Salesforce alternatives for small teams: where Sashimi fits

What is Salesforce good at?

Enterprise governance. As of 2026-10-18, Salesforce sells to the enterprise, and its AI brand is Agentforce. If you need the controls a large organisation expects, choose it.

Salesforce is also moving its CRM into the AI. "Here, the UI is the AI" is Marc Benioff's line, as reported by VentureBeat. At its TDX event in March 2026, Salesforce announced Headless 360. So the idea of a CRM you run from your AI is not Sashimi's alone.

Does Salesforce work with Claude and ChatGPT?

With Claude, it has been announced. As of 2026-10-18, Salesforce announced Salesforce in Claude on 26 August 2026, with 37 sales skills in Claude Cowork, for pilot customers. Its hosted MCP servers have been in open beta since September 2026. We have not checked a ChatGPT connector.

Sashimi starts from the other end. It is a CRM built as an MCP server, with no app to work in by default, and its 140 tools were written for a model to call:

• Whole lists per request. create_leads, create_companies and create_deals take up to 100 rows per call, and update_deals moves a list of deals at once.
• Timeouts without duplicates. Write tools accept an idempotencyKey, so repeating a call with the same key does not write twice.
• A record of the AI's work. list_mcp_activity shows each call: who, which tool and the result. Members see their own calls; admins see everyone's.
• One connector per workspace. A connection only sees the workspace it was approved for, with the same permissions its member has on the web.

When does Sashimi fit instead of Salesforce?

When you are a small team, or one person running several small businesses, and you already work from Claude or ChatGPT. If you need enterprise governance, Salesforce fits better.

Each business gets its own workspace, with its own leads, companies, deals, stages, custom fields, sequences and members. One login reaches all of them, and each workspace has its own connector in your AI, so a request in one business cannot write into another. The page on one CRM for multiple businesses explains the setup.

You work by asking, in the connector of the business you mean:

• "Add these twelve people from yesterday's event as leads and assign them to me."
• "Show my open deals grouped by stage."
• "Enrol these five leads in the intro sequence."

Roles are simple. Members create records, move deals and fill custom fields. Admins also delete from the AI, edit stages, create custom fields, merge duplicates and manage members.

What do I give up with Sashimi?

Enterprise scale and governance. Sashimi is a small sales-prospecting CRM with these limits today:

• An app to work in. There is none by default; on-demand screens are coming soon, in beta. A web app remains for sign-in, settings, integration keys and Gmail.
• Built-in agents. They are switched off during the beta, so your own AI does the reasoning.
• Gmail sending is beta. Sequence emails go out through your own Gmail, in beta while Google reviews Sashimi's access.
• Calling, meeting capture and an integrations marketplace. Sashimi offers none of them today.
• Open sign-up. Sashimi is a private beta, by invitation only. It is free during the beta and there is nothing to buy today. At launch it is priced per account, with seats included: Solo at $15 a month covers 3 workspaces and 1 seat, after a 14-day trial with no card.

How do I move from Salesforce to Sashimi?

Start from a CSV or spreadsheet you already have, and let your AI create the records. You need a Claude plan with custom connectors (the free plan allows one; on Team and Enterprise an owner adds it) or ChatGPT with developer mode on the web. How Sashimi connects has the steps.

1. Connect your AI with the connection guide. Your AI app sends you to Sashimi, you choose the workspace and approve.
2. Attach the file and ask: "Create these contacts as leads with their companies, and these opportunities as deals." Your AI calls create_leads, create_companies and create_deals, up to 100 rows per call.
3. Bulk create skips leads that repeat an email and companies that repeat a domain or name. Deals are never matched, so import them once.
4. Ask for find_duplicates; an admin then merges any pairs with merge_leads or merge_companies.

Only deletions can be undone: deleted records stay in the trash for 30 days, and deleting records from your AI needs an admin. Try ten rows before the whole file.

For the idea behind a CRM with no app to learn, read what a headless CRM is. Other comparisons are on the CRM alternatives page.