Dynamics 365 Sales starts to make sense around 50 staff if you’re replacing an older system, or 100 if you’re starting from scratch.
What you’re buying
Dynamics 365 Sales isn’t an out-of-the-box solution. It’s made for consultants to configure.
Licences are the small part. Microsoft’s Australian price list has Sales Professional at AU$97.30 a user a month and Sales Enterprise at AU$157.10, both ex GST. Ten salespeople on Enterprise is about AU$18,900 a year before GST.
Consulting is the big part. Don’t start on any Dynamics product without a good partner or an in-house Power Platform specialist, and assume you’ll spend at least $50K on consulting, often several times that. Dynamics consultants are some of the most expensive in the industry.
A good Dynamics partner will often send a small business back to HubSpot. Microsoft doesn’t have a product for that end of the market yet.
Who it suits
Mid-size and enterprise organisations, where it competes with Salesforce. If you have a lot of customer contact and complex customer processes, such as a government department or a utility, Dynamics works and HubSpot doesn’t. It also sits well beside Dynamics 365 Finance.
What to use instead
- HubSpot for most small businesses, especially marketing-led ones. The Starter Customer Platform does the job out of the box, well and cheaply: US$15 a seat a month paid yearly, or US$20 month to month. That’s a few hundred bucks a year for a small team, and HubSpot holds your hand more than most.
- Pipedrive, Zoho or Freshsales if HubSpot doesn’t fit. HubSpot is the default pick at this size, but it needs careful management.
- Odoo if you really want one all-in-one system. Be cautious: there’s such a thing as too integrated, too broad, and not every module is the same quality. For some businesses it’s great.
- Business Central plus HubSpot if you already run Business Central for finance. Business Central with Microsoft 365 shouldn’t be slept on, and moving from it to Odoo is almost never worth it. HubSpot builds a Business Central connector that syncs customers, items, opportunities and sales orders both ways. Customers land as HubSpot contacts, not companies. Custom field mappings need a paid Operations Hub plan. The listing’s reviews are poor, so test it with your own data first.
Make it the source of truth
Whatever you pick, a CRM only gets used if management relies on its reports. Don’t let people route around it with Excel, or you negate the entire purpose.