Dynamics 365 vs Salesforce: Market Share

One of the most popular questions when comparing Dynamics 365 and Salesforce is market share. How much does each company control in the CRM market? How have Microsoft and Salesforce increased (or decreased) in terms of market share over the past couple of years?

This is a relatively easy question to provide an answer to. In this article, I’ll consolidate, summarize, and predict the future of Dynamics 365 and Salesforce market share. As I go along, I’ll provide as many sources and links as I can find.

Sources

There are a surprisingly scant number of sources for CRM market share. The most recent full analysis appears to be a Gartner report released in May of 2016. This report monitored CRM market share for 2015. There’s some good analysis on the Gartner report here.

I also found an IDC report on CRM market share that was released in June of 2017, but I can’t find any mention of Microsoft from that report without paying $4500. We can do some math (below) to estimate the Dynamics 365 Market Share, however.

A third source I can find is a survey conducted by Apps Run The World in June 2016. And that’s pretty much it! This is going to be a short article.

Dynamics 365 and Salesforce Market Share Comparison

Thankfully, all the sources I found have similar results. The first, most often cited Gartner report (2016) gives the following results:

Brand	CRM Market Share
Salesforce	19.7%
Microsoft	4.3%

 

The IDC report (2017) abstract says that “the top 5 vendors represent 41.4% of the market”. A Salesforce press release also shows the top 3 vendors, which don’t include Microsoft.

If we do some subtraction (41.4 – 18.1 – 9.4 – 7.2), and we assume that Microsoft is #4 on the list (as they are on the other two) – we know that Microsoft’s market share according to IDC is in the following range:

Brand	CRM Market Share
Salesforce	18.1%
Microsoft	0 – 6.7%

In all likelihood, IDC puts Microsoft at 3.5 – 4%, if we compare the results of the other studies to IDC’s remainder.

Finally, the ‘Apps Run The World’ survey (2016) found:

Brand	CRM Market Share
Salesforce	21%
Microsoft	4%

 

Overall, it looks like the findings are consistent – Dynamics 365 has about a 4% market share, and Salesforce is sitting in the 20% range.

Changes Over Time

Below I have a chart from Salesforce’s Investor Presentation, which draws its data from the Gartner study. I found it in this Salesforce company overview.

Compared to all other vendors in the Gartner report however, the differences look slightly less significant. (source)

It looks like Microsoft has either flatlined or slightly increased in market share over the past three years, while Salesforce is the only major player showing double-digit growth. It would appear that the influx of other, smaller vendors is one of the main market trends.

The Future?

I’m eagerly awaiting some updated numbers. It might be too early to see the effects of Microsoft rebranding “Dynamics CRM” to “Dynamics 365”, but I’m very curious to know if Salesforce will be able to keep up their rate of growth.

I have a feeling that Microsoft will begin to creep up on Salesforce over the next five years as they continue to bring Dynamics 365 into their Office 365 offering and attract customers with competitive pricing.

I’m doing a series of posts on Dynamics 365 vs Salesforce. Feel free to follow along as I compare features, pricing, and integration.