Likelihood to Recommend It was not a good experience. Nothing was as advertised, from the user experience to the security of purchase. The address book was not able to be converted from the Leads module and the maps feature wasn’t able to connect from Leads. The mobile version has a lot of bugs and isn’t very functional. They have a tutorial, yet [I think they] aren’t proactive in distributing it to new users. Their focus is on sales. And it’s not a very salable product in my opinion. The worst aspect of this company is that they aren’t risk free. If you purchase a year software and decide after a few weeks it simply isn’t for your company, there are no refunds. I had to initiate a chargeback with my bank after being told that “unfortunately, due to the terms and conditions...” No customer wants to hear that. [I feel] they tried to bully me into keeping their software. There are far too many options in 2021 for CRM to be forced into one, especially one so difficult to use. When I asked about a feature that I needed, I was told, “Perhaps later this year...” Not what I need if I’m paying good money for a software. Their sales VP wouldn’t call me when I requested a call after being denied a refund. When I went through their main website again after my experience with Maximizer, I [felt] that everything they advertise is not in line with the product they put out. They say that there’s a free trial available. Not the truth [in my experience]. This maybe would have been a good CRM in say, 1999. [I think] it’s antiquated and didn’t serve the needs of my business. I used well-known CRM previously and didn’t find Maximizer to be better than the free version of that one. There was a disconnect in usage that wasn’t able to be overcome by myself or my employees in several weeks of trials.
Read full review The way Community Tax uses Sugar from a users point of view is, it can house a lot of information for either a company or individual with the option of adding additional sub cases . The down side is there are licenses issued per user and 1 per user is not enough because most of the time we are multitasking. Therefore a program/software would be more suitable instead of using a URL.
Read full review Pros Shared Calendar Customer Service cases Common database of customer information Len Masek Client Services, Mission Critical Solutions
Read full review Great way to keep myself organized. I do not miss appointments with clients since within the system I can input my appointment time and also send out a reminder to my clients. It has a nice layout [that] does not seem to be cluttered. I find it to be very user friendly. It has customizable dashboards which I find beneficial Read full review Cons Handling large data. Maximizer needs to improve on this. Add additional user-friendly shortcuts for the most frequently used functions in the web version. There is no mark for deletion option. They need to provide a way to delete without physically deleting records. Read full review The back-end programming (logical hooks) for advanced customizations could benefit from a more user-friendly interface General layout could be improved by the addition of modern templates to customize the standard look and feel Support communities could be further improved with the addition of videos on how to do specific configuration, modules. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are heavily entrenched in Maximizer and trying to pull our data out and into another CRM, with the same amount of customization and workflow would take a lot of effort.
Read full review Our organization will continue to use Sugar as long as it remains cost effective and it addresses the majority of our needs. I will, however, recommend looking into other options once our needs increase and there is additional budget for some bigger named and more robust platform options. I feel if the application was friendlier to end users we would get better productivity as well.
Read full review Usability The CRM didn’t have the capability I expected
Read full review There's a learning curve associated with Sugar. Right away, it's not as easy as an out-of-the-box CRM. Once you learn how to use Sugar, the system fits what your needs are. With any other CRM, you'd be trying to figure out how your company can best fit the CRM. You don't want to change your business cycle for your CRM, the CRM should fit your business cycle.
Read full review Reliability and Availability SugarCRM has never been down for us.
Read full review Performance No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.
Read full review Support Rating The support staff are very knowledgeable and competent. Never really had an issue with them not knowing what they are doing.
Read full review The support overall at least for us has been phenomenal. Anytime that the system has any Issues at all IT gets in contact from someone from support to get the system back up and running. Have never gone more than 30 minutes with the system not working. So overall I will be definetely recommending this system in any other company that I may work for in the future.
Read full review In-Person Training We feel clasroom training is essential to ensure user adoption and buy-in. Video and on-line training courses gave their place but being in a classroom setting enables the Team to make any potential CRM issues visble right up front.
Read full review Online Training Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.
Read full review Implementation Rating Study, study, and study. Be prepared to train everyday until all processes are flowing nicely. The CRM is the elephant and figuring out where to take the first bite can be a challenge. But there is only one way to eat this elephant, one bite at a time. Systematic planning is very important.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We chose to go with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM over Maximizer because of the customization and marketing options that were associated with Dynamics. The ease of use with Maximizer, however, was far better than that of Microsoft Dynamics.
Read full review Sugar Sell is the only product we found that met the needs of everyone involved in the evaluation process. It can be customized to accomplish just about anything you need, and trust me....we pushed the limits on that. It is a product that our users actually enjoy using which in itself contributes to productivity. We used other CRM tools in the past, and the discontent from our users resulted in consistently declining use and ultimately dropping those products.
Read full review Scalability Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.
Read full review Return on Investment It allows us to maximize our service billing It is easy to generate service quotes It is easy to follow up on leads. Len Masek Client Services, Mission Critical Solutions
Read full review Overall seems to be more expensive than other subscription based CRMs. Has positively impact our sales team to make more efficient and accountability among sales teams. Also allows for high level aggregated reporting Has been impactful for all teams, not only sales to track individual activity on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis Read full review ScreenShots Maximizer CRM Screenshots