Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales are the two best-known CRM platforms for business-to-business sales. Both are mature, both can be customised heavily, and both are used by companies from small teams to global enterprises. Choosing between them is rarely about which is “better”. It is about which fits your company’s tools, processes and budget over the next five years.
We implement Dynamics 365 and have migrated companies from Salesforce to Dynamics, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to describe both fairly.
1. The tools your people already use
Dynamics 365 Sales is built to work with Microsoft 365: emails and meetings tracked from Outlook, collaboration in Teams, documents in SharePoint, and reporting in Power BI. For companies that live in Microsoft tools, salespeople can do most of their CRM work without leaving Outlook, which helps adoption.
Salesforce integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace too, and has the largest ecosystem of CRM add-ons through its AppExchange marketplace. Companies that use many specialist sales and marketing tools often value that breadth.
2. Customisation and the wider platform
Salesforce is customised with its own configuration tools, Flows and the Apex language, and its platform supports a wide range of custom applications. Dynamics 365 runs on Microsoft Dataverse and is extended with the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate) and C# plugins, the same tools many companies already use for other business apps.
Both can become complex if every request becomes a customisation. Good governance matters more than the platform: keep a record of what was built and why.
3. Connection to finance and operations
If your company uses, or plans to use, Dynamics 365 Business Central or Finance & Operations for ERP, Dynamics 365 Sales shares the same Microsoft platform, which simplifies quotes, orders, customers and invoices moving between sales and finance. Salesforce connects to ERPs through integrations, which work well but are one more thing to build and maintain.
4. AI features
Both vendors are adding AI assistants to their CRMs: Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Einstein in Salesforce, with features such as email drafting, meeting summaries and opportunity insights. Both are developing quickly, so judge them on a demo with your own scenarios rather than on announcements.
5. Cost
Both charge per user per month across several editions, with add-ons for features such as advanced analytics, AI and customer service. Prices change, so compare current quotes for your own numbers. Include implementation, integrations, data migration, training and the internal time to run the system. Companies already paying for Microsoft 365 sometimes find Dynamics 365 easier to fit into existing agreements.
6. Switching later
Moving from one CRM to the other is very possible, and we do it, but it is a real project: automations have to be rebuilt, data and attachments moved and reconciled, integrations reconnected and people retrained. Choosing carefully now saves that cost later. If you are considering a move because a renewal is coming up, start early, because a migration done in a rush is where data gets lost.
How to decide
- Write down your sales process and the five things salespeople do most often. Test those in both systems.
- List the systems the CRM must connect to, especially email, ERP and marketing tools.
- Ask for references from companies of your size and industry.
- Compare the five-year cost, including implementation and support.
If your company is built on Microsoft 365 and Dynamics ERP, Dynamics 365 Sales is usually the more natural choice. If you depend on a wide range of specialist sales tools, Salesforce deserves a close look.
We implement Dynamics 365 CRM and provide Dynamics 365 support. See how we approached a Salesforce to Dynamics 365 migration.