The quarter closes two deals short. In the post-mortem, the CRO asks the obvious question: we pay for call recording, we have a forecast roll-up, and our CRM has AI built in, so why did nobody see this coming? The sales ops lead pulls the two deals. One had a close date pushed four times and a champion who left in week six. The other sat in "Negotiation" for ninety days with no logged activity. Every tool saw part of it. None of them was set up to act on it.
That is usually the moment someone starts searching for Gong alternatives. The problem is that Gong, Clari, Salesforce Einstein and VANDFORT don't solve the same problem, so comparing them feature by feature leads to the wrong purchase. One captures what was said on calls. One runs the forecast process. One adds AI to the CRM you already own. One engineers the specific systems that keep the records honest. Buy the wrong one and the problem you actually have keeps costing you deals.
Read the figures with their sources in mind. Gartner's figure comes from its State of Sales Operations Survey (press release, February 2020), which named poor data quality as one of the main contributors to inaccurate forecasts and found that only 47% of respondents believed their organization had high-quality data. The 24% figure comes from Gong's own Reality of Forecasting Report (July 2022), and Gong sells forecasting software, so it has a reason to show the problem as large. Salesforce surveyed 4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries between August and September 2025. The surveys differ in date and wording, but agree that most revenue leaders don't trust their numbers.
How we evaluated
VANDFORT publishes this guide, and VANDFORT is one of the options in it. We are a forward-deployed engineering firm that installs AI systems inside revenue teams, so we have a stake in the answer. To keep the comparison fair, we fixed five criteria before looking at any vendor and applied them to every option, including our own.
| Criterion | What we look for |
|---|---|
| Problem fixed | The specific failure the product is built to remove: missing conversation data, an unreliable forecast process, a slow CRM, or untrustworthy records. |
| Data it depends on | Whether the product creates new data (call recordings, activity capture) or reads the CRM data you already have, and how it behaves when that data is wrong. |
| Time to value | How much setup, adoption and process change sits between purchase and a better decision. |
| Fit with your stack | Which CRMs it works with, and whether it adds a platform or works inside the systems you own. |
| Pricing model | Published price or pricing model, as of October 2026. |
We weight the second criterion most heavily. Each of these products is good at what it was designed for, and none of them can make an untrustworthy record trustworthy just by analysing it. Vendors below are described only from their own pages, documentation, press releases or dated independent sources, as of October 2026. Naming a vendor is not an endorsement, and we don't rank anyone first.
The options compared: Gong alternatives side by side
| Option | Best for | Strengths | Limits | Pricing model, as of October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gong | Teams that lose deals on what happens in conversations | Captures and analyses calls and interactions; forecasting, engagement and AI agents on the same data | A platform to adopt; its value depends on reps and managers using it every week | Per-user licenses plus a platform fee; pricing not published. Vendr reports a $55,359 median a year |
| Clari (Salesloft) | CROs who need a disciplined forecast process across many managers | Automated roll-ups, deal-level visibility, scenario modelling; now paired with Salesloft engagement | Being combined with Salesloft after the merger closed in December 2025; the stated long-term aim is one platform | Pricing not published |
| Salesforce Einstein and Agentforce | Teams standardised on Sales Cloud that want AI without another vendor | Same data model, permissions and records as the CRM | Salesforce only; capabilities spread across editions and add-ons | Conversation Insights $50 a user a month; Revenue Intelligence add-on from $220; Sales Cloud editions $195 to $550 |
| VANDFORT engineered systems | Teams whose records, not their tools, are the problem | Built on your own data and definitions; tested on your past deals before going live | An engagement, not a platform; does not record calls | Fixed-fee engagements, scoped by a GTM Audit before anything is built |
Gong: fixes conversation visibility
Gong describes itself as the "#1 AI OS for Revenue Teams" and says it is trusted by more than 5,000 customers. Its pitch is to "capture every interaction, analyze what's working, and automate what happens next," built on what it calls a revenue graph and a team of specialized AI agents. Its products include Gong Engage, Gong Forecast and Gong Enable. Gong Forecast lists an AI Revenue Predictor, an AI Deal Reviewer and an AI Deal Monitor, plus dashboards and target management. Gong says it uses more than 300 signals to predict deal outcomes with 20% more precision than algorithms based on CRM data, a vendor claim worth testing on your own quarters. The important point for buyers is that Gong creates data you don't otherwise have. If your losses come from discovery that never happened, objections nobody heard or a champion who went quiet, that is the problem it fixes. Gong's pricing page says licenses are priced per user with a platform fee based on the number of users, and it does not publish figures. Vendr, which brokers software purchases, reports a median of $55,359 a year across 1,145 Gong purchases (updated March 2026). Owning the tool is not the same as using it: our piece on buying Gong but skipping the methodology covers that gap. And as we argue in why RevOps programs stall at recommendations, insight nobody acts on doesn't change the number.
Clari, now part of Salesloft: fixes the forecast process
Clari and Salesloft announced their merger on August 7, 2025, saying the combined company would serve more than 5,000 organizations and that Clari's co-founder and CEO, Andy Byrne, would lead it. When the deal closed on December 3, 2025, the companies instead appointed Steve Cox as CEO of the combined organization. Clari's site now redirects to Salesloft, which lists "Improve forecast accuracy With Clari Forecast" and still offers a separate Clari Forecast login. Clari Forecast automates roll-ups with one-click visibility "from top-line views to individual deals," supports scenario modelling, says it is built for subscription and consumption revenue models, and integrates with Salesforce and other revenue tools. Clari lists opportunity management and inspection as a separate product area. Clari's strength is process: it turns the Monday forecast call from a spreadsheet exercise into a governed cadence. The merger matters for buyers. Salesloft's customer FAQ, dated December 3, 2025, says there are no current plans for required migrations, that a joint roadmap would follow as 2026 began, and that the long-term vision is "one company, one platform," so ask any rep which product you would be on in two years. Pricing is not published.
Salesforce Einstein and Agentforce: fixes convenience inside Sales Cloud
Salesforce's own AI used to be sold mostly under the Einstein name. Much of it now sits under Agentforce: Salesforce's explainer is titled "What Is Agentforce Assistant? (Formerly Einstein Copilot)". As of October 2026, Salesforce lists Conversation Insights at $50 per user a month, billed annually, with call insights, automatic transcripts and call collections. On its Sales pricing page, Revenue Intelligence is an add-on starting at $220 per user a month, described as purpose-built analytics and actionable insights throughout the sales cycle. Sales Cloud editions are listed at $195 (Core), $395 (Advanced) and $550 (Max) per user a month, billed annually. The page says AI can be added to Core and above, lists Agentforce for Sales as an add-on from $125 per user a month, and includes it in Max. Everything shares the CRM's data model and permissions, so there is no sync to break. The trade-off is that it works only on Salesforce, and you need to map which capability sits in which edition or add-on before you can compare costs. Like the other platforms, it reads the records you have. It does not decide whether they are right.
VANDFORT engineered systems: fixes the records underneath
The last option is not a platform. VANDFORT installs specific systems inside your existing CRM and tools, built on your own definitions, tested on your own past data, and shipped only when they pass. Three of our nine systems overlap with this category. Pipeline Hygiene Sentinel flags stale or contradictory deal records, such as a close date in the past, a stage that has not moved or an owner who left, and routes each one to the person who can fix it. It "never edits a deal, changes a stage or moves a close date." Forecast Assistant builds a weekly forecast from the records, with every change traced to the deal that caused it, and is tested against your last four closed quarters before it forecasts a live one. Revenue Answers answers revenue questions in plain language and shows the query and definition behind each answer. Each ships at an 85% pass mark or doesn't ship. The limits are real. We don't record calls, we don't replace a conversation intelligence platform, and an engagement takes weeks, not an afternoon.
How to choose
Run a post-mortem on your last five lost or slipped deals. For each, write down where the warning first appeared: on a call, in an email, in a CRM field, or nowhere. That one exercise tells you which category you need. If the signal was on a call that nobody heard, you have a conversation problem. If it was in a field nobody trusted, you have a records problem.
Check the data your forecast reads. Gartner named poor data quality as one of the main contributors to inaccurate forecasts. Pull your open pipeline and count deals with a close date in the past, no activity in thirty days, or a missing next step. If that count is high, any forecasting platform will analyse the same errors faster. Our piece on identity resolution covers the layer most reports quietly depend on.
Decide whether you need new data or better use of existing data. Conversation intelligence creates new data. Forecasting platforms, CRM-native AI and engineered systems mostly work with data you already capture. Paying for new data makes sense only if you will act on it every week.
Price the full cost, not the license. Add platform fees, add-ons, admin time and the manager hours needed for adoption. For Salesforce, list which edition and add-on each feature needs. For merged vendors, ask in writing which product you will be on after the roadmap lands.
Test on your own quarters. Ask each vendor to replay your last two or three closed quarters and show what its forecast or deal warnings would have said at weeks four, eight and twelve. Vendor case studies, including ours, tell you less than your own history.
A rule of thumb, offered as a suggested starting point rather than a benchmark: if more than a quarter of your open pipeline fails the basic checks in step two, fix the records before buying a forecasting platform, because the platform will inherit the problem. If your records are clean and you still lose deals you thought you'd win, conversation intelligence is probably the better first purchase.
Where VANDFORT fits, and where it doesn't
You already own Gong, Clari or Salesforce AI, and the forecast still surprises you because the deals underneath are stale. Your board pack, like the one in our guide to board-ready revenue reporting, takes days to reconcile because each team counts differently. You want a forecast where every change traces back to a record, and a system that escalates instead of editing. Or you are a $3M to $30M ARR team that needs one or two systems working, not another platform to roll out. Our systems page lists all nine.
If you want call recording, transcripts and coaching libraries, buy conversation intelligence; we don't build that. If you need a self-serve tool your RevOps admin configures in a day, buy software. If you run a large sales organisation with dozens of managers and need a forecast cadence enforced across all of them, a forecasting platform is built for that. And if you are fully standardised on Sales Cloud with clean data and simple stages, try Salesforce's own forecasting and Conversation Insights before adding anyone.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best Gong alternatives?
The best Gong alternative depends on what you wanted Gong to fix. For forecast process, Clari, now part of Salesloft, is the closest comparison. For conversation insights inside Salesforce, Salesforce lists Conversation Insights at $50 per user a month as of October 2026. If the real problem is unreliable CRM records, an engineered system such as VANDFORT's Pipeline Hygiene Sentinel or Forecast Assistant addresses that directly.
Is Clari better than Gong for forecasting?
Neither is better in every case; they start from different data. Clari was built around the forecast process: roll-ups, deal-level visibility and scenario modelling across managers. Gong starts from captured conversations and builds forecasting on top, and it claims that its signals predict deal outcomes more precisely than algorithms based on CRM data. Test both on your own closed quarters, and remember that both read the same CRM records you already have.
How much does Gong cost?
Gong does not publish prices. Its pricing page says licenses are priced per user, with a platform fee based on the number of users. Vendr, which brokers software deals, reports a median of $55,359 a year across 1,145 Gong purchases, with a range of about $11,500 to $204,000 (updated March 2026). Add admin time and the manager hours that adoption needs.
Does Salesforce have a built-in alternative to Gong?
Yes. As of October 2026, Salesforce sells Conversation Insights at $50 per user a month, with call insights, automatic transcripts and call collections. Revenue Intelligence is an add-on from $220 per user a month, and Agentforce for Sales is an add-on from $125 per user a month on Sales Cloud Core and above, included in Max. They only work on Salesforce, so check which edition or add-on each feature needs.
What happened to Clari after the Salesloft merger?
Clari and Salesloft announced their merger in August 2025 and completed it on December 3, 2025, when Steve Cox was appointed CEO of the combined company. Clari's website now redirects to Salesloft, where Clari Forecast is still offered. Salesloft's customer FAQ says there are no current plans for required migrations and that the long-term vision is one company, one platform.
Do I need a revenue intelligence platform if my CRM data is messy?
Probably not yet. Revenue intelligence platforms analyse the records you give them, and Gartner names poor data quality as one of the main contributors to inaccurate forecasts. If many open deals have past-due close dates, no recent activity or missing next steps, fix that first. A platform bought on top of messy data usually produces faster, better-looking versions of the same wrong number.
Sources: Gartner, State of Sales Operations Survey (press release, February 12, 2020). Gong, Reality of Forecasting Report (928 sales and revenue professionals; press release, July 19, 2022). Salesforce, State of Sales report (4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries, surveyed August to September 2025). Clari and Salesloft, "Clari and Salesloft Announce Agreement to Merge" (August 7, 2025). Clari and Salesloft, merger completion and CEO appointment (December 3, 2025). Salesloft, merger customer FAQ (December 3, 2025). Vendr, Gong pricing data (1,145 purchases; updated March 2026). Salesforce, "What Is Agentforce Assistant? (Formerly Einstein Copilot)". Vendor product and pricing pages for Gong Forecast, Gong pricing, Clari Forecast, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Conversation Insights (accessed October 8, 2026).
Last reviewed: October 2026. Vendor features and pricing change; check each vendor's site before buying.
