Skylead vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

There are many LinkedIn automation products available, from Chrome extensions to desktop applications, to cloud-based apps like Skylead, and I've used many of them. Skylead stands apart with a simple, intuitive interface that is easy for my clients to use, is very economical compared to others, and is focused on continual improvement and customer service.

Incentivized

Sugar CRM is a good tool, but it's complex to customize. It often requires expensive 3rd partners to implement more complex scenarios that SugarCRM struggles to support; coming back with explanations was usually time-consuming and unsupported. The back end is overly complex in terms of what it needs to be, with many redundant database tables and columns.

Incentivized

• Convenient message inbox for responding to new leads.
• Ability to integrate with CRMs and other 3rd party software for more automation.
• Smart Sequences that use conditional logic to send LinkedIn messages as well as emails.
• Customer service is very responsive and super helpful. They are a pleasure to work with.
• Skylead is constantly improving and adding/updating features based on actual users' input via a feature request forum.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• It would be nice to be able to add steps to a sequence in an existing campaign
• The user hierarchy is a little confusing, in terms of placing my end-user clients under my master account—a little unintuitive
• Similar to above, it would be nice to have an additional level of user access, for scenarios in which I have a client with multiple salespeople on the platform, each with their own login (as it is now, with access only to their own account), but also have a companywide admin account for a sales manager who has access to all of their accounts with one login (I think they are working on this feature).

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

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.

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.

SugarCRM has never been down for us.

No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.

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.

Incentivized

SugarCRM is a lot better in many ways then LogicsCRM which I started using when I started as a sales rep at Community Tax. Yet there is still room for a lot of improvements to accommodate a steady workflow. They integration of old CRM files seems to have worked great from Logics to Sugar.

Incentivized

Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.

• 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

Incentivized