2 posts tagged with "salesforce"

Duplicate records are one of the most persistent data quality problems in Salesforce. They waste sales reps' time, skew reports, and create a poor customer experience. According to Gartner research, bad data costs organizations an average of $12.9 million per year — and duplicates are a major contributor.

Salesforce offers native Duplicate Rules, but they only prevent new duplicates from being created. They don't help you find and merge the thousands of duplicates already sitting in your CRM. For a deeper look at these limitations, see our post on why Salesforce duplicate management is not enough. A basic duplicate check using standard reports can surface some issues, but it won't scale — and it won't resolve them. That's where AppExchange deduplication tools come in.

We evaluated four of the most popular Salesforce deduplication tools available in 2026. They vary significantly in pricing, data security architecture, and feature depth. Here's what we found.

Salesforce provides native Duplicate Management through Matching Rules and Duplicate Rules. These tools can detect potential duplicates and prevent new ones from being created — and for many orgs, that's a solid starting point. Salesforce's own Trailhead module on Duplicate Management walks through the setup.

But prevention is only half the problem. Native duplicate management has five specific platform limitations that affect how far you can go with detection, merging, and automation. This article breaks down each one, explains native workarounds where they exist, and covers how AppExchange tools address the gaps.