Question 1

Is Certinia built on Salesforce?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Certinia’s own agreement states that its services are developed and operate on the Salesforce Platform and are hosted by Salesforce. For teams that run everything in Salesforce, that keeps services data next to Salesforce records. The trade-off is that licensing, platform limits and parts of the setup follow Salesforce: Salesforce Platform subscriptions acquired under Certinia’s agreement exclude access to CRM objects such as Leads, Opportunities and Forecasts unless the agreement or an order form specifies otherwise. Planhat is a separate platform with its own CRM, Customer Success and Professional Services, and it connects to Salesforce when a team wants to keep it.

Question 2

Does Certinia require Salesforce licenses?

Accepted Answer

Certinia’s agreement includes the right to use the Salesforce Platform as part of its services, but Salesforce Platform subscriptions acquired under that agreement exclude access to Leads, Opportunities, Forecasts, Cases and Campaigns unless the agreement or an order form specifies otherwise. Certinia’s PSA documentation states that creating a project from an opportunity needs a full Salesforce license, and Customer Success Cloud’s AppExchange listing names Sales Cloud and Service Cloud as required Salesforce products. Planhat includes the CRM, so deals and pipelines sit on the same records as delivery and customer health.

Question 3

What is the best Certinia alternative?

Accepted Answer

Planhat. Certinia runs PSA and ERP on the Salesforce Platform, with CRM functions tied to Salesforce licenses. Planhat brings sales, Customer Success, Professional Services and renewals together on the same customer records, so you don’t need Salesforce to run them, and teams that keep Salesforce for sales can connect it through two-way sync. Pi, the multiplayer customer agent, works with the customer context each user can access, and your own team configures health, workflows, reporting and Agents. In G2’s product comparison, Planhat has a shorter reported average implementation time and time to ROI than Certinia PS Cloud: three versus six months, and 11 versus 21 months.

Question 4

Which platforms combine PSA and CRM without Salesforce?

Accepted Answer

Planhat combines CRM, Customer Success and Professional Services in one platform that does not run on Salesforce. Sales teams manage deals, pipelines and forecasting, and services teams track time, plan resources and monitor utilization on the same customer records. Teams without a CRM use Planhat’s own, and teams that keep Salesforce for sales connect it through two-way sync.

Question 5

What is the difference between PSA and CRM?

Accepted Answer

A CRM manages customer relationships and revenue: accounts, contacts, deals, pipelines and forecasts. A PSA manages services delivery: projects, time tracking, resource allocation and utilization. Planhat runs both on the same records, alongside Customer Success, so a renewal can reflect what sales promised and how delivery went.

Question 6

Is Certinia an ERP?

Accepted Answer

Certinia describes itself as a provider of Salesforce-native PSA and ERP, with Financial Management Cloud covering its financial applications. Planhat is an agentic customer platform for commercial teams, combining CRM, Customer Success and Professional Services, with revenue data such as deals, line items and products on the same customer records.

Question 7

Is Planhat a CRM tool?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Planhat is a new generation of CRM: one commercial brain for all your commercial work, with Pi, the multiplayer customer agent, working alongside every commercial team on shared customer context. Sales teams run deals, pipelines and forecasting, Customer Success teams manage health, renewals and expansion, and Professional Services teams run onboarding projects with time tracking and resource planning, all on the same records. That shared context matters, because a renewal needs to know what sales promised and how implementation went. Teams can move their commercial stack onto Planhat OS, or deploy Pi alongside their current CRM, with Planhat OS at the center and two-way sync to Salesforce or HubSpot.

Question 8

What PSA capabilities does Planhat include?

Accepted Answer

Planhat Service Automation covers time tracking with billable and cost rates, weekly timesheets with manager approval, and Utilization Tables for total and billed utilization. For planning, Scheduled Time records forecasted work, the Resource Allocation page assigns it by capacity, and Work Roles group work by job role with billing and cost rates. Project Workflows include task dependencies and a Gantt view, and all of it sits on the same records as customer health and renewals.

Question 9

Can Planhat run alongside Salesforce?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Planhat’s Salesforce integration syncs standard and custom objects, including accounts, contacts, opportunities and projects, with the direction set per configured mapping. Changes from Planhat sync to Salesforce in near real time, and Salesforce changes sync to Planhat on a regular schedule. Teams can keep Salesforce for sales and run delivery and success in Planhat.

Question 10

How does Certinia Veda compare with Planhat Pi?

Accepted Answer

Veda is Certinia’s suite of agents, intelligent actions and agentic workflows, running on Certinia’s System of Action on the Salesforce Platform. Pi works within Planhat OS, using the customer context each user is permitted to access across CRM, Customer Success and Professional Services. It works with your team in Sessions, runs scheduled jobs, and builds Agents and Pages from plain English. Every action Pi takes is recorded in the system logs, and Pi can connect to tools such as Slack and Google Drive through MCP.

Question 11

Can customers see their implementation project?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Teams share a Project Workflow into the customer’s Portal, choose which task steps customers can see, and can make a customer contact the owner of a task. Customers can open their Portal with one click from inside your own product.

Question 12

Is Planhat hard to run without a dedicated admin?

Accepted Answer

Planhat is configurable by design. Teams start from templates, and Pi builds Agents and Pages from plain-English requests. On G2, Planhat scores 8.2 for Ease of Admin and 7.5 for Ease of Setup, compared with 7.2 and 6.8 for Certinia PS Cloud.

Question 13

How hard is it to migrate from Certinia, and how long does it take?

Accepted Answer

The timeline depends on what moves: Customer Success, Professional Services or both, and is set during discovery. G2 reviewer data lists an average of three months to implement Planhat, compared with six months for Certinia PS Cloud; this is a product benchmark, not a migration estimate. Certinia records and project history are assessed during discovery, the migration plan defines which data moves over, and delivery processes are configured in Planhat using Project Workflows, Scheduled Time and Work Roles, based on the agreed migration scope.

Question 14

Accepted Answer

Question 15

Accepted Answer

Question 16

Accepted Answer

Question 17

Accepted Answer

The Certinia alternative for commercial teams

The Certinia alternative for commercial teams

The Certinia alternative for commercial teams

Why commercial teams choose Planhat as their Certinia alternative

Why commercial teams choose Planhat as their Certinia alternative

A CRM that comes with the platform

Delivery connected to health and renewals

Faster to value, configured by your team

PSA, CRM, Customer Success and AI compared

PSA, CRM, Customer Success and AI compared

PSA, CRM, Customer Success and AI compared

The cost of running services on the Salesforce Platform

The cost of running services on the Salesforce Platform

Salesforce licenses beyond Certinia

Salesforce licenses beyond Certinia

Platform limits and support tiers

Platform limits and support tiers

What users say on G2

What users say on G2

Higher-rated support and administration

Higher-rated support and administration

Faster to implement, faster to return value

Faster to implement, faster to return value

Keep Salesforce for sales or consolidate onto Planhat

Keep Salesforce for sales or consolidate onto Planhat

Keep Salesforce for sales

Keep Salesforce for sales

Consolidate onto one platform

Consolidate onto one platform

Run at enterprise scale

Run at enterprise scale

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How to switch from Certinia to Planhat in five steps

How to switch from Certinia to Planhat in five steps

Discovery and scoping

Discovery and scoping

Data connection and migration

Data connection and migration

Configuration and setup

Configuration and setup

Validation and testing

Validation and testing

Go-live and enablement

Go-live and enablement

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions

PSA and CRM, no Salesforce required.

PSA and CRM, no Salesforce required.