Have you considered SugarCRM alternatives?

Chances are if you’re evaluating SugarCRM software, then you’re trying to find a cost-effective solution for your customer relationship management.
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relationship management systems are out of date and want to get something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 CRM, 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
excruciatingly 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.

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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
WORK[etc] 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. WORK[etc]’s software only costs $78 a month
for two 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 WORK[etc], 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.

Are Your Ready to Choose a SugarCRM Alternative?

SugarCRM can be a great investment, if you’re willing to put in the time and money to get it running properly. However, most people who choose SugarCRM are looking for a cost-effective solution. Wouldn’t you rather end up like Susan, paying for a cost effective alternative to SugarCRM that provides you with the tools to manage your entire small business? If these scenarios aren’t enough to get you thinking about alternatives to SugarCRM, then take a tour of Work[etc] with our Free Trial to see how you can benefit from a complete small business management solution.