WORK[etc] vs SugarCRM

SugarCRM has progressively been building on its original model of “open sourced” software to become a fully-paid software and services company.  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.  The chart below uncovers the real costs, showing WORK[etc] as true SugarCRM alternative:

Still not convinced?  Consider the scenario below.

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 He and his executives decide that their customer relationship management systems are out of date and want to get something new.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 team don’t understand what’s going wrong and decide to go look for support. After sending off emails and posting on forums, they wait.  Suddenly they are spending time on supporting their software, rather than time spent on getting more sales and actually building their business.