Best Salesforce Alternatives for UK Charities in 2026

Salesforce is the world's largest CRM. Through its Power of Us programme, it offers 10 free licenses to eligible nonprofits. On paper, that sounds generous. In practice, hundreds of UK charities have adopted Salesforce only to discover that "free" software can become their most expensive line item.

Implementation consultants charging £800-1,000 per day. A 3-12 month setup timeline. An interface designed for enterprise sales teams, not caseworkers. AppExchange add-ons for every feature you actually need. And when you want to leave, getting your data out is its own project.

If your charity is considering Salesforce, already struggling with it, or actively planning an exit, this guide covers the best alternatives available in 2026 — with honest assessments of what each does well and where it falls short.

TL;DR: Salesforce's 10 free nonprofit licenses come with hidden costs that regularly reach £20,000-100,000+ for implementation alone. For most UK charities under 50 staff, a purpose-built platform will cost less, deploy faster, and require no consultants. Plinth is the strongest option for service delivery charities; Beacon leads for fundraising-focused organisations; Donorfy suits smaller charities on tight budgets; CiviCRM works if you have developer capacity; and Blackbaud or Microsoft Dynamics 365 serve enterprise-scale nonprofits already embedded in those ecosystems.

What you'll learn: The real cost of Salesforce for nonprofits, the six best alternatives for UK charities, and how to choose between them based on your size, budget, and primary use case.

Who this is for: Charity leaders, operations managers, and digital leads evaluating CRM options — whether you are choosing your first system, replacing spreadsheets, or migrating away from Salesforce.

Why Charities Are Leaving Salesforce

Salesforce dominates the commercial CRM market. According to IDC, it holds roughly 21% of global CRM market share. But market dominance does not mean it is the right fit for charities, and a growing number of UK nonprofits are reaching the same conclusion.

The core issue is straightforward: Salesforce is a platform, not a product. It gives you building blocks and expects you (or your consultant) to assemble them into something useful. For a charity with a £500,000 annual income and three full-time staff, that model is fundamentally wrong.

The True Cost of "Free" Salesforce

Here is what Salesforce actually costs a typical small-to-medium UK charity:

Source: Cloudmetic, VRP Consulting, and Soltech cost analyses; UK Salesforce partner day rate surveys.

The 2024 Charity Digital Skills Report found that 72% of small charities cited squeezed finances as the primary reason they struggle with digital adoption. Spending tens of thousands on CRM implementation is difficult to justify when that money could fund direct service delivery.

The Five Pain Points That Push Charities Away

1. Implementation takes months, not weeks. The typical Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud implementation runs 3-12 months. For charities operating on annual funding cycles, that timeline is a serious problem. By the time the system is live, the grant that funded it may be halfway spent.

2. You need a dedicated Salesforce administrator. Salesforce is not a system you can hand to a programme manager and expect them to maintain. It requires someone who understands objects, flows, permission sets, and the Salesforce data model. The average UK salary for a Salesforce administrator is approximately £45,000-55,000 — a full-time role most small charities cannot justify.

3. The interface was designed for sales, not service delivery. Salesforce's terminology (Leads, Opportunities, Accounts, Campaigns) reflects its origins as a sales pipeline tool. Charities working in case management, referrals, or grant distribution have to mentally translate every concept. The Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) helps, but it is a layer on top of a fundamentally commercial product.

4. Every feature costs extra. Need Gift Aid processing? That is an AppExchange app. Marketing automation? Marketing Cloud, starting at hundreds per month. Event management? Another add-on. Volunteer tracking? Another. Each one adds cost, complexity, and integration risk. Many nonprofits find they need multiple paid apps and add-ons to match the capabilities that come standard in purpose-built platforms.

5. Leaving is harder than joining. Salesforce stores data in proprietary structures. Extracting it cleanly — with relationships, attachments, and history intact — is a project that itself may require consultant support. This creates vendor lock-in that many charities do not anticipate when they sign up for "free" licenses.

The 6 Best Salesforce Alternatives for UK Charities

1. Plinth — Best All-in-One for Service Delivery Charities

Price: Free tier available; AI Grant Management from £2,500/year Best for: Charities delivering services, managing cases, making referrals, and reporting on impact Setup time: Weeks, not months

Plinth is purpose-built for UK charities that do more than fundraise. Where Salesforce requires you to bolt together multiple products, Plinth ships as an integrated platform covering case management, AI grant management, partner CRM, impact reporting, referral tracking, surveys, volunteering, payments, and room bookings.

The platform is used by over 60 UK funders and manages more than £200 million in grants. It deploys in weeks without consultants, and the interface is designed around how charity workers actually think — cases, referrals, outcomes — not sales pipelines.

Key strengths:

• AI-powered case notes and case analysis reduce admin burden
• Built-in referral workflows with automatic cascading between partner organisations
• Impact reporting that maps directly to funder requirements
• Charity Commission and Companies House integration for due diligence
• GDPR-compliant by design, hosted in the UK
• Free tier for case management — no credit card, no consultant, no hidden costs

Where it is less suited: Plinth is not designed as a donor database or fundraising CRM. If your primary need is managing individual donor relationships and Gift Aid, Beacon or Donorfy will serve you better. Many charities use Plinth for operations alongside a fundraising-specific tool.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: The most common reason is that Salesforce required consultants and months of setup to achieve what Plinth provides out of the box. Charities running service delivery programmes — housing support, youth work, community development, food banks — find that Plinth's workflows match their reality without any customisation.

2. Beacon — Best for Fundraising-Focused Charities

Price: From £32.50/month (Starter, up to 2,000 contacts); scales with contact volume Best for: Charities whose primary CRM need is donor management and fundraising Setup time: Days to weeks

Beacon is a UK-built CRM designed specifically for charity fundraising. It handles donor management, Gift Aid claims, event ticketing, and supporter communications in a single, well-designed interface. It has quickly become one of the most popular charity CRMs in the UK, with Charity Digital rating it as a top-tier option for 2025 and 2026.

Key strengths:

• Clean, modern interface that charity staff actually enjoy using
• Gift Aid management built in — no add-ons needed
• Event management and ticketing included
• Direct debit and online donation processing
• UK-focused — designed around HMRC Gift Aid rules and UK charity regulations
• Scales from small (£32.50/month) to large (custom pricing) without a cliff edge

Where it is less suited: Beacon is a fundraising CRM, not a service delivery platform. It does not offer case management, referral tracking, grant management, or impact reporting. If your charity delivers services rather than primarily fundraising, you will need a different primary system.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: Beacon does in a clean, affordable package what Salesforce Nonprofit requires NPSP plus multiple AppExchange apps plus consultant configuration to achieve. For charities where fundraising is the core CRM use case, the cost and complexity difference is dramatic.

3. Donorfy — Affordable Fundraising CRM for Smaller Charities

Price: Free for up to 500 contacts; from £59/month for paid plans Best for: Small charities moving from spreadsheets to a proper CRM Setup time: Days

Donorfy is a UK-built fundraising CRM that emphasises affordability and simplicity. It offers a genuinely free tier (up to 500 constituents) that includes the core features small charities need, making it one of the lowest-risk ways to move off spreadsheets or away from an over-complex system like Salesforce.

Key strengths:

• Free tier with meaningful functionality — not a stripped-down demo
• Designed by fundraisers, for fundraisers
• Gift Aid, campaign tracking, and reporting included
• Integrations with Mailchimp, Stripe, JustGiving, and other tools charities already use
• ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified — strong on data security
• Volume-based pricing that grows with your database, not per-user

Where it is less suited: Donorfy is focused on fundraising. Like Beacon, it does not cover case management, service delivery, or operational workflows. Its free tier is limited to 500 contacts, so growing charities will move to paid plans relatively quickly.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: Cost. A small charity paying a consultant to maintain Salesforce can replace the entire setup with Donorfy for a fraction of the price and get a system that works out of the box for fundraising.

4. Blackbaud — Enterprise Alternative for Large Fundraising Operations

Price: Custom pricing; typically £5,000-30,000+/year depending on products Best for: Large charities with major gift programmes and complex fundraising operations Setup time: Months (comparable to Salesforce)

Blackbaud (Raiser's Edge NXT, eTapestry, Financial Edge) is the traditional enterprise alternative to Salesforce in the fundraising space. It has decades of history in the charity sector and deep functionality for major donor management, prospect research, and financial reporting. Blackbaud remains one of the most widely used fundraising platforms among large UK and US nonprofits.

Key strengths:

• Deep major donor and prospect research tools
• Comprehensive financial management and reporting
• Long track record in the charity sector — extensive professional community
• Purpose-built for nonprofit fundraising (not adapted from a commercial CRM)
• Strong integration ecosystem

Where it is less suited: Blackbaud shares many of Salesforce's downsides: high cost, long implementation, complex interface, and need for specialist support. It is not a good fit for small or medium charities, and its pricing is opaque. If you are leaving Salesforce because of cost and complexity, Blackbaud may present the same problems in different packaging.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: Typically, charities move to Blackbaud when they need deeper fundraising analytics and major gift management than Salesforce NPSP provides, and they want a vendor with nonprofit-specific expertise. It is a lateral move for large organisations, not a cost-saving one.

5. CiviCRM — Open Source and Free, If You Have Developer Support

Price: Free (open source, AGPL v3 licence); hosting and development costs vary Best for: Charities with access to technical staff or a development partner Setup time: Weeks to months, depending on complexity

CiviCRM is the most established open-source CRM for nonprofits, with 20 years of development and over 11,000 organisations using it worldwide. It runs on top of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or as a standalone application, and covers contacts, donations, memberships, events, mailings, and case management.

Key strengths:

• Completely free to download and use — no licence fees ever
• Full control over your data — no vendor lock-in
• Highly flexible and customisable
• Active global community with UK-based implementation partners
• Covers a wide range of nonprofit workflows in a single system
• No per-user pricing — cost scales with hosting, not headcount

Where it is less suited: CiviCRM's "free" comes with a caveat: you need technical capacity to install, configure, maintain, and update it. The interface is functional but dated compared to modern SaaS platforms. Without a developer (in-house or contracted), CiviCRM can become its own maintenance burden — trading consultant costs for developer costs. A 2025 CiviCRM survey highlighted that charities without dedicated technical support often struggle with upgrades and customisation.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: Philosophical alignment (open source, no vendor lock-in, data sovereignty) and long-term cost. For charities with technical staff, CiviCRM can provide Salesforce-level flexibility without the licence and consultant costs.

6. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Nonprofit — For Charities in the Microsoft Ecosystem

Price: From approximately £19/user/month (nonprofit discount, ~60% off commercial pricing) Best for: Large charities already using Microsoft 365 who want tight integration Setup time: Months

Microsoft offers significant discounts on Dynamics 365 for eligible nonprofits, and its Nonprofit Accelerator includes data models for programme delivery, fundraising, and volunteer management. If your charity already runs on Microsoft 365, Teams, and SharePoint, Dynamics 365 provides a CRM that integrates natively with your existing tools.

Key strengths:

• Deep integration with Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, and Power BI
• Nonprofit Accelerator with pre-built data models
• Strong reporting and analytics via Power BI
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance
• 60% discount for eligible nonprofits
• Scalable from small teams to large organisations

Where it is less suited: Dynamics 365 is an enterprise platform. Like Salesforce, it requires significant configuration, and most charities will need an implementation partner. The nonprofit discount makes it cheaper than commercial pricing, but the total cost of ownership — including implementation, training, and ongoing support — still places it firmly in enterprise territory. It is overkill for charities under 20-30 staff unless you are deeply committed to the Microsoft stack.

Why charities switch from Salesforce: Typically because their IT infrastructure is already Microsoft-based and they want to consolidate vendors. The nonprofit pricing discount also makes it cheaper than Salesforce for organisations that have outgrown the 10 free licenses.

Comparison Table: Salesforce Alternatives at a Glance

How to Choose: A Decision Framework

The right alternative depends on what your charity actually does day-to-day. Here is a straightforward framework:

Your primary need is service delivery (case management, referrals, impact measurement, multi-agency work): Choose Plinth. It is the only platform in this list purpose-built for that workflow. Start with the free case management tier and expand as needed.

Your primary need is fundraising (donor management, Gift Aid, events, campaigns): Choose Beacon if you are a medium charity wanting a polished, UK-built platform. Choose Donorfy if you are smaller or on a tighter budget and want to start free.

You have complex, enterprise-scale requirements and dedicated IT staff: Choose Blackbaud for deep fundraising analytics, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 if you are already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.

You have developer capacity and value open source: Choose CiviCRM. It gives you maximum control and zero licence fees, but you must invest in technical support.

You need both service delivery and fundraising: Consider running Plinth for operations alongside Beacon or Donorfy for fundraising. Two purpose-built tools that each do their job well will cost less and work better than one over-customised Salesforce instance trying to do everything.

Migrating Away from Salesforce: What to Expect

If you are currently on Salesforce and planning an exit, here is what the process typically involves:

1. Audit your data. Before you export anything, document what you actually use. Most charities find that they use 20-30% of their Salesforce configuration. The rest is unused custom objects, abandoned automations, and duplicate records.

2. Clean before you move. Migrating dirty data into a new system recreates old problems. Deduplicate contacts, archive inactive records, and standardise field formats. This step saves significant time and cost.

3. Export systematically. Use Salesforce's Data Loader or report exports to pull data in stages: contacts first, then related records (donations, cases, activities). Export to CSV and validate each batch before moving on.

4. Map to your new system. Every platform structures data differently. Create a mapping document that shows which Salesforce fields correspond to which fields in your new CRM. Your new vendor should be able to help with this.

5. Plan for a parallel running period. Run both systems for 2-4 weeks to validate that everything transferred correctly. Do not cancel Salesforce until you are confident the new system has all critical data.

6. Budget for the transition. Even moving to a simpler, cheaper system has a cost. Budget for staff time (data cleaning, testing, training), any migration support from your new vendor, and a short period of reduced productivity during the switchover.

The 2025 Charity Digital Skills Report found that 76% of charities are now using AI tools — up from 61% the previous year. If you are migrating systems, it is worth choosing a platform that incorporates AI meaningfully rather than bolting it on as an afterthought.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Salesforce really free for charities?

Salesforce provides 10 free Enterprise Edition licenses to eligible nonprofits through its Power of Us programme. The licences themselves are genuinely free. However, the total cost of ownership — implementation, customisation, training, ongoing administration, and add-on applications — typically ranges from £20,000 to over £100,000 in the first year alone. According to Soltech and Cloudmetic cost analyses, even a basic nonprofit implementation costs $7,000-30,000 (approximately £5,500-24,000), and ongoing monthly support runs $500-5,000 (£400-4,000). The "free" label is accurate for the licences but deeply misleading about the real investment required.

Can a small charity with no IT staff use Salesforce effectively?

It is very difficult. Salesforce requires ongoing administration — managing users, updating automations, fixing data issues, configuring reports — that assumes technical competence. Most small charities without a dedicated Salesforce administrator end up either paying for managed support (£500-5,000/month) or underusing the system to the point where it provides little value over a spreadsheet. Purpose-built platforms like Beacon, Donorfy, or Plinth are specifically designed for teams without IT staff.

How long does it take to migrate from Salesforce to another CRM?

For a small-to-medium charity, expect 4-8 weeks from decision to go-live on a simpler platform. The main time investment is data cleaning and mapping, not the technical migration itself. Larger organisations with complex Salesforce configurations may need 3-6 months. The key factor is how customised your Salesforce instance is — the more custom objects and automations you have built, the more work it takes to untangle.

What if we need both fundraising and service delivery in one system?

No single platform excels at both. Salesforce tries to, but requires extensive customisation and cost to get there. The more practical approach is to pair a service delivery platform (like Plinth) with a fundraising CRM (like Beacon or Donorfy). Modern APIs make integration straightforward, and you avoid the compromise of forcing one tool to do a job it was not designed for.

Are there grants available to help charities fund CRM migration?

Yes. Several UK funders support digital infrastructure projects. The National Lottery Community Fund, Comic Relief's Tech for Good programme, and various local community foundations have funded CRM implementations and migrations. Many digital infrastructure grants specifically welcome applications from charities moving to more sustainable, cost-effective systems. The Charity Digital Skills Report consistently highlights that digital investment is a growing funding priority.

Recommended Next Steps

• Case Management for Charities — See how Plinth handles case management without consultants
• AI Grant Management — Explore AI-powered grant workflows purpose-built for UK funders
• Partner CRM — Manage partner organisations and referral networks
• Impact Reporting — Report outcomes to funders with built-in tools
• Partner CRM vs Salesforce — A detailed head-to-head comparison
• CRM for Charities — Broader guide to choosing a charity CRM
• Top Digital Platforms for UK Charities — Wider landscape of charity technology

Last updated: February 2026

Ready to leave Salesforce behind? Book a demo or contact our team.