Sana Commerce vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Where does each B2B e-commerce platform win?

ana Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud both have strong, similar offerings. Salesforce's B2B commerce product is built on the same platform as its CRM, one of the most widely used in the world, so it's strongest where the customer relationship is the anchor, such as in personalization, cross-channel engagement, and now buyer-facing AI. Sana Commerce is built on the ERP, so it's strongest where the transaction is, such as in contract pricing, live stock, technical catalogs, and reorders that match SAP or Microsoft Dynamics to the penny.

For your business, the comparison ultimately hinges on where your company's operations actually live. If your commercial truth sits in the CRM, Salesforce makes a strong argument. If it sits in the ERP, as it does for most manufacturers and wholesalers, the argument changes.

This comparison explains what each platform was built around, how each one connects to your ERP, and where their very different approaches to AI and growth tooling take you.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud at a glance

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the commerce arm of the world's largest CRM company, now marketed under the Agentforce Commerce umbrella following Salesforce's 2025 rebrand. It's a family of products rather than a single platform. The B2C side grew from Salesforce's 2016 acquisition of Demandware, a retail e-commerce platform, while the B2B side grew from CloudCraze, acquired in 2018 and built natively on the Salesforce platform, which means B2B Commerce shares its data model with the CRM itself.

That CRM foundation is Salesforce's genuine differentiator. Accounts, entitlements, buyer roles, contract pricing, and custom catalogs are managed in the same object model your sales and service teams may already work in, and the platform's personalization, multichannel support, and enterprise scalability draw on that shared customer data. Salesforce has also moved quickly on buyer-facing AI, shipping a conversational buying assistant natively into B2B Commerce in 2026.

To connect to an ERP system such as SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce Commerce Cloud typically runs through MuleSoft, the integration platform Salesforce acquired in 2018, or other middleware. Salesforce ships a MuleSoft accelerator with prebuilt APIs and templates for connecting ERP systems. This is a real head start over generic middleware. The accelerator's commerce use cases sync data on a schedule your team sets, and MuleSoft can support event-driven flows for near-real-time updates, but the architecture is the same either way. Your ERP data is synced into the platform and maintained there as the commerce products' own version of your prices, products, and customers, alongside whatever the CRM holds, and keeping all of it in agreement is the middleware layer's job.

Sana Commerce at a glance

Sana Commerce starts from the other system of record. Where Salesforce builds commerce outward from the customer relationship, Sana builds it on the ERP, the system that holds a manufacturer's contract prices, stock, account structures, and order logic. Founded in Rotterdam in 2007, Sana has spent its whole existence on companies running SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, serving customers around the world in industries from industrial equipment and spare parts to construction, chemicals, medical supplies, and electronics, with a place in the Gartner ® Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce four years running.

With Sana, real-time ERP data is connected across your wider systems, which helps buyer and seller touchpoints come together. Plus, you get guided intelligence that turns what your data shows into next steps. The store arrives complete, with complex product offerings, content management, order management, a self-service portal, and guided buying tools running on live ERP data.^®

Nothing is copied and nothing is synced. When a buyer opens a product list, a product page, or the checkout, Sana reads the price, stock, and account terms from SAP or Dynamics at that moment, applying your ERP's own logic to every order. What the buyer sees is what the ERP says, every visit, with nothing to drift.

Sana Commerce Cloud is a SaaS platform and a certified SAP and Microsoft Gold Partner, with native, certified ERP integration for SAP and Microsoft Dynamics ERPs, including:

• SAP ECC
• SAP S/4HANA
• SAP Business One
• Microsoft Dynamics AX, F&O/SCM
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Business Central

The first difference: Commerce built from the CRM, or from the ERP

Every commerce platform is an extension of something. Salesforce Commerce Cloud extends the CRM, and that shows in what the platform does best. Account structures, buyer entitlements, and permissions live natively in the Salesforce object model, personalization draws on the customer's full relationship history, and the buying experience is tuned for engagement and discovery. If the question is "who is this customer and how do we deepen the relationship," Salesforce was built to answer it.

Sana Commerce extends the ERP, and the difference shows in what a manufacturer's buyer actually needs at the moment of purchase. The question on a parts order is transactional: what's my contract price, is it in stock, what are my terms, and is this the right component for my machine? Those answers live in SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, so Sana was built on top of them, with technical catalogs, parts-buying tools, and reorder behavior shaped around ERP data rather than connected to it.

What this means for your buyers

• Catalog depth

  Sana handles large, technical, multi-attribute catalogs natively, drawing structure and specifications from the ERP's item data. On Salesforce, catalog depth for technical products is built up through configuration, and its search, recently strengthened for B2B with synonym management and weighted attributes, still runs on the catalog data the platform holds, so what a buyer finds is as accurate as the last sync from the ERP.

• Parts buying

  Sana ships visual and guided part search, exploded views, and BOM support, so a buyer who knows the machine but not the part number still lands on the right component, priced and stocked from live ERP data. Salesforce's new buying agent can confirm a SKU from an image and take the order in a chat, which is genuinely useful when the buyer already knows the part. Identifying the right component from the machine, the assembly, or the bill of materials is a different job, and it's the one Sana's tools are built for.

• Account complexity

  Salesforce manages account hierarchies, entitlements, and buyer roles natively in the CRM object model, and does it well. The catch for an SAP or Dynamics business is that the commercial terms those accounts buy on, meaning contract prices, credit limits, and payment terms, are mastered in the ERP, so the CRM-side account structure has to be kept aligned with the ERP-side truth. Sana reads account structure and terms from the ERP directly, so there's one version and it's the binding one.

• Reorder behavior

  Sana is built around repeat, high-frequency reordering tied to live ERP order history, including orders that came through reps or EDI. Salesforce has moved on reordering too, with a buying agent that completes repeat orders over chat. The difference is what the reorder runs on: the agent works from the order history and pricing the platform holds, synced from the ERP, while Sana reads the account's full history and current contract terms from SAP or Dynamics at the moment of reorder.

The second difference: How your ERP data gets to the buyer

Salesforce's ERP connection runs through MuleSoft, and it deserves credit for being more than generic middleware. MuleSoft is Salesforce's own integration platform, acquired in 2018, and Salesforce ships an accelerator for Commerce Cloud with prebuilt APIs, connectors, and integration templates for ERP systems including SAP. That's a real head start over building from a blank page. What the accelerator doesn't change is the shape of the connection. In MuleSoft's own documentation, the accelerator's ERP use cases operate on a scheduled basis you configure, the SAP flows require their own setup work before data moves, and while event-driven flows can be built for near-real-time updates, the architecture is the same either way. The commerce platform holds its own version of your prices, products, and customer data, refreshed on the rhythm you've built, and keeping that rhythm healthy through ERP upgrades and platform releases is ongoing integration work, whether it's owned by your team, a MuleSoft developer, or a partner.

Sana doesn’t let that data travel at all. The store is built on the ERP, so when a buyer loads a page, Sana reads the price, stock, and account terms from SAP or Dynamics at that moment, applying the ERP's own order logic. There's no sync to configure, because there's no second copy to feed.

What this means for your buyers

• Pricing accuracy

  Sana shows each buyer their exact contract price on every visit, pulled live from the ERP's pricing conditions. On Salesforce, pricing is typically maintained within the platform and updated through ERP integrations, though real-time pricing can also be implemented depending on the architecture.

• Stock a buyer can commit to

  Sana's inventory is the ERP's inventory, on product lists, product pages, and at checkout. On Salesforce, inventory availability is typically integrated from the ERP or inventory systems, on the accelerator's schedule by default, though near-real-time availability is possible through Omnichannel Inventory APIs or similar integration patterns, depending on the implementation.

• Who owns the connection

  Sana's ERP-native connectors are built and maintained by Sana, and staying current through ERP updates is the vendor's job. A MuleSoft integration is your asset, which brings flexibility, and also means your team or partner owns its upkeep, its monitoring, and its behavior after every upgrade on either side.

• Implementation

  Sana arrives with certified, pre-built connectors for SAP ECC, S/4HANA, Business One, and the Dynamics versions listed above, so connecting your ERP doesn't add a build of its own. On Salesforce, the accelerator shortens the ERP workstream but doesn't remove it: templates get extended, mappings get built, and the SAP-specific configuration gets done before the first price flows.

The third difference: AI at the front of the store, or behind it

Salesforce has pushed AI to the front of the buying experience. Its most concrete B2B capability is Buyer Agent, a conversational assistant that lets buyers confirm SKUs, apply their contract pricing, and complete orders over chat, including channels like WhatsApp and SMS, without logging into a portal. It's a real capability shipping today, not a roadmap slide, and it's aimed squarely at making ordering faster. One thing to understand about any front-of-store AI, though: when it answers a question about price, stock, or account terms, it can only be as accurate as the data behind it, and on Salesforce that data is the platform's synced version of your ERP, kept current by the integration.

Sana puts its AI behind the store, where a parts business feels it: working on the accuracy of what buyers see and the speed of how they reorder, rather than on the conversation itself. Around it sits the growth tooling: built-in analytics and a Commerce Console that surface reorder and replenishment patterns guided by your own customer and order data, and Workflows, a no-code automation tool that acts on those patterns automatically, whether that's a reminder email to a lapsed account, an internal alert, or data sent to another system. Sana also partners with tools like Tweakwise for AI-powered product suggestions and personalization, with more of its own AI capability actively in development.

Neither approach is wrong. They just put the intelligence in different places. Salesforce's AI meets the buyer in the conversation and works from the data the platform holds. Sana's works underneath, keeping the data itself trustworthy, so whatever the buyer touches, from search to reorder, is right because the ERP behind it is the source.

What this means for your buyers

• Where the AI meets them

  On Salesforce, buyers can meet AI directly, as a conversational assistant that takes the order in a chat. On Sana, buyers meet AI's results: product data that's complete and consistent, reorders that go through at the right price, and follow-ups that arrive because the system noticed their ordering pattern change.

• What the AI knows

  Any assistant's answers about price, stock, and terms inherit the freshness of the data underneath it. Sana's tooling reads the live ERP; Salesforce's reads the platform's synced copy. For product questions that difference rarely matters, but for "can I get 400 of these by Friday at my contract price," it's the whole answer.

• Where insight lives

  Sana surfaces reorder and replenishment patterns in Commerce Console out of the box. On Salesforce, commerce insight is genuinely powerful and assembled across the wider stack, which rewards businesses already invested in that ecosystem and asks more of those who aren't.

Sana Commerce vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Feature comparison

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two B2B commerce platforms:

Where Salesforce Commerce Cloud has an edge

Salesforce's advantages in enterprise software are great for the right business:

• The CRM and everything attached to it

  If Sales Cloud already runs your pipeline and Service Cloud runs your support, B2B Commerce lives in the same object model, sharing accounts, contacts, and history natively. That's a one-vendor coherence across the customer relationship that no bolt-on integration reproduces.

• Buyer-facing AI, shipping now

  Buyer Agent puts a conversational assistant directly into the buying journey, taking orders over chat with contract pricing applied. If conversational, guided buying fits how your customers want to purchase, Salesforce is ahead here.

• Personalization and multichannel reach

  Drawing on the customer data the CRM already holds, Salesforce personalizes across web, mobile, and messaging channels with retail-grade sophistication. For discovery-driven buying models, that machinery earns its cost.

• Enterprise scale and ecosystem

  The platform runs some of the world's largest commerce operations, backed by the AppExchange, a deep partner bench, and enterprise-grade compliance including PCI DSS. If you have the resources for an enterprise build, the ceiling is very high.

That last point is also the caveat. Salesforce's strengths assume an enterprise posture, meaning implementation partners, developer resources, licensing fees across the products the ecosystem depends on, and an ERP integration workstream that's yours to own. The total cost of ownership reflects everything the platform can do, whether or not your commerce channel needs all of it.

Where Sana Commerce has an edge

For manufacturers and wholesalers on SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, Sana's advantages compound because they come from one design decision:

• The ERP is the foundation, not an endpoint

  Certified, ERP-native connectors that Sana builds and maintains connect the store to SAP and Dynamics with no middleware to license, configure, or monitor. The connection is the product, not a workstream beside it.

• Live data everywhere a buyer looks

  Pricing, stock, and account terms match the ERP the instant a buyer loads a product list, a product page, or the checkout. That matters when 75% of B2B buyers say they'd switch suppliers for a better online experience, and a wrong price is one of the fastest ways to lose them.

• Part-finding that skips the guesswork

  A buyer moves from a machine or an image straight to the right part, with visual search, exploded views, and BOM support carrying the reorder through — no part number memorized, no phone call.

• Reorder patterns Workflows can act on

  Commerce Console and Insights surface reorder and replenishment patterns from your own customer and order data, and Workflows turns them into action without a developer. Growth tooling comes standard, not as a separate build.

• Lower total cost of ownership for the channel

  One system of record, no middleware licensing, no integration partner on retainer, and no ERP integration workstream to fund before the store earns anything. TCO stays close to the subscription.

• A single source of truth

  Prices, stock, customer data, and order logic live in the ERP and nowhere else. No second copy, no sync to watch, no question about which system is right.

Which platform works for your business?

Both platforms are excellent at what they were built for. The decision comes down to which system of record anchors your business, what your buyers come to your store to do, and what an enterprise e-commerce platform needs to deliver before it earns its cost.

When to choose Sana Commerce

• SAP or Microsoft Dynamics runs your business. Your commercial truth lives in the ERP, and Sana puts the store on top of it, with live contract pricing, stock, and account terms on every visit.
• You sell equipment, parts, or consumables that run out and get reordered again and again. Buyers can pinpoint the exact filter, belt, fitting, or anything in between by machine or image, and reorder in seconds — no part number memorized, no phone call.
• You want the integration off your project plan. Certified ERP-native connectors remove the ERP workstream, so the store's timeline is the storefront's timeline, not an enterprise program plan.
• You want growth tooling included, not assembled. Commerce Console surfaces the reorder patterns that drive revenue, guided by your own customer and order data, and Workflows acts on them without a developer. 

When to choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud

• Salesforce already anchors your customer relationships. If Sales Cloud and Service Cloud run your pipeline and support, B2B Commerce extends the same object model, and that native coherence is worth real money to the right organization.
• Buyer-facing AI and personalization lead your strategy. Buyer Agent brings conversational ordering with contract pricing applied, and the personalization machinery fits buying models built on discovery and engagement.
• You're an enterprise with enterprise resources. Implementation partners, developers, and budget for the wider ecosystem turn Salesforce's high ceiling into an advantage rather than an overhead.
• Your buying motion looks more like B2C. If discovery and merchandising matter more than contract reordering, Salesforce's retail lineage works in your favor.

What to ask in every demo

The demos will both look good. These questions get underneath them:

• "Is pricing read from our SAP or Dynamics version live at the moment the page loads, or from a synced copy?" The answer determines whether a price changed in the ERP this morning is on the store this morning.
• "Is the MuleSoft accelerator a starting template or a finished connector for our specific SAP setup?" Ask what configuration remains after the accelerator, who does it, and what the ERP integration workstream costs in the implementation quote.
• "Who owns the integration after an ERP upgrade? Walk us through what your customers did during their last one." Vendor-maintained and customer-owned connections behave very differently at exactly this moment.
• "When your buying agent quotes a price or a stock level in a chat, where does that number come from, and how fresh is it?" A conversational assistant is only as reliable as the data behind it. Make the vendor show the pipeline, not just the conversation.
• "Walk us through a buyer who knows the machine but not the part number, in the storefront and in the chat." Use one of your own products with variants or substitutes, and watch whether the tools identify the component or just confirm a SKU the buyer already had.
• "What does the first year cost, all in?" Platform, implementation, integration, middleware licensing, partner fees, and the Salesforce products the demo quietly assumed you own. Compare that number, not the subscription line.
• "Which of the capabilities in this demo require Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, or other Salesforce products we'd license separately?" The ecosystem is the pitch. Make sure the quote and the demo describe the same purchase.

Where this leaves you if SAP or Dynamics runs your business

Salesforce built commerce outward from the CRM, and everything it does best, meaning personalization, relationship coherence, and conversational AI, flows from putting the customer record at the center. Sana built commerce on the ERP, and everything it does best flows from that decision. Prices are always the contract price, stock is stock a buyer can commit to, parts search is built for finding the right component, and the channel goes live without an integration program.

So the question comes down to which system of record your business actually runs on. For most manufacturers and wholesalers on SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, the answer is sitting in the ERP already, holding every price, every stock level, and every account term your buyers depend on. Sana builds the store where that data already lives.

If you want to see what that looks like with your own catalog, pricing, and ERP, start a conversation with the Sana Commerce team and request a demo.