The Core Trade-Off
Salesforce is the world's most capable CRM platform. It also costs $300/user/month for Enterprise Edition — $360,000/year for a 100-person sales team. That's before implementation consulting ($50,000–$200,000), Salesforce Administrator headcount ($80,000–$120,000/year), and the inevitable add-on licences (Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Pardot) that each cost as much as the core platform.
A custom CRM built by an India-based team costs $40,000–$100,000 once. Annual maintenance: $10,000–$20,000. No per-user licence fees. No add-on modules. No Salesforce administrator.
The question isn't whether custom is cheaper. It clearly is at scale. The question is: does the cost saving justify the capability loss and the development risk?
What Salesforce Does Better
- Ecosystem: 5,000+ integrations on AppExchange. Any tool you use probably has a native Salesforce connector. With a custom CRM, you build each integration yourself.
- Out-of-the-box features: Reporting, dashboards, workflow automation, mobile app, and user management are immediately available. A custom CRM starts with none of these.
- Compliance certifications: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA BAA, GDPR — Salesforce has them. Custom CRM must earn them.
- Enterprise adoption: If your sales team comes from large enterprises, they know Salesforce. Zero training cost.
- Scalability: Salesforce handles millions of records without your engineering team worrying about it.
What Custom CRM Does Better
- Fit to your process: Salesforce is built for a generic sales process. Your process may be unique — multi-stage approval workflows, custom object relationships, industry-specific data models. Custom CRM fits your exact process without workarounds.
- Cost at scale: Every user costs Salesforce money. Custom CRM's marginal cost per additional user is near-zero once built.
- Integration with internal systems: A custom CRM can be deeply integrated with your custom ERP, production system, or proprietary data in ways Salesforce's API layer makes complex and expensive.
- No vendor lock-in: Salesforce switching costs are enormous — data migration, retraining, process redesign. You own your custom CRM's code and data.
- Feature velocity: Adding a new field or workflow to a custom CRM: 2 hours. In Salesforce: 2 days and possibly a Salesforce Admin certification requirement.
The 5-Year TCO Comparison
50-user sales team, mid-market B2B company:
| Salesforce Enterprise | Custom CRM (India build) | |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $180,000 (licences) + $80,000 (implementation) = $260,000 | $65,000 (build) + $3,000 (hosting) |
| Year 2 | $180,000 | $15,000 (maintenance) |
| Year 3 | $198,000 (10% increase) | $15,000 |
| Year 4 | $217,800 | $20,000 (feature additions) |
| Year 5 | $239,580 | $20,000 |
| 5-year total | $1,095,380 | $138,000 |
Custom CRM saves $957,380 over 5 years for a 50-person team. At 100 users, the Salesforce figure doubles to $2.1M while the custom CRM cost stays flat.
When to Stick With Salesforce
- Your team is under 15 people — build cost amortisation takes too long
- You rely heavily on AppExchange integrations with tools that have no API (rare but exists)
- Your process is entirely standard — no custom objects, no unusual workflows
- You're in a regulated industry where Salesforce's compliance certifications save significant effort
- Your sales team is large-enterprise veterans who will resist any non-Salesforce CRM
When to Build Custom
- Team of 20+ users where 5-year Salesforce cost exceeds $500,000
- Genuinely unique sales process (project-based, multi-party, complex approval chains)
- Deep integration with a custom ERP or production system required
- Indian market primary (Zoho CRM is a strong alternative at ₹2,000/user/month — $25/user/month — before considering custom)