Dynamics 365 vs Salesforce

Editions and list prices

Dynamics 365

Sales Professional at $65, Sales Enterprise at $105 and Sales Premium at $150, each paid yearly. Microsoft Relationship Sales adds LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Sales Enterprise, has a variable price and needs at least 10 seats. Professional and Enterprise users may not be deployed in the same environment.

Salesforce

Starter Suite at $25, billed monthly or annually. Pro Suite at $100, Core at $195, Advanced at $395 and Max at $550, all billed annually. Core replaces Enterprise Edition, Advanced replaces Unlimited Edition and Max replaces Agentforce 1 Edition.

Sales Enterprise adds customization and extensibility to Professional, so compare it with Core, which replaced Salesforce's Enterprise Edition.

Outlook, Teams and Slack

Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 App for Outlook links email and meetings to CRM records and syncs contacts with Exchange. Teams integration lets anyone in the organization view and work on records in a chat or channel, and sellers can call through Teams from inside Dynamics 365. It is not supported when Dynamics 365 and Teams are in different tenants.

Salesforce

Core includes Slack Business+, and Max includes Slack Enterprise+. The Sales Cloud edition comparison lists email integration with Gmail or Outlook.

Dynamics 365 connects to Microsoft's mail and meeting tools, while Salesforce includes Slack in its upper editions.

Data platform

Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Sales stores its data in Dataverse tables. Power Apps can build on that data without a separate integration. Power Automate and Power BI can also use it. Dataverse tables are available in the Excel add-ins.

Salesforce

Sales Cloud runs on the Salesforce Platform, which runs on Hyperforce. Data 360, formerly Data Cloud, unifies data from sources such as external data lakes and websites into one customer profile, without copying it.

Microsoft shares one data store across its business apps, while Salesforce adds a separate data layer for outside sources.

Customization and development

Dynamics 365

Plug-ins are .NET classes registered on Dataverse events. Microsoft advises trying declarative options first. The Power Apps component framework builds code components for forms, views and dashboards. Power Automate builds workflows. Custom apps and Power Automate automation on Dynamics 365 Sales require additional licenses.

Salesforce

Flow Builder handles low-code automation and can be extended with Apex. Apex is Salesforce's own strongly typed, object-oriented language with Java-like syntax. Lightning Web Components is a JavaScript framework for the interface.

Dynamics 365 plug-ins are written for .NET, while Salesforce code-level logic is written in Apex.

AI agents and how they are priced

Dynamics 365

Prebuilt agents include Sales Qualification, Sales Opportunity and Sales Research Agent. Custom agents are built in Copilot Studio. Agents run on Copilot Credits. Sales Premium includes 1,000 credits per user per month. Copilot Studio sells packs of 25,000 credits for $200 a month, or credits pay-as-you-go. An Azure subscription is required to use these agents.

Salesforce

Agent Builder configures agents with Flows, prompts, Apex and MuleSoft APIs. Flex Credits cost $500 per 100,000, and an Agentforce action uses 20. Customer-facing agents can instead be priced at $2 per conversation. The Agentforce add-on for Sales costs $125 per user per month for unmetered employee use. Max includes it.

Both meter agent work in credits that are not equal units, so price a real task on each.

Hosting and sovereignty

Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Sales is hosted in regional datacenters, including North America, Canada, Europe, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, India, Japan, Korea, South Africa, the UAE and China. US Government GCC and GCC High are separate options. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises), version 9.1, is a separate on-premises product.

Salesforce

Hyperforce runs Salesforce on the public cloud, with regions including the US, UK, Germany, India and Japan. Customer data is generally stored in the country of the org. Hyperforce has no added cost. The EU Operating Zone is a paid offering with EU-based support. Government Cloud is designed to meet FedRAMP requirements.

Check that your country and compliance regime are on each list, and note that Microsoft also documents an on-premises CRM.

Choose Dynamics 365 when

• your staff already work in Outlook and Teams in one Microsoft tenant
• you want CRM data in Dataverse for Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI
• you need US Government GCC High hosting or an on-premises deployment

Choose Salesforce when

• you want Slack, Tableau Next and Data 360 in the same edition as the CRM
• your developers will build in Apex, Flow and Lightning Web Components
• you want agent usage for employees unmetered per user, or metered per action

A company on Microsoft 365 where sellers live in Outlook and Teams

Dynamics 365. The Outlook app and Teams integration put CRM records in both, within one tenant.

CRM must run on-premises

Dynamics 365. Microsoft documents Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises), version 9.1.

A sales team that already runs on Slack

Salesforce. Core and above include a paid Slack plan.

Many employees need only occasional CRM access

Dynamics 365 has a Team Members license with read-only access and basic tasks. Salesforce sells an Agentforce User License at $5 per user per month, which requires Flex Credits and limits CRM objects.