AFFINITY VS SALESFORCE

Is Affinity or Salesforce Sales Cloud right for your team?

Affinity CRM is a Salesforce Sales Cloud alternative that delivers easy-to-use relationship insights and automatic data enrichment.
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Choosing a CRM for relationship-driven deal teams

Salesforce is the world’s largest customer relationship management (CRM). It’s designed to fit into any industry and integrate with a number of apps through its API. Salesforce’s tenure as the reigning, one-size-fits-all CRM solution has lasted for over 20 years, and its platform continues to evolve. Sales teams ranging from small businesses to mid-sized SaaS companies and international retail giants all use Salesforce.

A new type of intelligent CRM platform has emerged, however, that better meets the needs of teams looking for less transactional, more relationship-driven dealmaking solutions. Relationship intelligence CRMs allow users to track, manage, and expand their networks, making it easier to nurture the right connections, manage deal flow, and close quality deals faster. 

Instead of a sales-based focus, which Salesforce and other traditional CRMs provide, relationship intelligence CRMs like Affinity focus on relationship building, efficient sourcing, and collaboration across the deal lifecycle.

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With Affinity:

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Unlock relationship intelligence capabilities across all license tiers.

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Seamlessly enrich every company and contact profile with 40+ trusted data providers for private capital professionals.

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Achieve faster time to value with a 72-hour implementation.

Affinity vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Single source of truth for your data

Organize and manage records, monitor deal sourcing, and track your team’s most valuable connections in a centralized CRM.

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Relationship intelligence

Uncover high-impact relationships and gain actionable insights you need to close more deals.

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Automated data capture

Instantly surface all historical interactions with people and companies from across your firm.

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Data enrichment

Automatically enrich every company and contact profile with a dataset powered by Affinity and 40+ trusted sources, including PitchBook and Dealroom.

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Keep your team up to date on industry trends

Combine proprietary CRM datasets and external data partners to enrich your records with industry-specific data.

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Highly relevant data for deal sourcing

Discover the right opportunities with key market data and ensure you stay ahead of the competition.

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Purpose-built for private capital

A CRM designed specifically for private capital, giving you the upper hand to manage your entire deal lifecycle with ease.

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Integrate your tech stack with your CRM

Customize your software experience by integrating your most-used tools with your CRM.

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Close deals on the go

Keep your deals in the palm of your hand with mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices with a cloud-based platform.

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Scale private capital workflows

Access essential features for private capital at every license tier, ensuring your team has the necessary tools regardless of your team size.

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Onboarding support

Deploy the entire CRM platform in as little as 72 hours.

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Ease of use

Navigate the CRM and complete tasks using an intuitive interface—no technical support required.

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Security

Receive a dedicated CISO and security team focused on preventing, detecting, and responding to security threats across system operations.

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Compliance

Rely on a system that meets certification against stringent global standards—including ISO 27001, ISO 27018, ISO 27019, ISO 27701, and SOC2 Type 2.

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Constant vulnerability testing

Benefit from proactive CRM security measures that continuously identify and address potential weaknesses, helping safeguard sensitive customer information.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What makes Affinity the best alternative to Salesforce for dealmakers?
Where does Affinity’s relationship intelligence come from?
How does Affinity’s artificial intelligence give dealmakers a competitive edge?
Why are private capital firms turning to Affinity’s purpose-built CRM to streamline and optimize their investment workflows?
How much does Affinity cost?
How do I choose the right CRM for my team?

Why our customers love Affinity

“We're using Affinity, and we have a way better view of our network and of who we know; and what, when, why we know these people, because previously, we didn't. Now, we have a more effective method of engaging with the people we know, and getting productivity out of that.”
Leo Walde
Partner, Armira
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"Because Affinity is more intuitive [than our old system], you don’t have to go through a big training program. If we wanted to properly scale our old system, it would have taken up to twenty hours of onboarding training for new team members. Now, everyone is able to use Affinity immediately."
Michael Lamm
Co-founder & Managing Partner, CAS
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"Our clients want to know that we have key access to decision-makers. We’re able to show them this by showing them the core of our CRM system—Affinity. It’s about being honest and truthful—that is what matters to clients."
Mirko Heide
Managing Director, IEG
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"Investment banking is nothing, if not, a relationship business, and Affinity is now core to our success."
Rudy Burger
Founder and Managing Partner, Woodside Capital Partners
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“The combination of the CRM value plus a database approach for deal flow management is ultimately why we ended up going with Affinity.”
J. Skyler Fernandes
Founder and General Partner, VU Ventures
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“What attracted us to Affinity was the fact that they were really focused on Venture Capital customers… this is a CRM for VCs.”
Nolan English
Director of Portfolio Services, SOSV
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“When founders come to me with requests, I use our network to source solutions. I call Affinity our ‘relationship ChatGPT’ because this is how we keep track of folks in our network.”
Amira Ouji
Senior Director of Portfolio Success, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Fund
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“Affinity creates visibility across teams, so if an investor chatted with someone […], then folks from our portfolio development team can go into that company's profile in Affinity and see how long the two have been communicating and ask for an introduction. That is the relationship intelligence that we're trying to unlock and super-power within Munich Re Ventures.”
Pedro Carrasco
Senior Operations Manager, Munich Re Ventures
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“There are a lot of jobs to be done in venture. We’re always sourcing and fundraising, but we're also always looking to be human in those processes, and Affinity helps us do that most effectively.”
Kelly Graziadei
Founder & General Partner, f7 Ventures
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“We tracked 1,000 companies that turned into nine investments—with Affinity we now understand the characteristics that led to those investments so we can make better investments, faster.”
Amy Francetic
Managing General Partner, Buoyant Ventures
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“A lot of CRMs provide structured data management, but in the end we had to do the data entry ourselves, and that was a no-go for us. Affinity’s automation and data enrichment meant we could focus on the thing that really matters to us: building relationships, gaining insights, and supporting the portfolio companies.”
Sven Rossmann
Chief Investment Officer, ABACON CAPITAL
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“We've started to use Affinity Pathfinder on websites and LinkedIn, and it’s very valuable. It's easy for somebody to go to a website and see who we know without having to go to Affinity and look it up.”
Caroline Haun
Operations Director, 8VC
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"Affinity Alliances truly operationalizes our executive network. I use it every day to better understand the relationships I can leverage across Fidelity."
Alessandro Vigilante
VP Corporate Business Development, Fidelity
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"We use Affinity to stay on the same page, hold each other accountable. It’s been a game changer for collaboration. "
Jocelyn Goldfein
Managing Director, Zetta Venture Partners
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"A product that has truly changed the way I work and made me so much more efficient across the team! Amazing and recommend to all! "
Harry Stebbings
Founder, Stride.VC
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"Affinity has helped us centralize our CRM efforts in the most automated way. By organizing our pipeline, community, to-do’s, and distributing our Alliances to portfolio companies. "
Michael Tam
Partner, Craft Ventures
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We tried three market-leading CRMs but were never completely happy, and then we found Affinity. It’s genius — intuitive, flexible, super smart. What an effective CRM should be.
Dan Bowyer
Partner & Co-Founder, SuperSeed
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"Affinity has completely changed the way we do business, we are now far more organized and streamlined. Grouping advisors and target businesses using various filters and automatic logging of contact details, emails and meetings have saved us so much time in an administrative sense. If we ever have a query, Affinity is quick to respond."
Shannon Potts
Marketing and ESG Manager, Pemba Capital Partners
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"Affinity keeps us organized! It is perfectly tailored to what we need. Cataloging all of our emails and grouping them by an organization made it much easier to track contacts and report on how we’re managing deal flow. "
Adam Struck
Founder and Managing Partner, Struck Capital
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I built one of the first CRMs — Dynodex — in 1989, I feel like I’ve been waiting for a decent replacement for 30 years, now I’ve found it in Affinity. It automates many of the rote tasks and “digital fork-lifting” of legacy CRMs
Brian Smiga
Partner, Alpha Venture Partners
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"All our data is now centralized in Affinity, so information is never siloed with a single team member and we all understand the relationships among the entire team’s business network."
Kevin Zhang
Partner, Bain Capital Ventures
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"We’re really impressed by the speed that the Affinity team operates and the availability of the team. "
Christian Meermann
Founding Partner, Cherry Ventures
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"Having all the documents and information in one place without having to clamp around on different systems is really valuable. Affinity is a massive time saver and enables us to be super-efficient."
Sam Endacott
Investor, firstminute capital
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"As an early stage investor, my constant focus is finding new ways to turn my connections into my portfolio’s next hundred opportunities."
Mar Hershenson
Managing Partner, Pear VC
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"With Affinity, my team and I can track and nurture all of our firm’s most important relationships. In an industry like real estate, Affinity gives us a competitive advantage. "
Roy Hirshland
Vice Chairman, T3 Advisors
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