Salesforce vs Twenty
 Salesforce |  Twenty | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 21/100 | 54/100 |
| Rank in category | #7 | #2 |
| Rated comments | 24 | 25 |
| Best for | Larger sales orgs with an in-house admin to own the system; Companies with complex custom objects, permissions and integrations; Teams that want the CRM with the widest consultant and integration ecosystem | Small teams that want a free or low-cost self-hosted CRM without per-seat fees; Technical teams that want to customize their CRM through an API or with AI coding tools; Teams leaving HubSpot or Salesforce mainly to cut cost |
| Skip it if | Small teams of under about 20 users without a dedicated admin; Buyers who want to change fields and workflows themselves without consultants; Budget-sensitive teams that need API access or heavier automation on lower tiers | Teams that need deep built-in workflow automation; Teams without anyone to host and maintain a self-hosted app; Buyers who need built-in reporting charts or formal security compliance |
| Starting price | $25/user/mo | $9/user/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Free Suite at $0; Starter Suite $25/user/mo (billed monthly or annually); Pro Suite $100, Core $195 and Advanced $395/user/mo billed annually; Max $550/user/mo through sales. Free trials on Starter through Advanced. | Self-hosting the open-source core is free. Cloud plans: Pro $9/user/mo and Organization $19/user/mo on yearly billing (yearly saves 25%); Enterprise from $50k/year through sales. 30-day free trial, no credit card. |
Independent users treat Salesforce as the most capable and customizable CRM but rarely as the right choice for small teams: of 24 non-promotional comments with an opinion, most describe it as overkill, expensive at the tiers that unlock automation and API access, and dependent on paid admins or consultants for routine changes. Its defenders are mostly people who have administered or implemented it alongside Dynamics or Zoho and found it easier or more complete, and several warn that leaving a heavily customized org is slow and costly. The corpus is heavily seeded: 39 of 100 comments were promotional, mostly agencies, freelance admins and rival CRM or custom-build vendors pitching in r/CRM threads from teams trying to leave Salesforce.
Users like
- Users and implementers describe it as able to model almost any process, with more depth than Zoho or HubSpot when heavily customized[1][2][3][4][5]
- People who have administered or implemented both Salesforce and Dynamics 365 say Salesforce is easier and more intuitive to work in[1][2]
- Seen as the mature, industry-standard choice, and a team that moved to Zoho says Zoho does most of the same things less smoothly[1][2][3]
- One user reports Salesforce still gives sizeable discounts and that admin work can now be done through the CLI with AI coding tools, cutting consultant hours[1]
Users complain about
- Widely called overkill for small teams, with admin overhead that forces the business to wrap itself around the tool[1][2][3][4][5]
- Expensive, and the price climbs steeply when a small team needs a higher edition; one 18-person team cut CRM spend from about $90k to under $25k a year by leaving[1][2][3][4][5]
- Routine changes often require a paid consultant; one team reports $200 per hour and three-week turnarounds for small edits[1][2]
- Leaving is slow: users report months-long migrations, painful exports of attachments and email history, and custom flows that must be rebuilt rather than copied[1][2][3]
Independent users mostly like Twenty as a free, self-hostable open-source CRM: they cite no per-seat fees, low hosting costs and how easily it can be customized through its API or with AI coding tools, and several moved to it from HubSpot or Salesforce to save money. The main trade-offs are thin built-in workflow automation (users bolt on n8n), fewer features than mature CRMs, and self-hosting that one user found cost more and broke more often than a SaaS CRM. Several comments in the discussion come from consultants and hosting services selling Twenty setups, and one user complains about the people advertising it.
Users like
- Free to self-host on a cheap server, and users can add as many people as they like without per-seat charges[1][2][3][4]
- Easy to customize and extend: users point to a strong API and to customizing it with Claude or other AI tools[1][2][3][4][5]
- Clean and minimal for basic contact management, with search and filtering one user found strong on a list of 8,000+ contacts[1][2][3]
- Users who tried several CRMs rate it among the few that tick most boxes, and some run their own business on it[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Built-in workflow automation is limited or clunky; users connect a separate n8n server for things like follow-up sequences[1][2][3]
- Self-hosting is not free in practice: one user's AWS hosting cost more than a SaaS CRM, and maintenance and breakages killed the project[1]
- Fewer features than mature CRMs; users mention no charts and say it is still early[1][2][3]
- One user calls it a terrible system with no security compliance certifications[1]