Alternatives to SugarCRM.

Chances are if a company chooses to go with SugarCRM for their customer relationship management, it is because they are a cost-conscious company. They choose to go with SugarCRM because SugarCRM offers a free and open source community edition of their CRM software.

This at face value seems amazing; a completely free CRM tool that does nearly everything the paid versions do. After a short time however, many users of this software soon come full circle to realize something they’ve been taught all their lives: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Consider These Two Situations:

Situation One
Neil owns a small company in Dallas, Texas that sells paper and paper related products. He and his executives decide that their customer relationship management systems are out of date and want to get something new. The company makes a decent amount of money, but has to be smart about its spending choices. After looking into multiple different paid and free CRM solutions, Neil decides to go with SugarCRM because it is free and he has servers to host it on.

Neil realizes shortly after he downloads his source code that he has to hire someone to code the CRM better to fit his company properly. This was an unexpected cost, but the CRM system being free and all, Neil only sees it as a good investment. He then tries to install his package, but experiences some difficulty. Some hours later, Neil and his helping staff doesn’t understand what’s going wrong and decide to go look for support. After sending off emails and posting on forums, they wait.

They wait for multiple days and don’t see the solution they need until some kind individual, not a SugarCRM employee, posts a detailed explanation. After doing some more research, Neil comes to the understanding that SugarCRM staff prioritize their support to paid customers of the professional and enterprise edition, and don’t give as nearly as much support to the community edition users.

After having the CRM software up and running for a few days, Neil is realizing this isn’t exactly what he expected. The features aren’t nearly sufficient for his businesses needs, and he keeps experiencing more problems. He has no integration capabilities with the billing and project management applications he uses, and the software is quite buggy, and often slow. Neil posts in the forums trying to get help about these issues, but can’t seem to find the answers he wants.

Situation Two
Susan works as an executive for an online software company, and has been chosen to select new CRM software for the company to use.

The company is small and wants something affordable. After doing some research she found that many free CRM software solutions are insufficient in terms of performance and features, and are usually used as bait to get customers to move into the paid edition. She decides that it is worth it to find an affordable but paid CRM platform as a SaaS (Software as a Service) that includes hosting.   She chose this so that her company doesn’t have to worry about server problems and can access the software from anywhere.

Susan’s company at the time also used a separate management application for projects as well as billing. She was worried about how the two would integrate, as different systems are known to integrate poorly resulting in only inefficiency. She decides to make a big move on behalf of her company that she thinks is for the best. She finds an online SaaS called WORKetc that offers a total business management platform: it combines features from all aspects of business. This means under one application she has customer relationship management, project management, and billing covered.

The software is right in their spending-conscious price range as well. The previous software she had been looking at was only for CRM and was priced at $40 a month per user. WORKetc’s software only costs $75 a month for five users, and covers billing, project management, and CRM. On top of that, her company was able to lower total costs from getting rid of their previous billing and project management applications. After a smooth transition into WORKetc, the company Susan worked for was quite impressed with her decision.

All In One, With More Features Than Your Average CRM + Project Management + Billing Systems Combined.

Neil and Susan are friends, and talk quite regularly. After discussing their new business management solutions, Neil felt like he did not get his money’s worth. Neil had upgraded to the paid version of SugarCRM, but after a discussion with Susan, found that the software Susan chose at a lower price had even more features when it came to CRM. What made Neil the most embarrassed with his choice was the fact that he was paying more for a product without even the same amount of CRM features, when the software Susan uses costs less and includes billing and project management features as well.

Which would you choose? Compare WORKetc to SugarCRM directly as well as other top competitors here.

Feature	WORKetc	Salesforce*	Highrise & Basecamp	Zoho CRM + Projects	SugarCRM
Total cost (5 users - unlimited everything else)	$195/month	$1150/month	$198/month	$165/month	$275/month
CRM	WORKetc	Salesforce	Highrise	Zoho CRM	SugarCRM
Assign Sales Leads	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Qualify leads, set status	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
View sales pipeline	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Collaborate on leads	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Set sales actions & alerts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Web forms for leads	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Generate detailed reports	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Convert leads to quote, project, or invoice	Yes	No	No	No	No
Project Management	WORKetc	Salesforce*	Basecamp	Zoho Projects	SugarCRM
Client collaboration	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Unlimited sub projects	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Gantt Chart View	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Project dependency	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Prioritise sub projects	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Set alerts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Time sheet & milestone billing	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Billing & Time sheets	WORKetc	Salesforce*	37 Signals	Zoho Billing	SugarCRM
Time sheet billing	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Product catalog	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Subscription billing	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Multiple currencies	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Invoice tracking	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Future cash flow report	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Desktop timer widget	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Paypal, Google checkout & gateways	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Other Cool Stuff	WORKetc	Salesforce*	37 Signals	Zoho Billing	SugarCRM
Help Desk Software	Yes	No	No	No	No
Document Management	Yes	No	No	No	No
Easy customization options	Yes	No	No	No	No
14 Day Free Trial	Get Started

Download and view the original CRM Comparison spreadsheet here (updated August 2010)

*Please note: All new feature additions under Salesforce for Project Management/Billing and Time Sheets/Other Cool Stuff that say YES are extra paid additions and do not come with the Salesforce CRM original package. Without these paid additions, every single feature listed within the Project Management/Billing and Time Sheets/Other Cool Stuff that says yes would say NO. Without the additional paid Dreamteam and FinancialForce apps, monthly cost is $325. With the addition of Dreamteam/FinancialForce apps the monthly cost is $1150.