Acoustic Campaign vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acoustic Campaign
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.N/A
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Sugar Sell from SugarCRM is a collaborative CRM, allowing users to track and monitor activities, map each customer’s journey and automate as many workflows as you need to. Sugar Sell is presented by the vendor as lean, fast and integratable with anything. Sugar Sell replaces former editions of the SugarCRM product, including the SugarCRM Community Edition, the open source edition, which is discontinued.
$147
per month 3 users
Pricing
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$49
per month per user (3 user minimum, 5 user maximum)
Sugar Enterprise
$85
per month per user (billed annually)
Advanced
$85
per month per user (3 user minimum)
Sugar Enterprise+
$135
per month per user (billed annually)
Premier
$135
per month per user (10 user minimum)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
10 Ratings
11% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor4.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages5.18 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing7.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization6.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.4
8 Ratings
4% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation6.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
8 Ratings
9% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
Calendaring6.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.44 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
6.3
5 Ratings
17% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns6.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration6.25 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
4.5
10 Ratings
50% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
Dashboards4.210 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports4.210 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports5.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
5.7
10 Ratings
28% below category average
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
-
Ratings
API5.29 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability5.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com4.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM5.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.2
32 Ratings
7% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.831 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings7.927 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings8.525 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.823 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings7.129 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings7.924 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.2
23 Ratings
9% above category average
Case management00 Ratings8.823 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.716 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
7.9
24 Ratings
5% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.521 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings7.322 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.9
27 Ratings
16% above category average
Task management00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings9.117 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings8.723 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.7
27 Ratings
13% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings8.723 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings8.724 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.726 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.8
28 Ratings
15% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.724 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.5
26 Ratings
2% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings9.120 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings7.925 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.2
18 Ratings
12% above category average
Social data00 Ratings8.218 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings8.315 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.0
18 Ratings
11% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.412 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
8.1
19 Ratings
8% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings8.119 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Likelihood to Recommend
4.1
(40 ratings)
7.2
(58 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.5
(30 ratings)
8.2
(26 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(6 ratings)
8.1
(9 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(5 ratings)
9.1
(12 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.4
(4 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Acoustic CampaignSugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Likelihood to Recommend
Acoustic
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
  • Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
  • Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
  • Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
Read full review
SugarCRM
  • 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
Acoustic
  • Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
  • Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
  • Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
  • Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
  • Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
  • Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
Read full review
SugarCRM
  • 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
Acoustic
SilverPop is a great marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce to provide customers and employees a great buying and selling experience. The software takes some very difficult tasks and makes them easy to accomplish. With proper setup and management, Silverpop gives you the tools to gain insight into the productiveness of campaigns.
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
This is a little bit difficult to rate because Silverpop is gradually updating its interface to improve usability all around. I know users are able to do their job with minimal assistance. However, some of the interface is dated, and the Programs interface, while functional, has a bit of a learning curve.
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
While several of the other reviews have mentioned poor performance in this department, we have only had one situation where the system was down (although it was down for several hours). Silverpop segments its clients on different servers, and I know that the problem we experienced only occurred on our specific server (maybe other servers have had their own problems?) but our service has been reliable otherwise.
Read full review
SugarCRM
SugarCRM has never been down for us.
Read full review
Performance
Acoustic
The throttle time for sending emails would vary depending on how many other campaigns were going out that day, which I found inconsistent
Read full review
SugarCRM
No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.
Read full review
Support Rating
Acoustic
The Salesforce Integration support team is fantastic. I'd give them greater than a 10 if possible. The rest of the support team can be extremely frustrating to work with. Too often they try to blame something obscure and refuse to escalate or look into the issue. And on occasion when you find system glitches they don't seem to care about fixing them
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
No answers on this topic
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
The online trainings are very detailed (for the most part) and really walk through the entire system. They are a little dry, but they are usually broken up into segments to allow you to skip to the parts you need.
Read full review
SugarCRM
Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Acoustic
Based on recommendations from Silverpop we made some implementation decisions that we later regretted pretty substantially. In hindsight we should have started a pilot implementation earlier so we could learn and then start over. The big issue for us was that Silverpop recommended a non-keyed database, or at least a database that doesn't use email address as primary key. This is resulted in a large number of duplicate email addresses so that the end user is forced to unsubscribe multiple times to stop receiving emails.
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
We evaluated alternate providers less than a year into our IBM Watson Campaign contract because the system was so clunky to use (and we wanted a system that would include or better integrate with our SMS provider). Bluecore and Klaviyo were the front runners at the time, and we came close to moving forward with Bluecore. The pricing model and overall the cost of Bluecore was much higher than IBM for us though, and the timing of this was right when the IBM to Acoustic changes took place. We decided to give Acoustic a shot and are optimistic it will be enough to keep us on board once all the dust settles, though I find it unlikely we will renew with Acoustic when our contract is up again. My main email specialist is a Klaviyo expert and finds that platform very easy to use in comparison-- it might be a better fit for a team of our size.
Read full review
SugarCRM
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
Acoustic
No answers on this topic
SugarCRM
Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Acoustic
  • we have not experienced any currently but moving to lead automation and lead scoring could change that.
  • i'm not sure how increased employee efficiency would ever be a benefit b/c lead importing and visibility, along with setting up email templates is quite cumbersome.
Read full review
SugarCRM
  • 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

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design