Quest for the perfect online CRM - SugarCRM

Today's research for the perfect online CRM was on SugarCRM. I was referred to this solution by an internet marketing guru that I just had a casual conversation with and I told him about my current projects to find the perfect online CRM solutions for my 2 clients. He asked if I'd heard of Sugar. Its open source and its free. Can't get much better than free.

So I started my research on Sugar at www.sugarcrm.com.

Now, as a business intelligence expert and automation champion, I LOVED the features I saw on the online videos for the dashboard and visual reporting on sales pipeline and close percentages. But my gut said that I must be in the wrong place because these functionality-rich features couldn't possibly be for free.

Then I saw the big blue "Buy Now" button. Ahhhh...so it's not free. Or at least not what I was looking at.

So I discovered that the commercial open source version of SugarCRM is Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise which runs between $30-$50 per month per user. So right away, this one is definitely out of my budget for these two clients. But I still liked what I saw enough to keep looking because one day my clients might grow up and need a more robust system. So I watched most of the videos and liked everything I saw, but I didn't sign up for the trial so I don't think I'd be fair to the software to give any more of an opinion on the specific features. But just take a look at this dashboard report. Who wouldn't love to have this on your screen every morning?



So I turned my attention to finding the free version. My thought was that if my client could use the free version for now to meet the need, then when they are ready to upgrade, the fuller version is right there ready for them. But where is the documentation on the Community Edition that is free? It was very hard to find, I'll tell you. I could find a marketplace for plug ins that you could download (many free -- the beauty of open source), and how to install the free version (which is not a hosted version but has to be hosted on your own server). But I couldn't find just a simple discussion of the functionality included in the free version.

Then like he knew what was on my mind, I get a follow-up emai from a SugarCRM sales rep. (So they are putting their own software to good use!!). He so kindly spent a few minutes clarifying that the free Community Edition version is not hosted, that to have a hosted solution with them means going with the Professional or Enterprise Edition, and he sent me a great grid of the comparison of the features of the three versions.

So my conclusion is that if you are a techie and have your own server tucked away under your desk, you don't mind being your own tech support including following the several page detailed installation instructions, and you need some pretty advanced CRM functionality, then take a look at SugarCRM CommunityEdition. But my two clients don't fit this profile and I don't want to be in the tech support business.

I will, however, keep SugarCRM Professional and Enterprise in mind for other clients that may have more advanced needs and a higher budget. Maybe a client that is hating Salesforce.com and wanting to find something new but that has a lot of the Salesforce.com-like features. One thing I love about an open source platform is that you can hire Sugar developers out there for pretty cheap to create custom modules for your CRM system, so you can start with the "Lexus" base model and add on the custom fender, the custom paint color, etc. to make it a one-of-a-kind solution that perfectly fits your business. This is a big, big plus.