Four Best Apps for Salesforce.com

Super Productivity Apps That Fill Out Salesforce.com Functionality

Salesforce.com launched its AppExchange on January 17, 2006, more than seven years ago.  Today, the AppExchange hosts 1,700+ third party apps for Salesforce.com.  Some of the apps are free; others cost money; still others have free and paid versions.  All of the applications on the AppExchange must pass a rigorous security review and pay a $400 listing fee.  Generally, paid app providers pay 15% of their revenue to Salesforce.com to be listed on the AppExchange. 

After comparing Salesforce.com apps, these four standout as the best in the leading categories:

1. Data Loader – Dataloader.io
2. Email Integration – Match My Email
3. Composition Engine – Conga Composition
4. Social Network Integrator — Fliptop

Data Loaders

The most popular applications on the AppExchange are data loaders.  Data loaders facilitate the one-time migration of data into Salesforce.com.  All of the leading data loaders on the AppExchange are free.  Their parent companies sell cloud data integration solutions that typically cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars per month.  So giving away a small data loader to generate a lead is a good marketing investment.  Dataloader.io is the most popular app on the AppExchange.  It is produced by Mulesoft, a 150-person company in San Francisco which just raised $37M from the venture capital community, including Salesforce.com, and counts 37% of the Fortune 500 as clients.  Other free data loaders are Jitterbit for Salesforce [Private,] and Informatica Cloud Dataloader for Salesforce.com [NASDAQ: INFA].  Data loaders are found on the AppExchange under the Category ( IT & Administration) and Sub-Category, (Integration).

Email Integration

Email integration has been called the #1 pain point for Salesforce.com users and the ‘missing piece’ of Salesforce.com.  The importance of email syncing and logging can be seen in the number of successful third party apps addressing the issue.  Most email syncing and logging tools are plug-ins for email clients like Outlook or Gmail.  A new category of automated email integration platforms is emerging led by Match My Email.   Salesforce.com offers a free Outlook plug-in called Salesforce for Outlook, but their offering is not rated highly.  This has created an opportunity for the third party app vendors and they have rushed in.  The leading email plug-in on the AppExchange is from Linkpoint 360, Red Hook, NJ,  and it works with most versions of Outlook.  The Linkpoint 360 plug-in queries the SFDC database and enables a user to click a button and add an email to record like a Lead or Contact.  It also logs Contact, Tasks and Calendars items using simple click commands.  Linkpoint 360 costs $5 per user per month.  The best Gmail version of a manual plug-in is produced by Cirrus Insight.  Cirrus Insight, headquartered near Knoxville, TN, has grown quickly with the rapid market penetration of Google Apps.  Cirrus Insight costs $9.00 per user per month.  Match My Email offers a whole new approach.  It focuses only on email syncing and logging, but does it fully automatically in the cloud.  This approach frees the sales rep from the manual task of filing their emails into Salesforce.com and creates a 100% complete and up-to-the-minute email log in SFDC.  As a productivity tool, Match My Email is reported to save the average user 100 hours of labor per year versus a manual plug-in.  Match My Email costs $14.95 per user per month importing from up to two email accounts.  Match My Email is located in Mark Zuckerberg’s hometown of Dobbs Ferry, New York.  Email integration tools are found on the AppExchange under the Category (Sales) and Sub-Category, (Email and Calendar Sync).

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