Gainsight vs Totango: Enterprise Customer Success Platforms Compared

Overview

Gainsight and Totango are both established customer success platforms competing for the enterprise market. Gainsight is the category leader with comprehensive features and deep Salesforce integration. Totango offers a modular approach with SuccessBlocs and a free tier that makes it more accessible for growing teams.

Both platforms provide health scoring, playbooks, and CS workflows. The choice often comes down to budget, existing tech stack, and how much customization you need.

Key Differences

Approach to CS Programs

Gainsight provides maximum flexibility to build custom CS programs. You configure health scores, playbooks, and workflows from scratch based on your specific needs. This customization is powerful but requires significant setup time and CS operations expertise.

Totango's SuccessBlocs offer pre-built templates for common CS scenarios - onboarding, adoption, renewal, expansion. This modular approach gets you running faster but may constrain teams with unique requirements. Templates are customizable but start from established frameworks.

Pricing and Accessibility

Totango's free Spark tier is genuinely useful for up to 100 accounts. This lets teams start with CS tooling before committing budget. Paid tiers scale reasonably. The gradual on-ramp makes Totango accessible to growing companies.

Gainsight typically starts around $50,000 annually with no free tier. The investment makes sense for large enterprises but prices out smaller companies. Budget alone often determines which platform is realistic.

Salesforce Integration

Gainsight has exceptionally deep Salesforce integration, including a native Salesforce app option. If your company runs on Salesforce and needs tight CRM-CS alignment, Gainsight's integration is a significant advantage.

Totango integrates with Salesforce and other CRMs but the integration isn't as deep. For Salesforce-centric organizations, this difference matters.

Who Should Choose What

Choose Gainsight if:

• You have 20+ CSMs and complex CS operations
• Salesforce is central to your revenue operations
• You need maximum customization and flexibility
• Budget allows for $50k+ annual investment
• You have CS ops resources for implementation and maintenance

Choose Totango if:

• You want to start with CS tooling before major budget commitment
• SuccessBlocs templates match your CS scenarios
• Faster implementation is important
• You're building your CS function and may scale later
• Budget is a primary constraint

The Bottom Line

Gainsight is the enterprise standard for good reason - it's comprehensive, customizable, and deeply integrated with Salesforce. But it's expensive and complex. Choose Gainsight if you're a large enterprise with the budget and resources to maximize its capabilities.

Totango offers a more accessible path to CS platform functionality. The free tier and SuccessBlocs templates let growing teams start building CS practices before enterprise-level investment. Choose Totango if budget matters or you want faster time-to-value.

Either platform benefits from complementary tools. Retention email automation from Sequenzy adds AI-generated sequences that neither CS platform provides natively.