Close vs Salesloft: pricing, features and which to choose

Close is a hosted CRM and sales engagement platform made by Close, a company founded in 2013 by Steli Efti, Anthony Nemitz, and Thomas Steinacher. The product launched publicly as Close.io in January 2013 after the founders worked at Elastic Sales. Close adopted its current name after acquiring the close.com domain in 2019. Y Combinator lists Close in its Winter 2011 batch and identifies the company as active. Close describes its growth as bootstrapped, while contemporaneous coverage reported an early 2013 seed round. The company sells to sales teams that want customer records, outreach, calling, and sales operations in one hosted application instead of separate CRM and engagement products.

Close organizes sales work around leads, contacts, opportunities, and activities. A typical workflow begins with importing or creating leads, adding contacts, and recording email, call, or SMS interactions on each lead record. Reps can use built-in calling, texting, email sequences, forms, and workflows for follow-up. Growth adds Power Dialer, bulk email, custom activities, and broader automation. Scale adds predictive dialing, live call coaching, permissions, lead visibility rules, custom objects, and user groups. Reporting covers pipeline and activity performance. Developers can connect external systems through the REST API, OAuth 2.0, webhooks, event logs, pagination, rate limits, and the MCP server. This keeps communication history close to opportunity data.

Close does not offer a self-hosted or open-source edition, and heavy calling, SMS, or AI use can make the total cost harder to predict. Avoma is a closer fit for meeting recording, transcription, conversation intelligence, scheduling, and revenue insights across conferencing tools. Salesforce offers broader enterprise customization and administration, while HubSpot combines sales with larger marketing and service products. Close instead concentrates on native sales communication, pipeline activity, and programmable CRM workflows. Its one-user Solo plan also limits the cheapest entry point for teams. Small and midsize teams that want CRM records, calling, messaging, and sales automation in one focused workspace should pick Close.

Salesloft is a revenue orchestration platform for mid-market and enterprise teams. Its suite covers Cadence for sales engagement, Conversations for recording and intelligence, Deals for deal execution, Forecast for forecasting, Rhythm for seller prioritization, and AI agents for account research and coaching. The company says its Predictive Revenue System connects buyer engagement, conversation, deal, and forecast signals to seller actions. Salesloft reports more than 4,000 customers, including Adobe, 3M, IBM, and Zoom. Its merger with Clari completed in December 2025, establishing Salesloft as the go-forward company and platform brand. Clari Forecast retains its name, while broader Clari capabilities continue under Salesloft. Current packaging includes Advanced and Elite, with some features offered as add-ons or package-dependent modules.

Salesloft brings outbound execution and revenue intelligence into one connected workflow. A team can use Cadence to organize multichannel outreach, Conversations to capture buyer interactions, Deals to inspect opportunities, Forecast to evaluate expected revenue, and Rhythm to prioritize seller actions. AI agents support account research and coaching workflows. The company says its system connects buyer engagement, conversation, deal and forecast signals so revenue teams can turn them into prioritized work. Exact workflows depend on purchased modules and CRM configuration. Deals documentation identifies a Salesforce CRM dependency, making CRM fit an important procurement question. The platform is therefore broader than a sequencing tool, but its value depends on which modules a customer buys and how those modules connect to existing systems.

Salesloft suits revenue organizations that want engagement, conversations, deals and forecasting connected in one commercial platform, although quote-led packaging makes comparisons harder. Outreach is a close alternative for enterprise sequencing and seller workflows, while Gong focuses on conversation intelligence and revenue analysis. ZoomInfo Sales combines prospect data, engagement and intent. HubSpot Sales Hub and Salesforce Sales Engagement are more natural choices for teams prioritizing CRM-native execution. Salesloft is a poor fit for buyers seeking transparent self-serve pricing or a documented self-hosted edition. Choose it when a mid-market or enterprise revenue team wants coordinated engagement and forecasting under one brand, with exact module availability and costs determined during procurement rather than through a complete public rate card.