Salesforce alternative
A Salesforce alternative for small teams
Salesforce’s Starter Suite is affordable, but a phone menu and a public help center start at Service Cloud Core, $195 a person. A small team that wants both, and marketing email, buys a long way up the ladder or adds a phone system. ContactRoll Plus includes both for a small team.
Salesforce and ContactRoll, need by need
Salesforce sells its CRM to small businesses as Starter Suite and Pro Suite, and to larger teams as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud editions. Starter Suite covers sales, service and email campaigns; calling and a public help center come with higher editions and add-ons. [1]
| What a small team needs | Salesforce | ContactRoll |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts, companies and a deals pipeline | Yes, on every suite: accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities. [1] | Every plan, Free included; Free has one pipeline. |
| Support email as cases in a shared queue | Email-to-case and case management on Starter Suite. [1] | Every plan, Free included: each email opens a case anyone can take. Free has one support address of your own. |
| Knowledge articles and a public help center | Knowledge on Starter Suite; a public help center from Service Cloud Core ($195 a person). [1][2] | Every plan, Free included. |
| Calls in the browser, with recording and transfer | Sales Dialer from Pro Suite, $5 a user, for click-to-dial. Salesforce Voice with Partner Telephony from Service Cloud Core, from $50 a user, plus the partner’s charges. [3][4] | Every plan, Free included, through your own Twilio account: call groups, voicemail, recording, hold and transfer. |
| A phone menu for callers | Not on any Starter or Pro Suite pricing page; Contact Center ($125 a user) brings its own phone menu. [1][5] | Plus, from ready-made templates, with owner-first ringing and warm transfer. |
| Marketing email to about 2,000 people | Email campaigns on Starter and Pro Suite, with 2,000 sends a month; more at $10 per 1,000. [1][6] | Every plan: 500 marketing contacts and 500 emails a month on Free, 2,000 marketing contacts on Standard, 10,000 on Plus. |
| Automation | Flows from Pro Suite. [1] | Plus: automation flows. Standard and Plus: sequences started by what a customer does. |
| Roles and who sees what | Roles and permissions on every suite. [1] | Every plan: nine ready-made roles and scopes. Plus: roles of your own. |
| An API and webhooks | A $25 add-on on Pro Suite; included from Core. [1] | Plus. |
What it costs a team of five, and of ten
Starter Suite for the CRM, cases, knowledge and email campaigns, with Aircall Professional — the Aircall plan that integrates with Salesforce — for calling with a phone menu. List prices, per month, paid yearly, in US dollars, before tax.
| What the team buys | 5 people | 10 people |
|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Starter Suite, $25 a user [1] | $125 | $250 |
| Aircall Professional, $50 a license [7] | $250 | $500 |
| Email campaigns, 2,000 sends a month included [6] | $0 | $0 |
| Salesforce, for its part, about | $375 | $750 |
| ContactRoll Plus, $59 a person | $295 | $590 |
| ContactRoll Standard, $29 a person: the CRM, support cases, calling with call groups, recording and cold transfer, and marketing email to 2,000 | $145 | $290 |
Starter Suite has no public help center; that starts at Service Cloud Core, $195 a person. Whether Aircall’s Salesforce integration works on Starter Suite, which has no API access, is not stated on either vendor’s pages. Leaves out international calls and taxes. ContactRoll’s calls are billed by Twilio to your own account, with no markup: for example, 2,000 minutes a month in the browser, half of them recorded, with one number, come to about $34 at Twilio’s published US rates (a call put on hold or transferred also pays Twilio’s conference minutes). Try your own numbers in the calling cost calculator.
For a team of 3 people or fewer, ContactRoll Free costs nothing: 1,000 contacts, one pipeline, one support address, calling through your own Twilio account, and 500 marketing emails a month (Free’s limits). Salesforce’s Free Suite is for up to 2 users, with up to 100 marketing emails a month. (Salesforce’s pricing page, read .)
Where Salesforce is strong
- Starter Suite is $25 a user whether paid monthly or yearly, with no user maximum, and a free suite covers two users. [1][6]
- A long upgrade path, through Pro Suite to Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, with the AppExchange from Pro Suite. [1][2]
- Salesforce Voice works with telephony partners, so a team can keep a phone provider it already uses. [4]
Switching from Salesforce
In Salesforce Setup, search for Data Export, choose Export Now or Schedule Export, pick the data and start the export. Salesforce emails you a zip file of CSV files. On Professional Edition, a backup can be made every 29 days; weekly exports are on Enterprise and up. [8]
Then import the file into ContactRoll as a CSV file (save it as CSV first if it came out in another format). Files exported from Salesforce are matched as they come, including their company or account columns and their phone columns. ContactRoll shows, row by row, what the import would do before it writes anything, and people who unsubscribed stay unsubscribed.
Import your contacts from a CSV file walks through it, and the CSV contact cleaner merges repeated addresses first if your file has them.
Questions
Is ContactRoll a Salesforce alternative for a small team?
For a team of 10 to 25 that wants sales, a support queue with a help center, calls with a phone menu and marketing email in one product, yes. Salesforce suits a team that expects to grow into its larger editions and the AppExchange.
Can I bring my Salesforce contacts and accounts to ContactRoll?
Yes. Export your contacts and accounts from Salesforce as CSV files and import them into ContactRoll: Salesforce’s columns, including account and phone columns, are matched as they come.
Sources
Every Salesforce figure above, with the page it was read from and the date. Prices change, so check Salesforce’s own pages before deciding. Salesforce and every other product named here are trademarks of their owners, named only to say which product is described.
- Salesforce, small business pricing: https://www.salesforce.com/small-business/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce, Service Cloud pricing: https://www.salesforce.com/service/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce, Sales Cloud add-ons: https://www.salesforce.com/sales/pricing/add-ons/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce, Service Cloud add-ons: https://www.salesforce.com/service/pricing/add-ons/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce, Contact Center pricing: https://www.salesforce.com/service/contact-center/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce, Starter and Pro Suite comparison chart (PDF): https://www.salesforce.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/documents/small-business/comparison-chart-starter-prosuite-features-us.pdf, read 2026-10-14.
- Aircall, pricing: https://aircall.io/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Salesforce Trailhead, export your data: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/lex_implementation_data_management/lex_implementation_data_export, read 2026-10-14.