integrated into Sales Cloud, allowing you to sync your email inbox, mobile device, and calendars with the platform. It also includes Salesforce Inbox, which uses built-in AI to help you streamline tasks and update pipeline data.
The Winner: Sales Cloud wins this feature due to its built-in email integration.
5. Mobile Access
You can access business data on the go with NetSuite CRM’s customizable mobile apps for Android and iOS. This means you can manage leads, create quotes and orders, check forecasts, and do other essential tasks from your smartphone. NetSuite’s SuitePhone browser makes this easy–- users get access on any Android, iPhone, or Windows device without needing to download an app.
Salesforce also provides native mobile apps for Android and iOS for on-the-go access. Sales reps can handle sales, access dashboards, and files, join conference calls, add meeting notes, and collaborate with team members using Salesforce apps.
While Salesforce does not offer a quick-access browser, it has “mySalesforce,” which allows users to create custom-branded mobile apps to access CRM data, track accounts, and manage deals in real-time.
The Winner: With its SuitePhone browser access on mobile devices, NetSuite CRM wins this round.
6. Automation
NetSuite’s SuiteFlow provides a graphical point-and-click interface for customizing and automating business processes like lead nurturing, sales discount approvals, etc.
In Salesforce’s Process Builder, users can also visualize and create work automation processes using drag-and-drop actions.
The Winner: NetSuite and Salesforce tie in this round; neither platform has significant automation differences.
7. Quote, Orders and Invoicing
NetSuite CRM allows you to convert quotes into approved sales orders with integrated quote-to-order and fulfillment features. It simplifies the sales process and makes recommendations based on purchasing habits. You can automate tax and shipping rate calculations, pricing, and discounting rules. Online approvals and automated workflows are also available to help with order management.
Built-in quoting features in Sales Cloud automatically populate a quote with relevant customer data and generate a PDF from an approved template. However, users will need add-ons to achieve full quote-to-cash functionality.
The Winner: NetSuite CRM takes this round thanks to its out-of-the-box features that support the quote-to-cash process.
8. User Experience
There’s no better source of user experience reports than….well, users. To determine which software in the Salesforce vs. NetSuite battle is more user-friendly, we looked at an aggregate user review website, Software Advice.
According to its users, NetSuite is not a very user-friendly system. It’s easy to get lost in the software if you don’t have any prior experience with it or someone to guide you through the process.
Users also complain about NetSuite’s slow response/loading time. That could be because it’s so feature-rich and cloud-based, so connection issues might be slowing things down.
Tip for users: A user discovered that using NetSuite on MozillaFirefox was faster than using NetSuite with Chrome.
Speaking of being feature-rich, that NetSuite attribute is a two-edged sword. Because it is so customizable, it can be a drawback for businesses that become overwhelmed by too many options and decisions. A company looking for a complete out-of-the-box ERP system might be better off looking elsewhere.
Another major gripe is that NetSuite’s user interface is a little dated. Even the way data is presented in reports appears and feels dated. On the plus side, users agree that it gets the job done, even if it can be challenging to navigate at times.
NetSuite addresses this in their ecosystem by encouraging customers to deploy the system through NetSuite partners—certified Value-Added Resellers (VARs).
Now let’s talk about Salesforce.
When it comes to user experience, Salesforce is no better than NetSuite. What are the issues? For starters, every login on the platform includes a two-factor authentication step, a standard, unchangeable feature. If you don’t have your token device or need to access the platform quickly, this can cause delays.
Salesforce also offers a plethora of customization options, so there’s a risk of over-engineering the system or creating too many customizations, resulting in you being boxed in.
Salesforce also gets strikes because its platform is not user-friendly. Users say mastery requires extensive training and that the system is not intuitive. It’s also likely for users to have trouble making changes to the system down the road as business needs evolve and change.
The Winner: In this round, there’s neither victor nor vanquished. Both platforms have their flaws; users don’t find either particularly easy to use and navigate. We recommend deciding based on the other factors first, then committing to the learning curve for the platform that’s worth it.
9. Assisted Bookkeeping
The bottom line of every business is profit—and bookkeeping is a crucial practice for ensuring you’re making some. A management software that will help you scale should, without a doubt, provide accurate data reporting and analytics to help you better understand your financial situation.
There are additional benefits to having accounting software on your management software. For example, you can store financial data in a single integrated system. It means you’ll no longer have to sift through ledger after ledger searching for accounts. It also means you can process financial transactions within the same system, and you and your team can access comprehensive financial data quickly.
It’s no surprise that NetSuite has an Accounting Information System built-in because accounting is such an essential part of ERP (AIS). Salesforce is a CRM lacking bookkeeping, payroll, financial forecasting, and other AIS-like features. As a result, you’ll need to work with a third-party software provider or locate a local accountant.
The Winner: NetSuite takes the cake in this round. Built-in bookkeeping functionalities mean you can save on manual audits/accounting costs while still staying on top of your finances.
10. Integrations
Because NetSuite is an all-in-one solution, it offers several functional tools right out of the box. You’ve got your accounting, management systems, CRM, Accounting, HR, Payroll, and more already-made. Except your business requires some specific in-house functionalities, you shouldn’t need many third-party app integrations.
But if you do, NetSuite can integrate with a variety of on-premise applications and third-party cloud environments, thanks to its highly customizable SuiteCloud platform.
SuiteCloud supports common industry standards and integration technologies like REST and SOAP web services, custom REST endpoints, CSV file import, and ODBC/JDBC.
You can also build website-to-NetSuite integrations and create lightweight custom mobile apps if you want to.
Salesforce allows for virtual integration with ERP, e-commerce platforms, ITSM, accounting software, social media, document management systems, and content management systems. This allows the integrated systems to share data and have a consistent workflow.
The Salesforce app store (also known as the App Exchange) organizes integrations with tools (both paid and free) into categories. Among these are, but are not limited to:
- Finance
- Human Resources
- ERP
- Sales
- Customer Service
- IT and Admin
- Marketing
- Integration
- Analytics
- Salesforce Labs
For example, Quickbooks and Hubspot are two of the most useful Salesforce integrations. Quickbooks integrates accounting features into Salesforce, allowing you to handle payments, income, expenses, taxes, and more.
Meanwhile, Hubspot is an appealing integration due to the possibility of combining Salesforce’s CRM sales tools with Hubspot’s inbound marketing and content marketing functionality.
Again, the key difference is that NetSuite offers more out-of-the-box integrations than Salesforce. And that’s because Salesforce is a standalone CRM system.
Apart from that, both platforms provide excellent opportunities for third-party app integrations, API connections, and customizations.
The winner: Salesforce offers the same level of customization and scalability as NetSuite and the same level of support for vital operational tools.
In this round, NetSuite’s trump card is that it eliminates the time and technical know-how required for teams to get up and running with Salesforce integrations.
11. Customer Support
Setting up management software isn’t a one-and-done affair. That’s where the provider’s support comes in. It’s crucial to select a software provider that provides timely, reliable, and constant support when you need it. Now let’s see which one of NetSuite vs. Salesforce does it better.
You can contact NetSuite using the company’s phone number. Of course, depending on where you live, this number is different. For example, NetSuite’s corporate headquarters in the US has a different number than its offices in Colombia, Netherlands, or Australia.
Salesforce also has a customer service phone line. Like NetSuite, this number changes depending on your location. It’s excellent that both platforms offer support based on location. As a result, you’ll get a more personalized level of support from people familiar with your local market’s needs.
NetSuite and Salesforce have detailed contact pages that include addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. But NetSuite does one-up Salesforce in that it provides the contact information for its public relations officer, while Salesforce does not.
Salesforce offers a live chat during the onboarding phase, so users can get help if they hit a roadblock. One more point for Salesforce. NetSuite also provides a chat feature during onboarding, although it isn’t live. So, half a point?
Anyways, moving on.
For both Salesforce and NetSuite, support levels and speed differ depending on the pricing plan you choose.
For example, Salesforce users can only get the most out of online customer chat support if they have the Service Cloud’s “Enterprise” or “Unlimited” support plans. And that’s not all—the Enterprise plan will cost an extra $75 per month to add live chat functionality.
NetSuite offers tiered support packages—basic, premium, and advanced. On the basic plan, customers gain access to the SuiteAnswers portal, a suite of support articles, help topics, and training videos. Users on premium support receive priority treatment and access to “additional assistance,” although it is unclear what that could entail. Premium support users also get telephone support during business hours and 24/7 assistance with critical issues to ensure users are running smoothly.
NetSuite’s Advanced Customer Support (ACS) is a five-tiered hands-on approach to support involving proactive provider monitoring. So that the customer team can put out any potential operational fires before they even start. Of course, advanced support is only available at an additional cost.
Overall, NetSuite’s level of support is higher than Salesforce’s because their services are more comprehensive,
Verdict: Although Salesforce provides robust support, it’s limited to CRM-related needs. NetSuite provides a more comprehensive support system because its service offerings are more extensive than Salesforce.
Salesforce vs. NetSuite: Which One Wins?
Our verdict? NetSuite is a good choice for companies that want to take a holistic approach to management and operations. It’s a broader offering than niche-focused Salesforce. Although Salesforce is working to become an ERP system, NetSuite has the advantage of having figured it out first, reducing the likelihood of errors and defects.
Integrating Salesforce with NetSuite may be a good idea for anyone looking for a powerful ERP and CRM system. It’d essentially give you the best of both worlds.