The world’s #1 enterprise CRM — and a $50,000 implementation away from understanding what a trade show booth is. Exphora is the only CRM purpose-built for the trade show industry — with 30+ booth specifications, a free 3D Booth Designer, AI-generated proposals, multi-currency invoicing and a 433,000+ exhibitor signal database. All at flat $49–$399/mo, not per seat.
Switch from Salesforce in days, not months. Keep your data, drop the add-ons, ship your first AI booth proposal today. The 3D Booth Designer is forever-free with no credit card.
Salesforce is a fine general-purpose tool. For the specifics of trade show production, it leaves you filling gaps with add-ons, integrations and manual workarounds.
Salesforce ships nothing for trade shows. Modelling booth size, electrical, AV, hostesses, render gallery and fabrication materials means custom objects, custom fields, page layouts, validation rules and Flows — all maintained by a paid admin or a $150/hr partner.
Salesforce has no native 3D engine. The closest you get is uploading a SketchUp PDF to Files — a far cry from Exphora’s parametric 3D editor with DAE/STL/OBJ/GLB/DXF/PNG export, included free.
Sales Cloud Enterprise is $165/seat/mo (annual) — that’s $1,650 for 10 seats. Add CPQ ($75/seat) for proposals, Pardot for marketing ($1,250+/mo), DocuSign integration, partner implementation ($30k–$80k year one), and you are easily north of $5,000/mo before booth-specific work.
Most Salesforce rollouts run a discovery → design → build → UAT → train cycle of 8–24 weeks. Exphora is configured in hours. Booth pipelines, proposal templates, 30+ specs and event tagging ship pre-built.
Salesforce has no concept of "trade show". No catalogue of CES, Hannover Messe, EuroShop, IDEF, Tüyap, IFA, Cosmoprof, BIG 5 or anything else. Exphora ships 112,000+ events and 433,000+ exhibitor records as a queryable database.
Sales Cloud does not invoice. You either bolt on Salesforce Revenue Cloud (enterprise SKU) or pipe data to NetSuite/QuickBooks. Exphora bills natively in 7 currencies with 9 payment methods on every paid tier.
Salesforce starts at $25/mo and tops out at $500/mo per seat — before add-ons. Exphora is flat $49 / $199 / $399, with the 3D Designer included free.
| Tier | Salesforce | Exphora |
|---|---|---|
| Solo / 1 user | $25/mo (Starter, billed annually) | $49/mo flat — full CRM |
| Small team (5 users) | ~$825/mo (Pro Suite $100 × 5 + add-ons) | $199/mo flat — Pro, 5 users + Signal Explorer |
| Growing agency (10 users) | $3,300+/mo (Enterprise + CPQ + Pardot + DocuSign) | $399/mo flat — Enterprise, 10 users + API |
| Year-1 total cost | $30k–$80k typical (incl. partner) | $1,548–$3,588/yr |
The capabilities booth builders actually need, side by side.
| Feature | Salesforce | Exphora | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to go-live | No | Yes | 2–6 months vs hours |
| Booth specs native (no custom objects) | No | Yes | 30+ Exphora fields out of the box |
| Free 3D Booth Designer | No | Yes | Forever-free |
| AI booth proposals | Partial | Yes | Einstein generic vs Claude booth-aware |
| CPQ-equivalent included | No | Yes | Salesforce CPQ = $75/seat add-on |
| Multi-currency invoicing built-in | Partial | Yes | Salesforce needs Revenue Cloud / 3rd party |
| Trade show / exhibitor database | No | Yes | Signal Explorer |
| Flat pricing | No | Yes | Salesforce: per seat × many SKUs |
| Annual contract requirement | No | Yes | Salesforce typically locks 12+ months |
| Admin / partner required | No | Yes | No Exphora certification needed |
Comparison data based on publicly available pricing and documentation as of April 2026. Plan names and feature gating may change — always verify on the vendor’s website.
Six reasons booth shops pick the industry-specific tool over the generic one.
Booth pipeline, proposal templates, contracts, invoicing and 3D Designer are pre-configured. The 3-day free trial is enough to run a real booth deal end-to-end.
No per-seat tax, no CPQ add-on, no Pardot SKU, no implementation partner. Booth shops routinely save $30,000–$150,000 in year one switching from Salesforce to Exphora.
Booth, BoothSpec, RenderImage, TradeShowEvent, ExhibitorContact and FabricationMaterial are first-class objects in Exphora — no custom-object engineering, no Flow Builder, no Apex.
Parametric editor, render gallery, electrical plan, art-list, 6 CAD export formats. Salesforce will never ship this — Exphora has it forever-free with no credit card.
Einstein focuses on lead scoring and forecasting. Exphora’s Claude-powered AI writes the entire booth proposal — 30+ specs, narrative, pricing — from a 1-line brief.
112k+ events, 433k+ exhibitors, 632k+ contacts queryable by country, sector and event date — plus WhatsApp, IG, FB, IMAP and AI chat in one inbox. Salesforce charges Service Cloud + Marketing Cloud + Data Cloud separately for fragments of this.
Most booth shops migrate in under a week. Here is the path.
Pull Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and Tasks via Salesforce Data Loader. Exphora’s wizard maps Account → Company and Opportunity → Opportunity automatically.
Most "Booth__c" / "Stand_Project__c" custom objects collapse into Exphora’s native Booth + BoothSpec model. We give you a field-mapping spreadsheet.
Drop CPQ, Pardot/Marketing Cloud Engagement, Service Cloud, DocuSign and any custom proposal apps — all replaced by Exphora natively.
Run Salesforce + Exphora in parallel for one billing cycle, freeze your Salesforce sandbox, then cancel before the annual auto-renew. Most teams save $30k–$150k year one.
Everything booth builders ask before switching from Salesforce.
For booth shops under ~50 users, yes — comfortably. Exphora delivers the booth-specific workflows that Salesforce only achieves after a $30k–$80k partner implementation. Above ~50 users with truly bespoke processes (territory management, complex compensation plans, regulated industries) Salesforce still wins.
Booth shops routinely cut $30,000–$150,000 in year one. Sales Cloud Enterprise (10 seats) + CPQ + Pardot + partner = $40k–$80k year one. Exphora Enterprise = $3,588/yr flat for the same team size, with booth specs, 3D Designer and Signal Explorer included.
Most "deals by stage", "revenue by event", "win rate by source" reports rebuild in Exphora’s reporting in minutes. Highly bespoke Apex-powered dashboards do not migrate; in practice 80% of booth-builder reports are pre-built in Exphora already.
No. Migration usually takes 1–3 working days using CSV export from Data Loader and Exphora’s import wizard. Exphora’s onboarding team can run the migration for Pro and Enterprise customers.
DocuSign is replaced by Exphora’s built-in dual e-signature. Slack and Outlook integrate via webhook + IMAP/Calendar sync. NetSuite/QuickBooks integration is on the API roadmap; in the meantime Exphora exports invoices to CSV/Excel.
Exphora uses Claude (Anthropic) for booth-specific AI: proposal generation, lead scoring, AI chat widget, AI sequences. For booth builders this is more useful than Einstein because it understands stand specs, materials and trade show context.
HTTPS/TLS in transit, AES-256 encrypted backups, JWT auth, role-based access (6 roles). Stripe handles payment data, so we never store card numbers. You can export your data as a ZIP and delete your account yourself at any time. We are not SOC 2 certified and no audit is currently underway — ask us before you buy if you need one.
Yes — that is the point. Sign up, run a real booth deal end-to-end, decide. No sales calls, no annual contracts, cancel anytime in the dashboard.
Start free. Import your contacts in minutes. Ship your first AI-generated booth proposal today — and try the 3D Booth Designer with no credit card.
If a generic CRM is the wrong fit for booth-builder workflows, these are the most useful next reads: