Pinion vs Salesforce
Pinion CRM vs Salesforce for small business
Salesforce is the CRM everyone has heard of. Here's an honest look at when a five-person business should pay for it, and when it shouldn't.
· 4 min read · prices checked 12 September 2026
Salesforce is the reason most people know the word “CRM”. It is also the product Pinion was built in reaction to, so we have a clear opinion here. We’ll try to keep it fair.
The short version
Choose Salesforce if you have a dedicated sales team, someone whose job includes administering the CRM, and you need it to talk to every other system in the business. It is the most customisable CRM on the market and nothing on this page changes that.
Choose Pinion if you are a trades business, a solo practitioner, or a small agency, you want to be up and running this afternoon, and you would rather pay one flat price than a per-user fee that grows every time you hire.
Pricing side by side
Salesforce prices per user. Pinion prices per business. That single difference drives most of the numbers below.
| Salesforce | Pinion CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No. Free trial only. | Yes. 2 seats, 100 clients, 5 invoices a month, no expiry. |
| Entry paid plan | Starter Suite, $25 per user per month | Professional, R299 per month for the whole business |
| Users on entry plan | Unlimited, each one billed | 10 included, no per-user charge |
| Next tier | Pro Suite, $100 per user per month, annual contract required | Max, R799 per month, 100 seats |
| Contract | Starter is monthly or annual. Pro Suite and Enterprise need an annual contract. | Month to month. Cancel any time, your data stays. |
| Currency | USD, billed at that month’s exchange rate | Rand |
Worked example: a plumbing business with the owner, an office admin, and three technicians is five users. On Salesforce Starter that is five times $25, so $125 a month, before any add-ons. On Pinion Professional it is R299, and hiring a sixth person costs nothing.
At Salesforce’s Pro Suite tier the same five people cost $500 a month and you have signed a year’s contract.
Where Salesforce wins
We would be lying if we pretended this list was short.
- Customisation without limits. Custom objects, custom fields, validation rules, formula fields, flows, approval processes. If your business has a process, Salesforce can model it exactly.
- Reporting. Salesforce reports and dashboards are the best in the category. Pinion has a dashboard with cash flow and pipeline, and a Recommended Actions panel. It does not have a report builder.
- Integrations. The AppExchange has thousands of add-ons. Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Mailchimp, WhatsApp, Slack, DocuSign, whatever you use, there is a connector. Pinion has no third-party integrations yet.
- Scale. Salesforce runs some of the largest sales organisations in the world. If you plan to be 200 people, it will still fit.
- Marketing and service. Salesforce sells email marketing, customer service ticketing, and commerce as separate clouds that share the same data. Pinion deliberately does not build any of those.
Where Pinion wins
- Setup time. Pinion has no admin console. Sign up, name your business, add a client, book a job. Most people are sending their first invoice within ten minutes. Salesforce implementations for small businesses are typically measured in weeks and often involve a paid consultant.
- Price predictability. One number per month, in rand, that does not change when you hire. Nobody has to do per-seat maths before offering someone a job.
- Built for people who do the work. Pinion assumes you are on your phone, standing in a driveway. Snap a photo, attach it to the job, mark it done, send the invoice PDF. Salesforce’s mobile app is capable, but it is a window onto a desktop product.
- Inventory and invoicing in the box. Stock items, suppliers, purchase invoices, low-stock warnings, quotes, sales invoices with PDF export, and payment tracking are all standard on Pinion. On Salesforce these are either add-ons or things you build yourself.
- Downgrading never deletes anything. Cancel a paid Pinion plan and your organisation drops to Free with every record intact and readable.
Things Pinion does not do
Being upfront about this is the point of the page.
- No email marketing. We link out to tools that do it well.
- No accounting or tax engine. Invoices export as PDF, and accounting-package sync is on the roadmap, not in the product.
- No calendar sync yet, no WhatsApp integration yet, no client-facing portal.
- No workflow builder. Pinion recommends actions, a human decides.
- Custom fields are limited on purpose. If your process needs twenty of them, Salesforce is the honest answer.
Who should pick which
A three-person agency that sells retainers, a coach with forty clients, or a plumber with two vans will find Salesforce expensive to buy and expensive to keep configured. Pinion was built for exactly those businesses.
A company with a sales team, an operations team, and a marketing team who all need the same customer record, plus someone who owns the CRM as part of their job, will outgrow Pinion. That is fine. We would rather say so than sell you something that fits badly.
The bottom line
Salesforce is the more powerful product. Pinion is the one you will actually use on a Tuesday afternoon between jobs. If the second sentence describes your week, start with the Free plan and see whether it does what you need before spending anything.
Try Pinion free. Two seats, no card, no clock.
The Free plan doesn't expire. If it turns out Salesforce is the better fit, nothing is lost but ten minutes.