Marketing-automation-first against sales-pipeline-first
This is a design question rather than a quality question. A marketing-first platform organises the world around contacts, tags and journeys; a sales-first CRM organises it around deals, stages and activities. Both are legitimate and each is uncomfortable doing the other job. Compare on which of those two problems is actually costing you revenue this quarter, and be honest about it, because a team that needs lifecycle nurture will not be helped by a dialer, and a team that needs follow-up discipline will not be rescued by another journey.
The channels Indian buyers actually use
Email open rates tell you very little in a market where a buyer answers WhatsApp in ninety seconds and never opens a marketing message. Check whether chat is native to the contact record in the product you are comparing or arrives through a third-party integration, who holds the message history, and what happens to it if that integration lapses. Check the same for calling: whether a dialer is included in the plan you would buy, or whether telephony is a separate subscription with its own contract.
How the bill is metered
Compare the shape of pricing rather than any number. Some vendors meter by contact volume, some by seat, some by feature tier, and the shape decides how the cost behaves as you grow. For an Indian business with years of accumulated enquiries, contact-metered pricing can mean paying to keep old data while seat-based pricing means paying for the people doing the selling. Check on your own plan how contacts are counted, what happens when you exceed the tier you are on, and whether there is a genuine free plan or only a trial.
