Revenue Leadership

Comparing the 11 Best Sales Forecasting Software Solution Options in 2025

This overview is brought to you by Revcast, the AI-powered revenue planning and forecasting operating system that optimizes for your people capacity, pipeline and performance.

Table of contents

  • Overview of sales and revenueforecasting
  • Today’s recommended criteria for selecting a sales forecasting solution
  • 11 sales foredcating / revenue forecasting solutions for consideration
  • How we put this list together and information sources
  • Learn more about the author, Revcast

Overview of Sales Forecasting

The purpose of sales forecasting (also called revenue forecasting) is to predict as closely as possible how much product and/or services you expect to sell in a given forward-looking period of time, such as in the next week, month, quarter, or year. Sales forecasting takes into account the company’s annual overall revenue goals, and seeks to identify progress (status) and gaps in meeting those goals.

With sales forecasting, a company is looking at a combination of two forces: first, what they think they will gain in market share, and secondly, their own resources and readiness to generate a desired volume of market share. You don’t want to be in a situation where there is more demand than you can meet (you are under capacity) or be inefficiently over-resourcing for demand that isn’t yet there (over capacity). Striking the balance is key.

Having poor sales forecasting and predictability hurts businesses in a number of ways. One of the most obvious impacts is that negatively missing your revenue goal has a cascading effect on budgeted investment and hiring decisions – even outside of the sales organization. Those plans must be re-evaluated and often pared back, particularly if there is not a high likelihood that you can “make up” the gap in the next quarter. It also erodes confidence in revenue and sales team leadership, as it creates uncertainty as to whether the root issue is a poor estimate of the plan’s revenue target to begin with; poor management and execution; or faulty or insufficient data behind the forecast. 

On the flip side, if you over-achieve against your forecast, there can be much to celebrate – but it also means you have missed opportunities to invest in some areas (hiring, product, marketing) earlier to further accelerate your momentum in the market. All those reasons are why sales forecasting solutions have been a priority for many companies.

Sales forecasting software tools came into popularity in the early 2000s with the increased adoption of sales force automation and CRM (customer relationship management) systems, mainly Siebel and Salesforce, with HubSpot eventually joining the fray as it expanded from its roots as an inbound marketing platform. Over time, independent sales forecasting products that integrated directly with those and other CRM systems became more numerous and competitive, although there have been cases of expected market consolidation through mergers/acquisitions. 

What are the components of a sales forecasting solution? Quality sales forecasting practices should draw from trusted historical sales data; collaborative input from sales stakeholders; the current state of sales performance; trends seen in customer acquisition and market dynamics; and of course – the goals of your overall revenue plan. The better you can understand and quantifiably model these influences on your business, the more accurate your forecast is likely to be. That said, forecasting is about predicting the future – with the goal to be best-in-class in making those revenue predictions.

Today’s Recommended Criteria for Selecting a Sales Forecasting Software Solution

Because sales forecasting solutions have been in the market now for nearly two decades, there are some fundamentals you should expect that they all (or nearly all) bring to the table. Assumed features include the ability to marry historic and current data; integrations directly with your CRM; low-latency data updates/refreshes; and easy-to-navigate reporting and views that swap between aggregate and roll-up views, territories, teams, and rep-level data.

Unfortunately, even with the well-established nature of these tools, sales forecasting remains a major challenge for many businesses. In fall 2024, a Harvard Business Review study found that only 41% of CEOs feel confident that their Chief Revenue Officer (or head of revenue/sales) can bring their company to commercial success (source). Vendor Xactly found in its 2024 Sales Forecasting Benchmark report that about 50% of revenue leaders have missed multiple forecasts in the previous year (source). That’s showing little progress from when Gartner reported in 2020 nearly the same finding, which is that less than 50% of sales leaders and sellers had confidence in forecasting accuracy (source).

Another dynamic at play has been the volatility of global markets and supply chains since the start of the COVID pandemic. In early 2025, the uncertainty continued around tariff policies by the U.S. All of this has coincided with the end of the ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) fundraising climate, which squashed the “growth at all costs” go-to-market era in favor of what is now a very close focus on efficient growth and greater predictability of outcomes.

As a result, in 2025, a new set of criteria is driving the sales forecasting solution landscape further along the maturity curve. The evolution of sales forecasting will be much more than simply “calling a number” to predict where you’ll end up for the month or quarter. It will be about how you can use forecasting to identify as early as possible the signals that put your revenue achievement at risk – and then understand the different options and trade-offs to address those risks.

To that end, current sales forecasting tool users and prospective buyers should most certainly add these criteria to their evaluation: 

  • Forecasting must be about more than deal-level analysis. Most forecasting tools either do a poor job of or completely lack in capturing other critical inputs outside of deals in play that drive forecasting accuracy, mainly around people capacity, sales performance KPIs, and pipeline.
  • AI support should drive improved efficiency, analysis, and projections. Sales forecasting tools should be adding in meaningful AI co-piloting features, not just superficial chat functionality. 
  • Stakeholder collaboration should become more tangible and measurable. That means collaboration must be about more than the table-stakes of shared visibility. What’s needed now are the data inputs, validation, context, and action items from your GTM stakeholders, which include marketing, people recruitment, finance, and possibly more.
  • Forecasting should connect directly to your overall plan, including your hiring and staffing plan. Sales forecasting cannot continue to operate as an island of weekly reviews that only sales participates in. It should benchmark against your annual revenue plan in real-time, look at both the near-term and long-term projections, and drive new scenario models to course-correct sooner.

Shortlist of 2025’s Sales Forecasting Software Solutions

Sales forecasting is a “noisy” product category, but there are some clear front-runners you want to compare in your solution search. Revcast has put together a list of 11 potential solutions we believe are some of the strongest contenders, ranging from the longer-established players to emerging and innovative entrants to the market. 

Revcast is described first on the list, and after that, we’ve placed the other solution options in alphabetical order. All have some advantages and shortcomings highlighted.

  1. Revcast
  2. Aviso
  3. BoostUp
  4. Clari
  5. Forecastio
  6. Gong
  7. HubSpot
  8. Kluster
  9. People.ai
  10. Outreach
  11. Salesloft

1: Revcast (www.revcast.com) - The Best Full-Capacity Sales and Revenue Forecasting Software Solution for 2025

Revcast is purpose-built for B2B companies seeking a more complete AI-powered sales forecasting picture that’s also directly connected to their revenue plan. Revcast refers to this as "4-dimensional," because it adds to the existing deal-centric forecast the current data about three important areas: your people capacity and headcount allocation; pipeline building and production; and sales performance. From there, the solution continuously models the best plan forward to reach your target revenue goal.

  • Best for: Full-picture sales forecasting and AI recommendations that captures more go-to-market inputs including quota-on-the-street capacity, pipeline production, and performance productivity
  • Year founded: 2023 with revenue planning and forecasting since inception
  • Key features:
    • Analyzes inputs beyond deal flow, including hiring, headcount allocation, ramp schedules, attrition, pipeline, quota attainment, and closing performance metrics
    • Includes AI teammates to help monitor forecasts and plan performance and recommend planning adjustments based on triggers or user prompts
    • Easily toggle views by forecast time periods, teams, individuals, and other defined segments
    • Sends push alerting on revenue forecast risks and opportunities as they arise
    • Simple few-clicks AI scenario modeling and analyses to compare different outcomes
    • Robust and dynamically updated visualizations with exportable reports
  • Advantages:
    • Specifically built to capture a holistic sales forecast that’s connected to your annual revenue plan, with people capacity and performance-centric inputs supported out-of-the-box not found in traditional sales forecasting, general EPM, and FP&A modeling tools
    • Substantive AI co-piloting help in terms of querying the data, receiving proactive alerts and recommendations, and generating rapid scenario side-by-sides
    • Allows for granular team segmentations
    • Drills down to planning-level assumptions and performance data at an individual rep level
    • Clean, simple UI
    • Up and running within 1 week
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Revcast constantly checks sales forecasting performance in real-time throughout the fiscal year, based on your annual revenue plan’s goals, with AI that proactively alerts you to risks and recommends changes going forward.
  • Shortcomings:
    • Used alongside vs. totally replaces deal-level forecasting reports or tools
    • Because it doesn’t provide deal-oriented forecasts, no availability to roll up deal- and rep-level forecasts
    • Early-stage company means it’s not as well known.
  • Customer Feedback:
    • A number of customer testimonials are published on Revcast’s website that highlight the solution helping them realize “confidence” in achieving their revenue targets and to communicate with the C-suite and board. Other statements note how the solution gives “both the current insights and forward-looking view needed to run the business effectively.”
  • Integrations:
    • Major CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot)
    • Additional integrations available to connect with HR/hiring systems and BI tools
  • Pricing:
    • Starts at $7,000 annual subscription and tiers based on size of sales organization

2: Aviso (https://www.aviso.com/

  • Best for: Sales management teams seeking a robust deal-based sales forecasting module with bidirectional CRM synchs and mobile views
  • Year founded: 2012 with forecasting product launched in 2014
  • Key features:
    • Rolls up and updates forecasts from individuals and teams in real time, across all in-app reports
    • A proprietary Winscore Explanations feature makes it easy to tag deals in or out for commits and to identify possible upside deals to pull in to the period
    • Easy dashboards and deal maps to scan for deal changes and risks in the current quarter
    • Mobile version of the app makes it easy to run meetings and review calls while “on the go”
    • Can bi-directional synch data with CRM and BI tools
  • Advantages:
    • Opportunity status updates made in Aviso can push back to Salesforce (or other CRMs) to keep deal data in synch without extra data entry work
    • Reduces read-only Salesforce license costs for forecasting-only viewers
    • AI features and agentic workflows automate a lot of the submission checks, report building, and report updating
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Winscore Explanations
    • Customization options to keep Aviso in synch with your CRM
    • Flexible reporting
    • Mobile version
  • Shortcomings:
    • Forecasting is limited only to data about deals/opportunities and does not take into account pipeline progress, people capacity status, and sales cycle performance metrics
    • Does not connect to the annual revenue plan, unless built as a custom integration with your BI system
    • Amount of data can feel overwhelming to some users
    • Some users report slow data synchs and/or reporting load times, but these are not common critiques 
  • Customer Feedback:
    • High volumes of user reviews on G2, where they score 4.4 out of 5 as of June 23, 2025 – with top pros being ease of use and forecasting accuracy, and top cons being learning curve and slow load times. Customer testimonials on the website also reference other product modules in their total revenue platform offering, but a number of revenue leaders cite that they “live in” Aviso for most of their management and reporting work.
  • Integrations:
    • Expected connectors to CRM systems, BI tools, and to other products in the Aviso platform.
  • Pricing:
    • Not disclosed on their website, but some independent websites estimate a starting price for Aviso of around $50,000 while other sources like Vendr report a range between $24,000 and $85,000.

3: BoostUp (https://www.boostup.ai/

  • Best for: Wider sales team access to deal-level sales forecasting and deal inspection help on a range of revenue-generating types, bolstered by a user-friendly interface
  • Year founded: 2018 with forecasting since inception
  • Key features:
    • Rolls up and drill down forecasts by any hierarchy you define, which can include by product or even feature set being sold
    • AI assistance features now help sales reps with compliance on deal submissions, sales methodology steps and scorecards, and status reporting
    • Build forecasts for any revenue model, whether SaaS, PLG, Customer Success, or Marketing, whether subscription or consumption
    • Blend human judgement with BoostUp’s AI predictions
    • Estimates amount of pipeline needed to hit targets
    • Two-way synch with CRM tools automates data updating
  • Advantages:
    • Brings in forecasting insights about pipeline generation needed to help with longer-term revenue predictability
    • Deal-level inspection features and action steps are easy to navigate
    • AI features prompt sales team members to be more accurate and complete in their entries and updates 
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Some level of pipeline forecasting brings additional insights into the picture
    • Flexible forecasting models tailored to team and revenue type
    • Ability to adjust a deal-level forecast using human judgement
    • Bi-directional CRM synch to make it easy to update deal data from one place
  • Shortcomings:
    • Although BoostUp includes some view of pipeline data along with deal- and account-focused forecasting, it does not integrate people capacity status, sales cycle performance metrics, and costs
    • Does not connect to the annual revenue plan
    • Some users cite concerns with search features throwing errors, issues with Salesforce integration synch, and quirks around certain UI fields
  • Customer Feedback:
    • BoostUp has similar customer reviews as Aviso, with top pros around ease of use and cons around CRM integration issues. As of June 23, 2025, it had 4.4 out of 5 stars on G2 from more than 600 reviews. Positive testimonials on their website include not just revenue leaders but also from customer success leaders and sales operations, which speaks to their forecast model flexibility.
  • Integrations:
    • Extensive integration options available beyond CRM and BI tools, including conversation intelligence, user analytics, and sales enablement platforms. 
  • Pricing:
    • While specifics beyond “per user, per month” are not disclosed by the company,, some independent websites estimate a starting price for BoostUp of around $79 per user per month, but this could not be verified.

4: Clari (https://www.clari.com/products/forecast/

  • Best for: GTM organizations seeking a well-established, deal-focused forecasting tool with flexibility to support different revenue model types and part of a larger sales enablement platform
  • Year founded: 2013 with forecasting added in 2015 
  • Key features:
    • Forecasting flexibility for “every” revenue model type, from subscription to consumption. Can blend deal-based and usage-based forecasts into unified views.
    • Highly configurable forecasting views can be built with ease
    • Provides some pipeline forecasting visibility including waterfall reports
    • Pushes prediction insights and scenario modeling down to rep-level views within the app, to drive more bottoms-up territory and deal forecasting accuracy
    • Automated forecasting roll ups for management views
    • Update deal data within Clari and synch bi-directionally back to CRM
  • Advantages:
    • Sizable market reach and length of experience, citing 75,000+ teams using their forecasting product
    • Versatile forecasting models for any and all revenue models
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Integrates with other Clari products that can support team collaboration on deals, deal inspections, sales action automation, and conversation intelligence and coaching.
  • Shortcomings:
    • Even as one of the largest independent sales forecasting solutions in terms of market share, Clari still only views forecasting through the lens of individual deal updates that roll up to aggregate predictions. Missing are insights into how people and quota-on-the-street capacity, as well as sales team performance metrics are contributing to both near and longer-term forecasts. 
    • Does not connect to the annual revenue plan’s goals and costs, beyond the target numbers for the quarter across teams and individuals.
    • May have slower pace of innovation than other emerging players in the category
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Reviews specific to Clari’s forecasting product offer praises for its ease-of-use, paving the way for widespread adoption across the GTM organization. Criticisms group around themes of inflexible forecasting views within a report and not auto-calculating values submitted by users. But overall, reviews on third-party sites like G2 report high satisfaction (4.6 out of 5 as of June 23, 2025).
  • Integrations:
    • Due to its multiple products, Clari lists a number of integrations on their website that may or may not be directly applicable to the forecasting product. But certainly, integrations with CRM and popular BI solutions are available. 
  • Pricing:
    • Clari has a pricing page without any specific provided. Third-party websites like Vendr indicate a median price annually of around $80,000, but that estimate doesn’t specify how many Clari products or which ones this references. Pricing may be as low as $18,000 per year, but no confirmation was obtained.

5: Forecastio (https://forecastio.ai/

  • Best for: HubSpot-native sales forecasting for smaller-sized and emerging growth businesses, who are also looking to include sales planning and sales performance support in the same platform
  • Year founded: 2024
  • Key features:
    • Built specifically for HubSpot CRM users
    • Delivers automated advanced forecasting vs. relying on manually-set deal probability inputs
    • Compares time-series based forecasts and actuals to planned targets
    • Leverages historical HubSpot data to identify trends and improve projections
    • Platform includes sales planning pre-defined templates for capacity planning, growth planning, and inbound and outbound sales planning
    • Platform also includes some pipeline and sales cycle performance reporting
  • Advantages:
    • For HubSpot CRM users, it’s a much-improved solution over the out-of-the-box forecasting features of HubSpot
    • Aside from Revcast, it’s one of the few sales forecasting solutions on the market that also brings sales capacity, planning, pipeline production, and performance inputs into the larger forecasting picture
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Simplistic user interface and reporting views that align with HubSpot’s product experience
  • Shortcomings:
    • Only built for HubSpot CRM
    • May feel overly simplistic for some organization’s needs
    • AI features are also fairly light at this stage
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Website features one customer, Streamline, providing a video testimonial citing improved forecasting to over 90% and also improvements to team performance. G2 reviews as of June 23, 2025 give Forecastio a 4.5 out of 5 stars, citing pros in usability and time saving. Some reviewers note difficulty with more advanced customizations and the level of detail in customer support responses, but otherwise cons mentioned are fairly limited.
  • Integrations:
    • HubSpot
  • Pricing:
    • Transparent, clear pricing is listed on their website, starting at $149 per month for the first two users for up to 1,000 deals reviewed, and then $29 per month for each additional user. Pricing also tiers-up based on deal volumes. Pricing includes the sales planning product features as well.

6: Gong (https://www.gong.io/forecast/

  • Best for: Integrating sales call conversation intelligence insights into deal-level sales forecasting
  • Year founded: 2015 but forecasting solution launched in 2022
  • Key features:
    • Uses 300+ unique signals and AI to predict deal outcomes
    • Drill into details directly from dashboards
    • Configurable KPI metric library and dashboard templates to help accelerate implementation and align stakeholders
    • Folds conversation intelligence insights into the predictive models
    • Deal inspection and management capability that also connects to customer interaction insights
    • Synch data with CRM system so there’s no need to manually update in both places
    • Includes some insights on pipeline pacing
  • Advantages:
    • Implementation and on-boarding typically done in weeks vs. months it takes for many other forecasting solutions
    • Smooth integration with Gong’s conversation recording offering to use sentiment on deal predictability
    • Strong market awareness due to popularity of call recording/conversation intelligence offering
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • The incorporation of sales-call conversational intelligence and sentiment insights into the forecasting models
    • Use of AI pervasive throughout their offerings, including forecasting
  • Shortcomings:
    • As with most other sales forecasting solutions, Gong focuses primarily on deal-based forecasting, although it does readily bring in sales conversation insights from its popular conversation intelligence product. Its forecasting does not capture historic and/or current data on people capacity, sales cycle and closing performance, and costs, and only a limited view of pipeline around deal pacing.
    • Does not integrate with the annual revenue/sales plan.
    • Gong is primarily known for its conversational intelligence (call recording, transcribing, and related AI), so its forecasting capabilities are not as well reviewed.
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Most customer feedback is around Gong’s popular sales call recording and related workflow-enablement insights derived from that product (4.8 out of 5 stars on G2 as of June 23, 2025). There were three customer case studies available on their website specific to forecasting, citing benefits that include 95% forecast accuracy; improved sales process for forecasting deals; and 30% increase in closed-won deals.
  • Integrations:
    • Synchs with major CRM systems. A number of integrations are listed on their website, many for the conversational intelligence/call recording solution. 
  • Pricing:
    • Does not include pricing specifics on their website, but has an online form to initiate a pricing estimate. Some third-party websites suggest it may start at about $5,000 per year, but pricing is likely also influenced by user numbers.

7: HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com/products/forecasting

  • Best for: HubSpot Sales users who want an embedded offering within their CRM package
  • Year founded: 2006 but 2014 for forecasting tool within HubSpot CRM Free launch (now Sales Hub)
  • Key features:
    • Customizable forecast categories and revenue forecasting models
    • Forecast access permissions and submission validations
    • Team rollup views and drill downs to individual team and rep performance
    • Capture renewals and cross/upsells in forecasting models
  • Advantages:
    • Seamless part of the HubSpot Sales Hub experience
    • Familiar user experience making for relatively smooth, easy learning curve
    • Basic, no frills, yet still flexible to adapt for revenue types and sales cycle definitions
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Easy user interface
    • No additional integrations needed
  • Shortcomings:
    • Only works with HubSpot (of course) and available only in Premium editions of Sales and Services Hub
    • Limited to deal-based forecasting and does not capture historic and/or current data on people (hiring, ramping, and allocation) capacity, pipeline generation and capacity, sales cycle performance, and costs.
    • Not integrated with the annual revenue and GTM plan, other than specifying monthly or quarterly revenue target goals for deal forecasting comparisons.
    • Some AI guidance as part of Sales Hub, but less so in the Forecasting module
  • Customer Feedback:
    • HubSpot Sales Hub and Services Hub are listed as separate products on G2, so it takes some work to find feedback specific to the forecasting feature. Users like that it’s part of an all-in-one platform with the same user experience feel, with negatives being around rapid cost escalation when adding on Forecasting or other advanced features/modules, depending on the type and size of company.  
  • Integrations:
  • Pricing:
    • Forecasting is available at the Professional package level for HubSpot Sales Hub, starting at $90 per seat per month, with value pricing if you commit annually. Pricing is very transparent on their website.

8: Kluster (https://www.kluster.com/

  • Best for: Focus is on B2B companies who are managed by Private Equity and seeking an easy-to-consume forecasting solution
  • Year founded: 2016
  • Key features:
    • Extends forecasting horizon by an additional two months beyond the current quarter for longer top-line visibility
    • Use of AI forecast figures and what they call “multi-angle” revenue forecasting that allows for a blend of data and subjective perspectives from reps to the CRO
    • Board-ready reporting library that’s easy to package up to share and communicate
    • Revenue recognition reporting to translate sales forecasting into finance terms
    • Some basic plan-building to set targets, with ‘what-if’ scenario capabilities
  • Advantages:
    • Easy to navigate UI and report options to meet the needs of a range of team members: from reps, to managers, and up to the CRO and CEO
    • Ready-to-go board packet generation
    • Expertise embedded within the Kluster teams
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Reports and notifications that can be pushed to leaders’ emails
    • Variety of pre-packaged reporting options that are easy to consume
  • Shortcomings:
    • Deals-focused forecasting and modeling only, so does not take into account the capacity of your sales organization, no extended metrics around pipeline generation and performance, and does not include sales team and individual performance. 
    • While they offer some basic revenue target planning, it is not connected to a holistic capacity-driven bottoms-up revenue plan.
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Kluster features a number of customer case studies and videos on their website. Many customer reviews on G2 cite the ease of navigation the forecasting tool to get the information needed, and other reviews praise their customer support teams. Criticisms include some comments about Salesforce integration lags and inflexibility in customizing reports for certain needs, although those seem to be around niche specifics.
  • Integrations:
    • Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics Sales for CRMs
  • Pricing:
    • No information available on their website, but some independent sites report Kluster appears to use consumption-based pricing. 

9. People.ai (https://www.people.ai/solutions/forecasting)  

  • Best for: Innovator sales leaders looking to remove seller bias and enrich forecasting using engagement activity signals found within deals and accounts 
  • Year founded: 2016 but forecasting product just launched in 2025
  • Key features:
    • Real-time matching for deal status 
    • Assess deal-level data around engagement activity and sales methodology scorecarding to help remove rep biases and guesses from forecasts
    • Customizable for different revenue model types
    • AI and user interface features to help spot trends, blockers, and signals that may affect conversions
    • Part of overall platform that includes longer-standing solutions in account planning and pipeline inspection
    • Data synched with CRM, so can view or update in either place
  • Advantages:
    • Models into the forecast the engagement activity in each account where there’s a deal, including emails, calls, and meetings
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • Essential Intelligence headlines surfaced by AI to call out areas leaders should focus on
    • Customize what deal signals are highlighted by AI agents in the app
  • Shortcomings:
    • While People’s Forecasting solution goes a bit further than most by ingesting engagement-level activity signals for each account with deals in play, it still falls short in capturing sales capacity, pipeline generation history and actuals, and aggregate-level sales closing performance outcomes
    • Does not integrate or incorporate the detailed annual revenue and sales plan and budget to sharpen forecasting models and projections
    • Brand-new product entrant to the market compared to others on this list
  • Customer Feedback:
    • The forecasting solution is brand-new to the market, so there it is hard to find user feedback specific to it just yet. Their head of product management described in the launch announcement that it was developed in response to usage patterns they were seeing within their existing customer base for account strategy and deal inspection, where data was being exported from those products to integrate with other forecasting tools.
  • Integrations:
    • Integrates with the other modules of their platform and with Salesforce CRM, Oracle Fusion Sales, and Microsoft. Full list of integrations available on their website, but not all may be relevant to the forecasting product. 
  • Pricing:
    • Not available on the website and little information found independently (specific to the forecasting offering).

10. Outreach (https://www.outreach.io/platform/forecasting

  • Best for: Traditional deal-focused forecasting but with easy-to-run intraquarter modeling and scenario comparison simulations 
  • Year founded: 2014 but acquired forecasting and revenue intelligence from Canopy in 2021
  • Key features:
    • Automated forecasting roll-ups
    • Editable deal information in app and synchs with your CRM
    • Hierarchical forecast approvals within teams before final forecast update submissions 
    • Scenario creation and planning feature will run simulations to give you a distribution of outcomes including bear case, bull case, and most likely value
    • Intraquarter modeling to forecast potential opportunities not yet created but still expected to close in the same quarter
    • Run multiple forecasts concurrently, called parallel forecasting
    • Forecast history record keeping
  • Advantages:
    • For teams already using Outreach for account management, engagement campaigns, and conversation intelligence, it’s an easy transition to add their Forecasting module
    • Scenario modeling tool is a novel approach and worth comparing to other offerings
    • Company is very focused on workflow automations bolstered by AI
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • The scenario simulations deliver an easy avenue to drive data-driven collaboration on a go-forward plan based on historic and current deal pipeline insights and predictions
  • Shortcomings:
    • As with most other forecasting tools, Outreach forecasting is viewed only in the context of individual deal updates that roll up to aggregate predictions. While its scenario modeling is compelling, it leaves out crucial inputs around pipeline generation KPIs, headcount and ramped capacity, and sales team performance to sharpen both current-quarter and longer-term forecasts. 
    • Scenario simulations have the potential to connect to the overall annual revenue plan, but currently do not.
    • With Forecasting only added to its portfolio through relative recent acquisition, customer adoption from Outreach’s core outbound solution side means fewer success stories for this module are referencable.
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Forecasting product testimonial on website from customer Newton.
  • Integrations:
    • Has a marketplace listing of direct app connections available, with the three major CRMs of Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics included
  • Pricing:
    • Outreach does not list specific pricing values on its website, but does provide a summary of what each module or ‘package’ includes. Unable to find Forecast-specific pricing.

11. Salesloft (https://www.salesloft.com/platform/sales-forecasting-software

  • Best for: 
  • Year founded: 2011 but forecasting product launched in 2022
  • Key features:
    • AI agents analyze dozens of attributes seen in deals and accounts to apply its own weighting to show Salesloft’s forecast next to your forecast number
    • Looks at pipeline volume across stages to flag changes and gaps
    • Add deal-level coaching notes within the app that reps can see in their own workflow views
    • Segment forecasts by revenue type, segment, regions, account sizes, or time period views
    • Roll up individual forecasts into team performance views and forecasts
    • Automated weekly trendline reports to monitor progress
  • Advantages:
    • Being able to add contextual notes and action items to individual opportunities is a convenient feature
    • Integrated with Salesloft's overall Revenue Orchestration Cloud platform
  • Features You’ll Like:
    • User-friendly, clean interface that should encourage strong adoption and regular use
  • Shortcomings:
    • While Salesloft’s forecasting does include some elements of pipeline, it’s fairly limited and doesn’t encompass full-pipeline sourcing and some richer waterfall gap analyses found in tools like Revcast. 
    • Salesloft forecasting does not take into account sales team capacity actuals vs. plan or closing performance metrics and trends.
    • Outside of the quarter’s revenue number targets, it does not provide visibility of tracking against the annual sales plan.
  • Customer Feedback:
    • Most reviews found on independent websites such as G2 and Gartner Peer Reviews relate to Salesloft’s most popular product, which is the sales outreach cadence solution. There are several attributed testimonials on their Forecasting product web page, with one of those statements praising its ease of use to facilitate manager-rep one-on-ones.
  • Integrations:
    • Few specifics on integrations for the Forecasting product (we can assume major CRMs), but they have a marketplace listing of all available Salesloft integrations across its suite.
  • Pricing:
    • Details not available on their website, but their Forecasting module is only available with the Premier packaging level. Some independent websites and AI search answers estimate Premier starts at $60,000 per year, but this could not be verified.

In Summary

The sales and revenue forecasting category remains a crowded and competitive space, with high degrees of feature overlap across most established players. AI co-piloting and automations, real-time data, and CRM synchronization – while important and necessary – are all table stakes (although the execution of each may vary, particularly on the AI side).

The next frontier for sales forecasting will be to go beyond only capturing the usual attributes about deals and opportunities, to increase the scope on pipeline analysis, and to also add in people capacity and individual sales performance and closing metrics across the full buying cycle. 

Those innovators are rare but legitimate with the customers to prove it. People.ai is incorporating engagement level insights into forecast models, but that data still resides at the deal level. Currently, Revcast is the only emerging player to bring in the other three dimensions of capacity building and readiness, more comprehensive pipeline insights, and individual performance.

How We Compiled This Information

This list of solutions to consider for sales and revenue forecasting was compiled using a number of online sources, including first-party sources.

Each vendor’s own website was reviewed, including any available product demo videos, product screenshot images, pricing information, product data sheets, product announcements, blogs, and customer testimonials and stories. 

G2 as a crowd-sourced review resource provided insights about overall ratings, top-ranked pros and cons, and then individual review contributions were read to look for patterns, especially among more recently-submitted reviews. Additionally, several Reddit communities were helpful to learn about possible pricing ranges for certain products and additional user recommendations.

General online searches and AI search overviews provided supplemental insights from miscellaneous sources, such as vendor comparison overviews. These were not weighted as heavily in our assessment.

About the Author: Revcast

Revcast is the AI-powered revenue plan operating system that continually forecasts and recommends the most optimal path to reach your revenue goals. 

In real time, Revcast’s AI:

  • Captures and measures essential GTM performance, pipeline, capacity, and cost insights that traditional sales forecasting solutions simply aren’t built to model
  • Alerts you to revenue risks and opportunities based on how well your whole plan is executing in the near and longer-term (not just deal risks)
  • Instantly responds with scenario analyses and recommendations, showing different forecast projection outcomes with each scenario

100% of customers using Revcast say they have increased their confidence to optimize the path to their revenue goal. Used by smaller- to mid-sized B2B companies, Revcast is a revenue leader’s trusted co-pilot to drive predictability and growth efficiency. www.revcast.com/get-a-demo 

Drive revenue performance by getting planning and forecasting right.

Discover the value of Revcast for your sales org today.
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