BQE CORE vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BQE CORE
Score 8.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
BQE CORE is a business management solution built specifically for professional service firms. BQE CORE is a combination of a billing assistant, project management, and accounting solution. CORE is designed to do the hard work of delivering actionable insights directly to the user's dashboards or inbox. BQE CORE replaces the products Engineeroffice, Archioffice, and BillQuick; the functionality of these applications is now found in BQE CORE.N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a platform for sales with a community of Sellers, Sales Leaders, and Sales Operations, who use the solution to grow sales and increase productivity. The AI CRM for Sales features data built right in, so that companies can sell faster, sell smarter and sell efficiently. Salesforce Sales Cloud is used for, and supports: Buyer Engagement Sales Engagement Enablement Sales AI Sales Analytics Team…
$25
per month
Pricing
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$25.00
per month per user
Professional
$80.00
per month per user
Enterprise
$165.00
per month per user
Unlimited
$330.00
per month per user
Agentforce 1 Sales
$550
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Considered Both Products
BQE CORE
Chose BQE CORE
Again, since I'm only an employee, I had no part in choosing BQE for my organization. But it is the best timesheet tracking system that I've used, and I've used 3 other ones in the past. BQE is the simplest to use, yet equally as powerful as the others. When editing my …
Chose BQE CORE
I am a user and was not involved in the decision making. Tool was already in place when I joined. But comparing to other tools I have used in the past, BQE is by far the easiest to use. You do not need any training to start using this tool immediately.
Chose BQE CORE
BQE Core does a similar job, but easier to use. The interface is also more intuitive compared to other similar software
Salesforce Sales Cloud

No answer on this topic

Features
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
7.8
74 Ratings
1% above category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Task Management8.756 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management8.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts8.528 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.636 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.539 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration6.546 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.921 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology6.018 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management8.339 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration6.133 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.445 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.474 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management7.932 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management8.158 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.3
56 Ratings
7% above category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates8.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.949 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.554 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.035 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.2
269 Ratings
5% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.9269 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings8.4258 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.7211 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.9259 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings8.0244 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.9215 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.7198 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings8.6229 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings8.0190 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.8
104 Ratings
2% above category average
Case management00 Ratings8.2102 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings7.782 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.486 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.1
244 Ratings
5% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.2239 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings8.1206 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.0
248 Ratings
4% above category average
Task management00 Ratings8.3236 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings7.478 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings8.5201 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.3
260 Ratings
9% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings7.9228 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings8.2247 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.6257 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.6
252 Ratings
12% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings9.0249 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings8.8239 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings8.2176 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.6209 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
9.0
253 Ratings
7% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings9.0221 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.9225 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.2
160 Ratings
10% above category average
Social data00 Ratings8.3158 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings8.0156 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.1
217 Ratings
9% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings8.2213 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings8.1146 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
232 Ratings
2% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings7.7232 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 9.5 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
InEight
InEight
Score 9.5 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(167 ratings)
9.0
(425 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(8 ratings)
10.0
(58 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(117 ratings)
8.4
(135 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.8
(27 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(90 ratings)
8.9
(92 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(11 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
9.1
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.3
(6 ratings)
2.1
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(9 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.8
(83 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(8 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE CORESalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
BQE Software Inc.
I would recommend this for our industry: architecture, engineering, or construction. I would recommend this for any larger firm with many employees or high number of projects. I would particularly recommend this for a company with projects that have budget constraints and where time tracking and expense tracking is very important. I would not recommend this complicated software for a small firm with a small amount of income or number of projects.
Read full review
Salesforce
Obviously, for any business, there are two main areas to focus on — the sales path and the service path. Sales Cloud wouldn’t be suited for a company that’s primarily into support services. For those kinds of companies, Salesforce has a different product — Service Cloud. So, for anyone in the support or service space, Sales Cloud isn’t the right fit.
Read full review
Pros
BQE Software Inc.
  • Invoice Collections within Billing is a great tool because of the ability to take notes and track contact.
  • Invoices are professional looking and easy for our clients to understand the overall progress within each phase of their project.
  • Dashboards are the best tool EVER!
  • The Contact List feature within Clients setup is the perfect way to track multiple project managers within a large company that also has multiple contracts with us.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • The customizations - We have an organization that operates differently from most companies, so we’ve had to implement quite a few customizations — and Salesforce allows us to do that quite quickly. Most of the time, delays come from dependencies on other internal parties rather than the system itself.
  • From my perspective as a consultant, one of the biggest advantages is that everything is in Salesforce — all the details, all in one place. The ability to customize it easily is a big plus; there’s really a lot you can do with it.
Read full review
Cons
BQE Software Inc.
  • Customizable Reporting
  • Linking Project to Payment all together
  • Assigning contacts to particular roles - such as Invoicing, Contracts, etc.
  • Accounting Functionality - they are basically a project management accounting software, so in my opinion, they could learn some things from other accounting software such as QuickBooks etc.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • We still need to include the production part. We started using Salesforce to sell the seeds — our inventory is in SAP — and from there we handle sales and track the process of planting, harvesting, selling, and then collecting payments. But we don’t yet manage the earlier production processes, like production planning. We handle allocation, but not full production planning, and that’s an area where we still have room for improvement.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
BQE Software Inc.
We have been using Core for a few years now, and honestly started to look at other software systems to see what was out there. What we chose was a nightmare for migration so we never left Core. Now we have added invoicing and payments from Core instead of double entry with QBO. Still only a few cycles in but looks like it will be up to speed soon and working smoothly.
Read full review
Salesforce
There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
Read full review
Usability
BQE Software Inc.
The foundation is awesome, like I have said before, however the house being built on it, the educational resources being provided to us (more of sales pitches that don't work), and flexible workflow opportunities, is making us look elsewhere for how much we will be spending on per user. It's crazy to think how flexible they are not when it comes to user settings. Lack of integration with other sources is awful.
Read full review
Salesforce
Because I think it could be easier. We have different standards today since we’re used to interacting with consumer apps like Starbucks, where all you do is scan your card. Then, when you use Sales Cloud, there are still a lot of manual inputs. So my mission with AI is really about figuring out how to make that easier.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
BQE Software Inc.
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
Read full review
Performance
BQE Software Inc.
This is one area that does need some improvement. It can be slow at time, so we had our IT look at it from our side and we had no issues, so it has to be some slowness on their side.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
Read full review
Support Rating
BQE Software Inc.
As a new employee and CORE user, I talk to support on a weekly basis. I have never had to wait for more than 3 min to get connect with a support rep, and all my questions have been answered. The support representatives are polite and eager to help no matter how simple your question is.
Read full review
Salesforce
The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
Read full review
In-Person Training
BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
Read full review
Online Training
BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
Read full review
Salesforce
I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
Read full review
Implementation Rating
BQE Software Inc.
It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.
Read full review
Salesforce
Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
BQE Software Inc.
Deltek Vision is far more advanced, more encompassing and offers more flexibility with what you want to do. However, it's also quite difficult to use, whereas BQE CORE is intuitive and user friendly. The trade off is worth it in some arenas but overall it's not suited for a larger fast paced company. Great for smaller companies.
Read full review
Salesforce
So I've evaluated, implemented Microsoft Dynamics in the past. I've used Oracle CRM solutions. I've used Daylight, which is a very niche CRM system the last couple of years. And I've evaluated a variety from Legacy Microsoft Ones to Zoho and Sugar when making implementation decisions at other companies. But usually I've gone with Salesforce. I'd say it's better than most. The only one that I generally prefer, and last time I chose an implementation from scratch, I did Microsoft Dynamics. And the reason is for small mid-size organization, Microsoft Dynamics, if you already have Microsoft Office products, it's much better integrated to all of the Excel, Word, OneNote, Outlook email than what you get from Salesforce. And so that's the only one that if someone's a Microsoft organization and small sized company, it'll save a lot of integration things, a lot of security, a lot of login and access and IT management by just sticking within the Microsoft ecosystem. But outside of that, if you don't use Microsoft or if you're a large organization or have other needs that you want, Salesforce I'd say is better than all of the other CRM offerings out there. It's the easiest to use and the most robust and the most vendors and products for the ecosystem.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
Read full review
Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
Read full review
Salesforce
It's very scalable as it has a ton of features (but you do need an admin who understands how to leverage these features). Because of the various features, we've also needed to host onboarding sessions with our users so that they can familiarize themselves with the platform, which isn't always super user-friendly or intuitive.
Read full review
Professional Services
BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
Read full review
Return on Investment
BQE Software Inc.
  • Quick setup of new tasks under a parent project, with immediate hourly billing to it.
  • Monitoring of details of non-chargeable efforts in appropriate detail
  • Validation of hourly cost, billing cost, benefit cost, profitability by person and role
  • Company tracking of write-off's included in corporate and project reporting, no data is "lost"
  • Can track excessive work time as +PTO in lieu of pay for use as future vacation
Read full review
Salesforce
  • It is easy for the sales team to track how well the dealers in their region are selling products.
  • It is easy to generate reports and see how well sales are each month compared to past months.
  • Quicker time to get products shipped to customers.
Read full review
ScreenShots

BQE CORE Screenshots

Screenshot of Core powered by BQE SoftwareScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Dashboard ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE 360* Firm Performance ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE Reporting & AnalyticsScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Time EntryScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Expense Tracking

Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of