Helium vs Salesforce
The world’s best CRM versus a unified operations platform that includes CRM and 40+ more modules. Two very different philosophies for running a product business.
Let’s be upfront: Salesforce is the most successful CRM platform ever built. It essentially invented the modern SaaS category, and its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud products are used by hundreds of thousands of organisations worldwide. With the launch of Einstein and now Agentforce, Salesforce is also making one of the largest investments in AI of any enterprise software company. If your primary need is enterprise-grade customer relationship management, Salesforce is the benchmark against which every other CRM is measured. But here is the question most growing product businesses eventually arrive at: what about everything else? Salesforce does not manage your inventory. It does not run your warehouse. It has no native accounting, no purchasing module, no manufacturing or MRP capability, no compliance documentation engine, and no warehouse management system. Commerce Cloud handles storefronts, but not the operational backbone behind them. To get a complete operational stack with Salesforce at its centre, you need to layer on a separate ERP, a WMS, an accounting package, and potentially several other systems — each with its own contract, its own integration middleware, and its own six-figure implementation project. Helium Systems takes the opposite approach. It was built from the ground up as a single platform covering every operational discipline a product business needs: CRM and sales pipeline alongside inventory, warehousing, purchasing, manufacturing, native double-entry accounting, multichannel commerce, shipping, returns, compliance, AI intelligence, and more. All 40-plus modules are included on every plan, starting at £249 per month. This comparison is not about which product is "better" in absolute terms — that depends entirely on what you need. It is about understanding the trade-offs between the world’s most powerful CRM ecosystem and a unified platform purpose-built for product operations.
Helium vs Salesforce: Pricing
A transparent look at what each platform costs.
Helium Systems
Every feature included on every plan
Salesforce
Enterprise CRM, commerce, and AI platform
The pricing comparison between Helium and Salesforce is not straightforward, because they solve different problems at radically different scales. Salesforce prices per user, per month, per cloud — and the clouds are additive. If you need Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, you are paying for each one separately. A team of 20 users on Sales Cloud Enterprise alone is $3,300 per month. Add Service Cloud and that doubles. Commerce Cloud layers on GMV-based or per-order pricing on top of everything. For a mid-market product business with 30 staff, a typical Salesforce deployment including Sales Cloud Enterprise, Service Cloud, and basic Commerce Cloud integration can easily reach $10,000–$20,000 per month in licensing alone — before implementation costs that routinely run into six figures. Salesforce implementations are complex enough that they have created an entire consulting industry around them. Certified Salesforce partners, administrators, and developers are essential, not optional. Helium’s Growth plan at £249 per month includes CRM, sales pipeline, customer service, and 40 more modules. The Business plan at £1,199 per month supports 100 users and 75,000 orders. Even at Enterprise level, Helium’s annual cost is typically less than a single quarter of a comparable Salesforce deployment. Critically, Helium also includes the inventory, warehouse, accounting, and manufacturing capabilities that Salesforce does not offer at any price — those would require yet another vendor and yet another contract. The total cost of ownership gap is not marginal. For product businesses, Helium typically costs 80–95% less than a Salesforce-centred stack when you factor in the additional ERP, WMS, and accounting systems Salesforce requires alongside it.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
How Helium and Salesforce stack up across every module.
This is a comparison between two fundamentally different types of platform, which makes the feature grid both revealing and nuanced. In the CRM, customer service, marketing, and AI categories, Salesforce is genuinely world-class. Einstein and Agentforce represent billions of dollars of AI investment, and the depth of Sales Cloud’s customisation — custom objects, Apex triggers, Flow Builder, Lightning Web Components — is unmatched by any competitor. If you need a CRM that can be moulded to virtually any enterprise sales process, Salesforce is the industry standard. Where the comparison becomes one-sided in the other direction is operational capability. Salesforce has no inventory management, no warehouse management, no manufacturing, no native accounting, no purchasing, and no compliance documentation. These are not gaps that AppExchange can easily fill — they require full ERP systems like SAP, NetSuite, or Microsoft Dynamics, each with their own implementation projects and licensing costs. Helium includes all of these capabilities natively, in a single subscription, with data flowing between modules in real time. The practical implication is that a Salesforce-centred product business typically runs three to five separate systems: Salesforce for CRM, an ERP for finance and operations, a WMS for warehouse, and possibly separate tools for commerce and shipping. A Helium customer runs one system. The difference in operational complexity, data consistency, and total cost is substantial.
CRM & Sales Pipeline
Order Management
Inventory & Warehouse
Multichannel Commerce
Accounting & Finance
Customer Service & Support
Manufacturing & Supply Chain
Marketing & Campaigns
AI & Intelligence
Platform & Integration
Strengths at a Glance
Where Helium Excels
- All 40+ modules included on every plan — CRM, inventory, warehouse, accounting, manufacturing, AI, and more in one subscription
- Native inventory and warehouse management with bin locations, pick-pack-dispatch, batch tracking, and AI-powered allocation
- Built-in double-entry accounting with AR, AP, VAT, multi-currency, profitability analytics, and scenario modelling
- Full manufacturing and MRP: bill of materials, work orders, production routing, workstation scheduling, and supplier management
- 80–95% lower total cost of ownership compared to a Salesforce + ERP + WMS stack for product businesses
- Self-service implementation in days, not months — no certified consultants or six-figure project budgets required
- Transparent, published pricing starting at £249/mo — no per-user multiplication across separate clouds
- Single source of truth: every module shares the same data in real time, eliminating sync delays and data inconsistencies between separate systems
Where Salesforce Excels
- The gold standard in CRM — the deepest, most customisable customer relationship management platform in the world, refined over 25 years
- Massive AI investment with Einstein and Agentforce: autonomous AI agents, predictive scoring, generative content, and conversational AI at enterprise scale
- AppExchange ecosystem with 7,000+ pre-built integrations and apps — virtually any business tool can connect to Salesforce
- Unmatched enterprise scalability: proven at Fortune 500 companies processing millions of records with complex multi-division structures
- Custom development platform (Apex, Lightning, Visualforce) enables building virtually any business process on top of Salesforce
- MuleSoft integration middleware (owned by Salesforce) provides enterprise-grade API management and system orchestration
- Enormous partner ecosystem: thousands of certified consultants, implementation partners, and developers worldwide
- Commerce Cloud offers enterprise-grade B2C and B2B storefronts with headless commerce capabilities
Switching from Salesforce?
Here's why teams are making the move to Helium.
The decision between Salesforce and Helium is less about "switching" and more about choosing the right architecture for your business. Very few companies move from a mature Salesforce deployment to a different CRM — that would be like replacing the foundation of a building. The more common scenario is a growing product business evaluating which direction to invest in before committing to a multi-year platform strategy. For businesses currently considering Salesforce, the critical question is: do you primarily need a CRM, or do you need a complete operational platform? If your business is services-based, enterprise sales-driven, or already has a mature ERP handling operations, Salesforce’s CRM depth is hard to argue against. But if you are a product business that needs to manage physical inventory, run a warehouse, handle purchasing and manufacturing, track profitability at the SKU level, and do accounting — alongside CRM and sales — then Salesforce becomes just one piece of a much larger (and more expensive) puzzle. Helium is purpose-built for this second scenario. The CRM and sales pipeline module is capable and growing, with Kanban boards, territory management, quote generation with margin calculation, and AI-powered lead scoring. It is not as deep as Salesforce’s CRM — we would be dishonest to claim otherwise — but it is integrated with every other operational module in a way that Salesforce cannot match. When a sales rep creates a quote in Helium, it pulls live stock levels, real-time landed costs, and accurate margin calculations from the same system. In a Salesforce + ERP setup, that same workflow requires middleware, data sync, and often manual reconciliation. For product businesses that have been quoted $200,000+ for a Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation and are now looking at the additional cost of an ERP and WMS on top, Helium offers a radically simpler and more affordable alternative.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce is, without question, the most powerful CRM platform in the world. Its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Einstein AI capabilities represent the pinnacle of customer relationship management technology. For large enterprises whose primary challenge is managing complex sales cycles, multi-division account structures, and sophisticated marketing journeys, Salesforce remains the benchmark. If CRM is your central business requirement and you have the budget for implementation and ongoing administration, Salesforce delivers capabilities that no other platform can match. However, Salesforce is not an operations platform. It does not manage inventory, run warehouses, handle manufacturing, process purchase orders, or do accounting. For product businesses, these capabilities are not optional — they are the core of daily operations. Building a complete operational stack around Salesforce means layering on an ERP, a WMS, an accounting system, and integration middleware, with total costs that can easily exceed $250,000 in the first year and $100,000+ annually thereafter. Helium Systems offers a fundamentally different proposition: one platform, one subscription, one source of truth. The CRM is not as deep as Salesforce’s — no platform’s is — but it is competent, growing, and integrated with 40 other operational modules in a way that a bolt-on architecture cannot replicate. For UK and European product businesses doing £1M–£50M in revenue, where operational efficiency matters as much as sales pipeline management, Helium delivers more total capability at a fraction of the cost. The honest answer: if you are a large enterprise and CRM is your primary need, choose Salesforce. If you are a product business that needs everything — CRM, inventory, warehouse, accounting, manufacturing, compliance, and AI — in one system, Helium is the stronger choice.
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