When organizations grow and reach at a certain point, the stakeholders feel the need for a CRM solution where they can maintain all their essential customer information and track their sales and after sales processes. The question which usually arise at this stage is, what CRM should they choose in order to minimize their effort and maximize the returns. Read our guide on small business CRM software solutions.
Also in many cases a standard software package may not meet their need and some think of making a new custom solution on their own. The usual needs for an organization revolve around tracking pipeline, help desk operations, generating monthly reports and running marketing automation. There are a number of CRMs which are providing these features but some are paid and others are open source. If you are a small / medium scale organization then you might want to reduce cost and look for an open source platform which could serve as a base or platform for your customer relationship management needs. These CRM platforms can be customized to meet organizations need.
In this article, we are going to compare two favorite CRM solutions – SugarCRM and SuiteCRM.
Comparing SugarCRM editions with SuiteCRM
We are listing various aspects for comparison – namely Features, Pricing and a small history of both the applications.
Features Comparison
The table below gives the comparison for the main features of SuiteCRM Vs SugarCRM. It may be noted that SugarCRM CE is no longer supported by the company.
| Feature | SugarCRM CE* | SuiteCRM | SugarCRM Professional | SugarCRM Enterprise | SugarCRM Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Modules like (included Accounts, Customer, Leads, Campaign, Documents, Calls, meetings, opportunities, Target) | Available | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Advanced Reporting | Not Available | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Salesforce Automation | Available | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Forecasting | Not Available | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Call Center Automation | Not Available | Not Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Revenue Line Item Level Opportunity Tracking Forecasting | Not Available | Not Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Revenue Line Item Level Opportunity Tracking Forecasting | Not Available | Not Available | Not Available | Available | Available |
| Product Level Quotes | Not Available | Not Available | Not Available | Available | Available |
| Advanced Workflow | Not Available | Not Available | Not Available | Available | Available |
| Advance Theme | Not Available | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Support** | Not Available | Not Available | Not Available | Available 12*5(hrs/days) | Available 24*7(hrs/days) |
| Pricing | Free | Free*** | $40 | $65 | $150 |
| Minimum Users | NA | NA*** | 5 | 10 | 10 |
* Note that SugarCRM CE is no longer supported by the company.
** The nature of support is related to product and its a basic support. Most companies go along with other service providers for support.
*** SuiteCRM also has a on demand version which costs €10 per user per month and minimum 5 users.
Since SuiteCRM is based on SugarCRM 6.5 CE, it is quite similar with SugarCRM’s logical part if we see it as a developer perspective. But coming to default modules SuiteCRM has added a lot of custom modules in comparison with SugarCRM CE. As SuiteCRM is using Sugar CE platform, it has the features by default which Sugar Community Edition (SugarCE) has. Apart from that, SuiteCRM includes sales, marketing, reporting, quotes and support automation options and offers. One of the great add-ons to SuiteCRM is “Advanced open workflow” which allows to perform different tasks.
History
Before we start comparing between SugarCRM and SuiteCRM lets have a brief look into their history. SugarCRM Started in 2004 as an open source platform has gained a wide popularity worldwide, with over 2 billion users as of 2017, whereas SuiteCRM has forked from SugarCRM in the year of 2013 and designed by SalesAgility when SugarCRM has decided to make SugarCRM 6.5 CE is the last one as open source and moving forward they will jump to Enterprise (Paid versions). Started using SugarCRM 6.5 CE platform, SuiteCRM keep adding number of custom modules (e.g. – Sales, reports, marketing etc.). SuiteCRM has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since the original release. SuiteCRM won the BOSSIE Award 2015 and 2016 for the world’s best Open Source CRM. The award had been won by SugarCRM for the previous 8 years.
Benefits of SugarCRM Enterprise Edition
Following are the important advantages of using the paid version of SugarCRM.
- The paid version of SugarCRM has much better user interface has changed a lot in enterprise edition as compare to SugarCRM CE or SuiteCRM.
- The performance of complete CRM is way better than SugarCRM CE and SuiteCRM.
- You will get an option to customize your report filters and generated report columns.
- Customizable charts for various modules.
- Security is a big concern for SugarCRM CE and SuiteCRM which is handled carefully in the paid edition.