Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce: Which is the Best CRM Platform (2025 Comparison)

This exclusive guide on Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce CRM deeply highlights their features & pricing. Uncover the strengths & weaknesses of each platform to make the right choice for your business growth:

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has changed our way of doing business.

Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are both leaders in the CRM marketplace. Both shape the CRM that we have today. Both cater to business needs and various business sizes. Their features include sales tracking, customer case management, leads, lead ranking, and more.

Microsoft Dynamics Vs Salesforce CRM: Which is Better?

What is the Market Share of Microsoft Dynamics Vs. Salesforce

Recent reports in Salesforce News & Insights show Salesforce has a 21.7% share of the global CRM market in 2023. As per the chart below, the Microsoft share is 5.3% in 2021.

Here is a graphical representation that portrays the data until 2021:

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In this tutorial, we will explore the features and capabilities, pricing and pros and cons, similarities and differences, and pricing–to enable you to decide which is best for your business.

Comparing Features and Capabilities

While looking at the two CRM systems, we have obtained an overview of some of the key features and capabilities.

To enable the user to decide which one of these CRMs is suitable for their requirements, we will explore the features below, comparing Salesforce and MS Dynamics.

Here is the comparison chart based on features:

Microsoft Dynamics Vs Salesforce

Salesforce Vs Microsoft Dynamics 365: Pros and Cons

Both these products have higher scores in some specific areas. Here are some benefits and drawbacks to each of them:

Pros of Salesforce:

• Salesforce manages its in-house customer orientation and is known for its customer-centricity. Known for its educational network, Trailhead is one of its key assets.
• Marketing Cloud and Pardot services of Salesforce are both ready to use and mature.
• Salesforce AppExchange is yet another product that sets it apart. This product is different from others. It offers plenty of third-party integrations to enable your business to extract more from your platform.
• With Salesforce acquiring the retailer e-commerce platform Demandware, it provides robust e-commerce facilities that are sure to improve in the future.

Pros of Dynamics 365:

• Dynamics 365, in terms of flexibility and competitive pricing, scores higher based on its licensing model. It is cost-effective and accessible to smaller businesses.
• Another pro of Dynamics 365 is its native integration with LinkedIn. Microsoft Relationship Sales is created from Dynamics 365 for Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It can identify leads and help to create relations through personalized engagement, using LinkedIn data.
• Microsoft commits to offer 99.9% uptime with its Service Level Agreement (SLA). However, SLA with a Salesforce is only available when you request and must be negotiated.

Cons of Salesforce:

• You need to install connectors when you want Salesforce to share data with any business software like an ERP solution. The cost increases as you use more software.
• Salesforce is not an option for small and mid-sized companies due to an increase in cost and contractual obligations.
• According to some reports, the Field Service Lightning module fails to be an integral part of the overall CRM solution, unlike the same module in Dynamics 365.

Cons of Dynamics 365:

• It is a new product which came out in 2016. Although growing in popularity, users are often wary of buying it.
• Dynamics offers customization, but it is difficult to master without any development know-how. Finally, third-party integrations are lesser in Dynamics than Salesforce.

Suggested Reading => Top Salesforce Competitors

Similarities Between Salesforce and MS Dynamics

The key features of sales and service systems for both Salesforce and MS Dynamics are similar. These products handle account and contact management, territory management, field service, social customer service, and sales forecasting.

Besides, both the above products provide their app marketplaces. These also offer you numerous business tools to improve the usability of your CRM and align with your industry in an improved manner.

Finally, the products find usage in larger or rapidly growing organizations since they are licensed as software-as-a-service versions. This enables them to scale both ways, based on your business size and functionalities.

Differences Between Salesforce and MS Dynamics

Salesforce is a SaaS-driven CRM, focusing on a simple learning curve, customizability, and system connectivity. It is a cloud-based, service-oriented platform for enhancing only customer relationship management. It is labeled as a CRM.

But Dynamics 365 is an altogether different class of technology. It is a product that is a blend of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and also Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP). It relies heavily on IT resources and also integrates with other Microsoft products.

Here are some more differences:

#1) Related to Platform

Salesforce is offered as a Cloud-based CRM application. It is useful when you store your data in remote servers and use browser-based or mobile-friendly software.

However, this is not beneficial when you own the license and get the software hosted on your server.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is much more flexible in terms of implementation and customization. Dynamics offers Sales and Service as cloud-based editions, but Finance and Operations appear as optional on-premises versions.

However, in the last few years, Dynamics has emerged with major cloud-based versions as more companies have utilized public and private cloud hosting, with limited demands on on-premises version servers.

#2) Integrations and Elasticity

It is a general opinion that Salesforce is a winner in offering integration solutions like increasing the speed of your CRM, optimizing for various industries, creating your CRM, and many more. Besides, your business or in-house developers can build custom solutions with Salesforce because Salesforce has its connected platforms and its partner program.

In addition, Salesforce provides plenty of apps through its AppExchange, including integration with its Marketing Cloud.

Whereas, Microsoft AppSource now has many app connections and is gaining in competition with Salesforce. Furthermore, the comprehensive Microsoft CRM platform offers integration with Power BI and PowerApps, enabling you to create a customized app by utilizing your data and connections.

In addition, you may win in terms of integration and flexibility with Microsoft software, more so when your business has preexisting custom apps.

Finally, Salesforce offers you the advantage of integrating with the majority of third-party apps and also connects to Microsoft apps. But, you have the advantage of using native integrations and connections of Dynamics 365.

#3) Features

Salesforce does many things that Dynamics cannot do, such as partner management, data governance tools, and sales performance management. However, it all depends on your data needs, company size, and your reach on a global scale. It might not affect your deal if Dynamics lacks these features.

Microsoft has invested in automation and introduced some features since the 2015 update of Microsoft Dynamics 365. This automation has improved the Engagement Plan tools for sales and service. Besides, these automated features along with AI enable your sales team to understand their clients in an improved way.

The sales team can now monitor the social channels enhanced, gather knowledge at the best time to email and improve customer experience. Finally, now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, they have improvised their social selling features for direct connection to the business social platform.

#4) Features Related to Artificial and Automated Intelligence

These AI and Automated features set apart Salesforce and Dynamics Engagement from other CRMs. Both have enterprise-level resources available to them, to create or acquire AI tools to make their service and sales tools appear smarter.

Salesforce offers Einstein AI algorithms -for understanding your company’s selling habits and gives suggestions for improvements. Einstein offers answers to customer queries or guides customers on the most effective strategies. And, when this is implemented in marketing and services campaigns and tools. Einstein comes at an add-on cost.

Salesforce Einstein AI uses advanced technologies such as machine learning and language models across various functions like service, sales, marketing, and the Salesforce platform.

We have Einstein Copilot as the conversational assistant to improve productivity by answering queries in natural language and providing answers based on proprietary, secure data for your company.

Salesforce Einstein AI is trustworthy since Salesforce offers the Einstein Trust Layer, an inbuilt, secure AI architecture. It ensures your data safety through the following means: Data Masking, Prompt Data Defence, Audit and Transparency, Toxicity Scoring, and many others.

Salesforce improves customer satisfaction, efficiency, and productivity, using personal interactions and intelligent automation.

However, Dynamics 365 comes with Microsoft AI tools for both sales and services modules. It offers smart sales predictions and natural language parsing. Finally, these tools improve the speed of business applications.

Dynamics 365 AI Copilot helps to streamline client interactions, enable data-driven decision-making, and optimize business processes to serve the objective of bringing AI directly into the workflow of various teams like marketing, customer service, etc.

In fact, in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Copilot helps the agents provide support – with contextually right responses – for email responses and chats. It offers an interactive chat experience with the knowledge base and historical data.

Another good example is the offering of customer insights and marketing. Here Dynamics 365 Copilot revolutionizes tasks by facilitating data exploration, content creation, and segmention of the audience.

Furthermore, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Copilot also helps create targeted customer segments and crafts content — for new email campaigns with analysis of current marketing materials and internet sources.

#5) User Training

Salesforce offers a unique way of training CRM companies with its own Trailhead, a gamified Learning Center. They impart free training to subscribers, not charging for training classes or content.

So, if you wish to become an administrator, developer, or consultant, you can start training yourself through Trailhead. To improve engagement, Salesforce offers badges based on skills and real fun to get your accreditations.

Besides, Salesforce promotes partnerships with vendors for services – consulting and development.

However, this is not available in Dynamics. Microsoft does not provide such learning resources and its consultant base is limited. The use of these consulting resources leads to higher costs for the solution or implementation.

#6) User Experience

Salesforce has a much more modernized technology company-type user interface (UI). However, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is considered an easier option to generate and customize reports. It is true, tried, and classic in nature.

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#7) Deployment and Flexibility

Dynamics offers deployment that provides on-premises server deployment. So, if you are interested in onsite CRM software, then Microsoft is the best option because Salesforce is cloud-based. So, Dynamics is more flexible.

#8) Community and Support

Salesforce and Dynamics 365 both offer support for ecosystems and communities. They come with extensive documentation and resources.

However, Salesforce offers a larger community (Trailblazers) and user base. But Dynamics has a smaller community. Salesforce can quickly answer your queries and solve your problems with its community, but its an overwhelming experience for some users.

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Which is Better – Salesforce or Dynamics 365

Both the CRMs are equally good. It all depends on your business needs. Both tools provide scalable platforms and excellent features. You can also create custom solutions using add-ons and optional modules available in their online stores, which have great user interfaces.

However, at a basic level, Dynamics 365 is more expensive. However, when scaling up, the cost increases for both, depending on the type of customization.

Besides, Dynamics 365 offers improved reporting and when requiring on-premises deployment, Dynamics 365 offers a plan as the only option but not Salesforce, which is cloud-based.

Finally, everything depends on your business needs, your existing system, and all the features you need now. Of course, budget is a crucial deciding factor.

Pricing and System

The core of the Salesforce CRM is formed with the Salesforce Sales Cloud. It is a web-based application that helps your organization to achieve business growth through multichannel relations.

On the other hand, the Service Cloud product from Salesforce offers two elements – Case Management and Customer Service. Besides, Salesforce also offers Marketing Automation and Machine Learning through Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce offers starting price plans at a cheaper rate. However, when you start scaling up, Salesforce is likely to become more expensive compared to Microsoft Dynamics 365, which offers discounts for additional software.

Businesses can choose any if these modules or bundle them together, payable – in monthly amounts for the entire platform. The Sales Cloud and Service Cloud bundle prices are comparable to the industry level.

However, when offered as an add-on, Pardot, a B2B marketing automation application, and Marketing Cloud are obtainable at a cost-intensive price.

However, Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a different packaging. It allows your business to scale from a simple CRM up to ERP capabilities. Dynamics 365 Sales is the core product here, and it has the focus on Salesforce Automation and helps your team to detect and close on opportunities. It is offered just as a single tool or bundled out with other business operation tools.

Dynamics offers a Customer Engagement Plan that includes sales, marketing, service, project automation, field service, and social engagement tools. It has the Unit Operations Plan bringing all together – finance and operations, retail, and talent management features. The Dynamics 365 tool encompasses all the features needed for a complete CRM platform.

A comparison was made between the two CRMs based on their Sales and Service editions (Customer Engagement Plan for Dynamics and Sales and Service Cloud capability bundle for Salesforce).

Here is a comparison between the prices for the two CRMs:

Microsoft Dynamics 365:

• Dynamics 365 Sales Professional plan costs you $65 per user, per month.
• Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise plan costs $95 per user per month.
• Dynamics 365 Sales
• Premium plan incurs a cost of $135 per user per month.
• The Dynamics 365 Marketing plan begins at $1,500 per tenant per month.
• Get the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional plan at $50 per user per month.
• The company provides the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise plan at $95 per user per month.
• Microsoft Relationship Sales plan costs $162 per user per month.

Salesforce:

• The Salesforce Sales Cloud Essentials plan incurs a cost of $25 per user per month when billed annually.
• The Salesforce Sales Cloud Professional plan is obtainable at $75 per user per month when billed annually.
• The Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise plan costs $150 per user per month, billed annually.
• Get the Salesforce Sales Cloud Unlimited plan at $300 per user per month billed annually.
• The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation (Pardot) plan begins at $1,250 per user per month billed annually.
• The Salesforce Service Cloud plan begins at $25 per user per month billed annually.

The above facts establish Dynamics 365 as a clear winner, with a small margin. The basic plan of Salesforce is limiting, although the base price may appear cheaper.

However, when you include all the required functionalities, then Dynamics 365 appears to be the winner concerning price.

Here is an overall comparison chart:

Note: You can get further information about Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, from the links.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Conclusion

Further to our research on Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce we conclude that costs related to support, ongoing maintenance, and adjustments for new releases are much lesser compared to the Microsoft platform (on-premises and online).

Moreover, Salesforce is quite expensive in terms of 3^rd party applications. So, it is best to engage the user community and offer the best documentation.

Dynamics 365 comes with on-premises server deployment and is the best and only option for your business with a requirement for an onsite CRM since Salesforce is cloud-based.

Finally, Dynamics 365 offers a much more favorable pricing model for long-term clients.