Sustainable Substitutes for Salesforce

Salesforce is a customer relationship management solution.

Reasons to avoid Salesforce

Salesforce is criticised for contributing to market monopolisation, leveraging its vast customer data to stifle competition. The company faces significant privacy and transparency issues, particularly regarding the handling and security of customer data, as evidenced by recent breaches and lawsuits. Salesforce’s aggressive AI deployment has also drawn criticism for reliability and governance, with reports of internal trust issues and job cuts.

Choose ethical, open-source and transparent alternatives.

Ethical and Sustainable Salesforce Alternatives

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SuiteCRM

An open-source, affordable and customisable Customer Relatation Management system.

SuiteCRM is fully open-source, ensuring transparency, customization, and community-driven development.
SuiteCRM Ltd is based in Scotland (UK). SuiteCRM is developed and maintained in the EU/UK.
SuiteCRM can be self-hosted, giving businesses full control over their data and infrastructure.
SuiteCRM does not include advertisements, maintaining a professional and clean interface.
SuiteCRM prioritises user privacy, particularly in self-hosted environments.
SuiteCRM itself does not have built-in, mandatory AI, but it supports AI integrations via third-party modules and tools.
Self-hosting the community edition is completely free apart from the hosting costs.
SuiteCRM offers a modular design, enabling customisation and scalability according to specific business needs.
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ERPNext

An open-source, affordable and customisable Enterprise Resource Planning system.

ERPNext does not include AI bloat in its core product. AI-based extensions are available though.
ERPNext is designed to be privacy-friendly, particularly in self-hosted environments, minimising data exposure.
ERPNext features a modular design, allowing users to customise and extend functionality based on their requirements.
ERPNext does not display advertisements, ensuring a clean and professional user experience.
ERPNext is free of charge, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes.
ERPNext can be self-hosted, giving businesses full control over their data and infrastructure.
ERPNext is fully open-source, ensuring transparency, customization, and community-driven development.
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Odoo

An open-source Customer Relation Management and Enterprise Ressource Planning suite.

The community edition (self-hosted) is free of charge.
Odoo is designed with privacy in mind, especially when self-hosted.
Odoo does not display advertisements, providing a clean and uninterrupted user experience.
Odoo features a modular architecture, allowing users to enable or disable specific applications based on their needs.
Odoo can be self-hosted, giving businesses full control over their data and infrastructure.
Odoo is based in Belgium, ensuring compliance with GDPR and strong European privacy laws.
Odoo is open-source, allowing full transparency, customization, and community-driven development.
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The 5 main issues with Salesforce

Big Tech - Big Tech companies do not nourish people and planet. This is especially true in times of political tension.

Salesforce is one of the largest CRM companies, contributing to market monopolization, with a market capitalization of over $200 billion and a dominant position in the SaaS industry, raising concerns about stifled competition and high costs for customers. Source: The Register: Salesforce adds AI to everything, jacks up prices by 6%

Privacy Concerns - User data is likely to be stored and used against users' best interest.

Salesforce has faced repeated privacy breaches and data leaks, including a 2025 incident where threat actors stole nearly 1 billion records from customer portals, exposing sensitive user data and raising serious concerns about data security and user privacy. Source: Ars Technica: Salesforce says it won’t pay extortion demand in 1 billion records breach (2025)TechCrunch: Hacking group claims theft of 1 billion records from Salesforce customer databases (2025)The Register: Prompt injection – and a $5 domain – trick Salesforce Agentforce into leaking sales (2025)

Lack of Transparency - Opacity in operations, data handling, or supply chains, making it difficult for users to understand practices.

Salesforce’s AI and data practices have been criticised for lack of transparency, especially in how data is used and shared across platforms Source: The Register: Prompt injection – and a $5 domain – trick Salesforce Agentforce into leaking sales (2025)

Exploitative Labour Practices - Poor working conditions and low wages for workers involved in production or services.

Salesforce is implementing much stricter performance measurements for engineering, with some salespeople being put under pressure to quit or succumb to harsh performance policies of their own.Source:TechCrunch: Salesforce yields to activist pressure with harsh new policies for engineers, salespeople (2023)

AI Bloat - Service has unnecessary or harmful AI features.

Salesforce has faced internal and external criticism over the reliability and governance of its AI models, with reports of trust issues and job cuts related to AI deployment.Source:The Register: Prompt injection – and a $5 domain – trick Salesforce Agentforce into leaking sales (2025)Heise: Salesforce: Trust in AI agents is good, control is better (2026)