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Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

Overview

What is Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)?

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…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

SugarCRM is a versatile tool that is widely used across organizations for managing customer relationships, sales opportunities, and …
Continue reading

Af

6 out of 10
May 28, 2021
Incentivized
[Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)] is being used as a trial currently to fill in the gaps that salesforce crm cannot do and will hopefully take over …
Continue reading

Sugar Cell Review

7 out of 10
December 17, 2019
Incentivized
My consulting company has implemented SugarCRM as a resource in multiple client organizations. It is used by numerous departments …
Continue reading

SugarCRM - great product

7 out of 10
December 13, 2018
Incentivized
We use SugarCRM as a central platform for all teams which allows us to be more efficient internally and externally. We use this CRM to …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 31 features
  • Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail) (28)
    9.0
    90%
  • Custom fields (28)
    9.0
    90%
  • Customer data management / contact management (31)
    8.8
    88%
  • Interaction tracking (29)
    7.1
    71%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Essentials

$49

Cloud
per month per user (3 user minimum, 5 user maximum)

Sugar Enterprise

$85

On Premise
per month per user (billed annually)

Advanced

$85

Cloud
per month per user (3 user minimum)

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.sugarcrm.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $147 per month 3 users
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Features

Sales Force Automation

This is the technique of using software to automate certain sales-related tasks.

8.2
Avg 7.7

Customer Service & Support

This component of CRM software automates help desk, call center and field service management.

8.2
Avg 7.5

Marketing Automation

This component of CRM software helps to automate and scale marketing tasks and the subsequent analysis of those efforts.

7.9
Avg 7.6

CRM Project Management

This component of CRM software helps users initiate, plan, collaborate on, execute, track, and close projects.

8.9
Avg 7.6

CRM Reporting & Analytics

Reporting and analytics in CRM software includes sales forecasting, pipeline analysis, and automated dashboards.

8.7
Avg 7.6

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

8.8
Avg 7.6

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

8.5
Avg 8.3

Social CRM

This component of CRM software helps companies leverage social media in engaging with customers.

8.2
Avg 7.3

Integrations with 3rd-party Software

This involves the CRM software’s ability to integrate with other systems, whether external or homegrown.

8
Avg 7.2

Platform

8.1
Avg 7.5
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Product Details

Sugar Sell (SugarCRM) Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Sugar Sell (SugarCRM) starts at $147.

Insightly, Zoho CRM, and Pipedrive are common alternatives for Sugar Sell (SugarCRM).

Reviewers rate Billing and invoicing management and Single sign-on capability highest, with a score of 9.1.

The most common users of Sugar Sell (SugarCRM) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(246)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

SugarCRM is a versatile tool that is widely used across organizations for managing customer relationships, sales opportunities, and tracking marketing campaigns. Users appreciate its flexibility and cost-effectiveness compared to competitors like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. With SugarCRM, users can efficiently manage prospects, sales stages, and customer interactions by providing a central source of information. The software offers features like in-line editing that minimize clicks, making it easy to use and navigate. The Sugar Mobile app provides flexibility for users in both desk and field settings, allowing them to track interactions with clients and improve follow-up efforts. Overall, SugarCRM proves to be an invaluable asset for sales teams, helping them manage leads, track the entire sales process, and increase win ratios.

Additionally, the software is utilized for CRM purposes, client follow-up, managing client issues, tracking applications, determining eligibility, managing payments in publicly funded preschool programs, relationship management, accounting, and much more. It also maximizes sales and marketing efforts by providing a centralized platform for managing contacts, leads, and sales opportunities. With automation capabilities, analytics tools, and efficient workflow management features, SugarCRM proves to be suitable for most businesses. It aids in generating and monitoring tasks while offering personalized support. By using SugarCRM, businesses can identify products of interest to customers and enable more specific advertising. Furthermore, the software provides a single tool to view all information related to current and prospective customers.

Sales departments find SugarCRM particularly helpful as it simplifies sales management by allowing users to make notes and track contact with prospects. With this tool in place, businesses can avoid multiple sales representatives working on the same account. Users have also implemented SugarCRM for marketing automation purposes such as monitoring customer journeys and creating quotes. Moreover, consulting companies benefit from SugarCRM's ability to consolidate client information, track vendor contacts, manage projects efficiently while keeping track of sales and marketing initiatives. For larger departments handling various clients or accounts managers experiencing high turnover, SugarCRM helps stay in touch with customers, mitigates turnover, and avoids re-explaining client discussions to new account managers. The software is also widely used to track leads and customers across the whole organization, providing a central repository for all customer data. It serves as an excellent tool for sales teams to track leads, convert them into accounts, clients, and ultimately track income from projects. Additionally, SugarCRM solves the problem of lack of accounting for certain types of work. Some businesses even prefer SugarCRM as a lightweight alternative to Salesforce CRM for tracking and managing leads and customer accounts. It fills in the gaps of Salesforce CRM and provides a reliable source of truth for other software companies. Overall, SugarCRM has proven to be a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes and industries, offering a wide range of use cases to effectively manage customer relationships, sales processes, marketing campaigns, and more. Its user-friendly interface, flexibility, customization options, and cost-effectiveness make it a popular choice among users. Whether it's tracking leads and prospects, managing customer interactions, automating sales and marketing processes, or providing a centralized platform for data management, SugarCRM has proven to be a versatile solution that helps businesses streamline their operations and maximize their revenue potential.

Customization Capabilities: Many users have praised SugarCRM for its customization capabilities, stating that it allows them to tailor the software to their specific needs and workflows. This has been particularly beneficial in streamlining operations and incorporating larger initiatives, making their companies more efficient.

Intuitive User Interface: Reviewers have consistently highlighted the intuitive user interface of SugarCRM, noting that it is user-friendly and has a nice layout. The easy navigation and clear organization of information make it simple for users to find what they need quickly and efficiently.

Reporting Capabilities: Several users have commended SugarCRM's reporting capabilities, considering them to be much better than their previous solutions. They appreciate the ease of use and intuitiveness of generating reports, allowing them to access valuable insights about their sales activities and performance.

Reporting Capability: Users have consistently mentioned that the reporting capability of SugarCRM is lacking and in need of improvement. Many users have expressed frustration with the limited capabilities for more complex reporting, stating that while it may be adequate for basic reports, it falls short when it comes to advanced functionalities.

System Downtime: Numerous users have experienced frequent system downtime, which has negatively impacted their productivity. This issue has been mentioned by a significant number of reviewers and highlights the reliability concerns associated with using SugarCRM.

Support Responsiveness: Users have repeatedly stated that support from SugarCRM is unresponsive unless there is a complete system outage or impairment. While initial response times may be satisfactory, many users have complained about delays in receiving solutions to their issues, especially when further explanation is required.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 40)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Jay Moore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by our Sales team only within our organization. It is used only for new sales and some retention efforts. We don't use a lot of the full features of it. We mostly use the leads and prospects modules.
  • Customize screen layout
  • Customize fields
  • Search functionality
  • Recording data
  • The email campaign of SugarCRM is very difficult to use. It is way more complicated than it needs to be.
  • Importing into SugarCRM as a lead is very easy but importing into account/contact is not.
SugarCRM is very flexible, and, since we have direct access to the underlying data, it is not too bad to integrate with other systems. If you want it as an email campaign platform, then I would look elsewhere or think about integrating with a tool that is better suited to do that.
May 28, 2021

Af

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)] is being used as a trial currently to fill in the gaps that salesforce crm cannot do and will hopefully take over the large number of duplicate accounts that are in sfdc currently. [Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)] is used by other software companies as well and I was tasked to get the crm and see if it could add value to where salesforce is lacking and that’s the source of the truth.
  • Building personal reports
  • Integrations
  • Visually appealing
  • Lack of Drill down to the level of detail
  • Cannot slice and dice the data with multiple scenarios
  • User experience is a little slow
I think [Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)] is well suited for small to medium sized businesses it seems to lack a true enterprise feel and I doubt it’s capabilities if your company is exceeding either 100M in revenue or, more than 450 employees. Other than that[,] it is an affordable crm if a company does not want to invest in an enterprise crm like a salesforce. I would recommend [Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)] to all my medium to small sized network accounts to use.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sugar is the main program for our company. It's used across the whole oganization. At the momento we've had small issues such as sometimes it would get stuck or at times certain information was not available on the right hand side at the time of putting notes on a case.
  • User Friendly
  • Saves Information Quickly
  • Informs you what you did wrong in order to continue
  • Add More Color to it
Sugar allows us to keep récords of the clients that the company has, such as new inbounds that are coming in hot or clients that you have to follow up with. These last couple of updatees that the system has made have been real helpfull. Especially being able to link a phone system to the system and be able to dial out quicker.
March 23, 2021

SugarCRM for Taxes

Joshua Willemse | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Community Tax has been using SugarCRM for almost three years now and it is being used for the entire company. We use this platform to attend individuals and businesses with income tax problems from; filing taxes, amending taxes and resolving tax debts so that our team can access the issue within the same platform.
  • One case per entity.
  • Access to notes about the problem.
  • Should be able to accommodate additional add-ons to the platform.
  • Smoother interaction with add-ons.
  • Instead of using a URL to run the platform create software.
  • Smoother interaction when saving information.
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.
Perla V. Ordonez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used across the whole organization. I work in sales and I use SugarCRM to manage my pipeline, to prospect and for AR purposes as well.
  • 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
  • I feel like there are unnecessary steps needed when saving work, which makes it time consuming at times.
  • Being able to create my own dashboards to my liking has been a challenge and I have had to ask IT to assist with that.
  • The system has gone down many times on me, I am not sure if it due to updates, but it does disturb my productivity.
SugarCRM is well suited to doing exactly what it is meant for, for managing my pipeline. It has a function that I have never had before that I believe that has helped me being successful within my role. I am easily able to use when the last time I had contact with a client/prospect. Every lead I have is important and this helps me ensure I am following up with all of my prospects.
March 09, 2021

SugarCRM Experience.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Sugar [Sell (SugarCRM)] all over the company, what we like the most it that it's customizable to your business needs.
It's a nice tool that allows to record all the calls and send SMS easy and quick, it lets you have a detailed record of all your clients, user friendly.
  • Record calls
  • User friendly
  • Schedule call backs
  • Slowness
  • You have to keep clearing your cache it order to work properly
  • It allows two users to edit the same case at the same time
It's great to follow up with clients, schedule call backs, send SMS, record calls, billing and many other functions.
Easy to understand and also allows companies to customize in order to succeed all the expectations and needs.

I don't like that you need to keep deleting cache in order to work properly.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company has multiple product lines, each with their own sales teams. Since each sales team is managed separately, CRM tools have historically been used very differently by each team. We have been through multiple big-name CRM tools. What eventually happens is that product use drops to almost zero because the tool cannot meet the needs of everyone. Sugar Sell has solved that problem for us.
  • The product is highly customizable.
  • It has powerful reporting features.
  • It performs much faster than other CRM products we've used.
  • Integrations with other systems work well.
  • Initial setup / configuration is involved and takes time.
  • There are limitations on logging into multiple devices.
  • The menus across the desktop and mobile versions are inconsistent.
If your organization has needs or requirements that it seems cannot be met by the industry leaders in CRM, I would urge you to talk to Sugar Sell (SugarCRM). They bent over backwards to work with different groups of people within our company to prove to them how committed they were to making the product work for us. It seamlessly integrates with our email and other applications we use frequently. And they helped us configure detailed reporting for our very complex sales territories and organizational structure.

If you are looking for a very basic CRM tool that doesn't require much configuration, Sugar will still work for you, but you certainly have other options.
Edward Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is being used in our team to generate and monitor tasks and also to manage our business needs, such as offering an administration portal for personalized support and sales and marketing automation, creating automated workflows as an administrator, and now the documentation is much easier because each user places the information in a centralized place and registers the contact with the buyers, and we have realized that this keeps our business organized.
  • Intuitive, simple and very robust user interface.
  • Organize your work better with lots of information you can add.
  • Needs some ways to automatically purge or self-clean old data.
  • Sometimes it's slow, and reports can be better and that affects the global search that doesn't always work.
The product has an excellent development model. Excellent integration with SQL. It can be customized to meet business requirements, it is cost effective and architectural integration is flexible, I like being able to create a new opportunity directly from an Outlook email and the fact that it can be implemented on the site, allowing additional flexibility with integration to other systems. On the other hand it is not so easy to use or robust compared to other CRMs that we have used, in addition to the fact that sometimes it is slow and not all modules work in the same way, for example, not being able to mass import the budget module, or lack of scanning in the document module.
December 17, 2019

Sugar Cell Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My consulting company has implemented SugarCRM as a resource in multiple client organizations. It is used by numerous departments including sales, vendor management, and others. It is used as a tool to consolidate and clearly view information on clients and their needs within the company. It addresses the need to have client information (business details, point of contact, location) located in a simple, easy interface.
  • Great user-interface and visualization.
  • Easy set-up for SSO which aligns with IT policy.
  • Less features than other CRM products.
  • Mobile application can be cumbersome.
SugarCRM is well suited for medium-sized businesses with semi-integrated departments to keep everyone on the same page and allow integration with other applications to streamline the process of managing customer relationships. I feel that SugarCRM would be less suited for multinational companies that need stronger visualization and customization, with good support, for their businesses.
Rick Giddings | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is the staple of our sales floor. This application makes my life easy from a sales management standpoint. SugarCRM allows all users to make notes from each time contact is made to a prospect, log the time and date, and keep it assigned to that specific user. This formula can help avoid having multiple sales reps working on the same account/prospect and ultimately eliminate any confusion. Sales managers can check in on any quotes for their teams to help create a funnel that doesn't get pushed to the side.
This application can also easily be manipulated into the way your company needs it most. We implement new functions to the dashboard frequently with ease. Customer support is always prompt as well.
  • Manages the sales pipeline.
  • Creates a funnel of pending sales.
  • Tracks all contact being made by each user.
  • If SugarCRM created their own click to dial feature, that would be great. For now, we use TenFold to integrate with SugarCRM.
When I have a sales rep who is on vacation, SugarCRM makes it easy for me to locate a contact and pick up with them where the last talks left off so that I can assist in closing the deal.
December 13, 2018

SugarCRM - great product

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SugarCRM as a central platform for all teams which allows us to be more efficient internally and externally. We use this CRM to house internal information and build reports on my team's sales funnel in terms of prospects and warm leads to closed accounts. We have various sales teams globally so its helped us scale while streamlining reporting and communication among the teams. It also helps ensure all teams are maintaining their client pipeline with a intelligence behind it which is helpful for management.
  • Very easy to set up and configure reports among teams. Very customizable and allows me to build reports that illustrate how the team is performing.
  • Exporting granular reports into excel for in depth analysis and actionable measures.
  • Ability to mass upload lots of information and leads. Important for our team to import lots of information on prospecting clients.
  • UI is sufficient but seems a bit outdated compared to SFDC.
  • Inability to login to multiple devices computers.
  • The email marketing tool is decent but far from the best, overall other solutions that have better marketing platforms.
When our company got acquired in early 2018 we had various sales teams located globally. Some of the teams did not use a CRM. With SugarCRM we were able to streamline all reporting, communication and accountability among the teams. The CRM has helped us ensure the teams are not targeting the same clients and doing double work. Additionally since teams are in various timezones the activity tracking is extremely helpful to give a snapshot of the latest status with the account and how close we are to the sale. Without this CRM we would be extremely messy and on different pages with each sales team.
Emma McCarthy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SugarCRM as our primary tool in tracking applications, determining eligibility, and managing payments for children in publicly funded preschool programs. Although it was primarily designed as a sales tool, we use it less as for sales (given that we are not a sales organization) and more as a relationship management and accounting tool. We have a very small team (10 people total), but we all use Sugar on a daily basis.
  • Extremely flexible. Sugar is open source, and so you're able to build customized modules to fit your needs readily and easily.
  • Robust reporting capabilities. I appreciate how it's quick and easy to pull the data that my clients need.
  • Easy to use. Sugar has a fairly straight user interface, and so is usable even by those who are not particularly tech savvy.
  • More approachable user interface. At its core, it's a complex database, and it's not always intuitive.
It's well suited for tracking and managing customer relationships. We also find that it's well suited for tracking program eligibility. We use it to manage over 6000 applications for publicly-funded preschool programs, as well as the entire communication flow with both families and preschool providers who engage with our program. It does well if you have a few different customer groups that interact with one another - it allows you to track your communication with these groups, as well as their relationships with one another.
Peter Fletcher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have worked with Sugar for many clients ranging in size from 2 to over 300 CRM Users.

Sugar is extremely flexible and cost effective compared to its competitors like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.

Sugar covers the whole customer life cycle from Lead through Sales and on-going Support and Marketing. It is easy to use and has many features like in-line editing that keep Clicks to a minmum. Most tasks can be one with two or three clicks.

Sugar Mobile gives a very strong mobile app to give users complete flexibility whether at their desk or in the field.

  • Sugar gives full account and contact visibility so any member of the organisation can have a full and accurate view of all related activities, products install, contracts in place and much more. It gives the proverbial One View.
  • Dashboards are one of the strongest parts of Sugar giving each user their own view of the way they can and want to interact with the customer. The dashboards are a key feature in that they are very easy to customize so that each user has a personal view with tasks, data views etc. appropriate to their role. Customizing these dashboards by role is also very easy. No coding is required, it is largely a matter of dragging and dropping fields.
  • Sugar's Forecasting Module makes the forecasting process quick and easy by using the Opportunities already created by the Sales Team. It also provides great individual feedback to the Team regarding YTD & QTD performance against Quota.
  • Sugar Mobile is a very strong mobile app for IOS and Android that is both easy to use and comprehensive. I t can be used both of-line and on-line mode.
  • With Version 8, there's not much Sugar can't do for us. With Plug-ins for most extra requirements that Sugar doesn't deliver at no/very low cost it's easy to build/deliver what we really need.
  • S
Sugar is an excellent product that covers the CRM needs for most organisations, large or small. Its low cost, flexibility and ease of use make it stand out in a very cluttered market. For mobile teams, Sugar Mobile is a free IOS/Android App that is superb.

Ease of customisation and administration mean our clients can control their own destiny if they wish to. This ease of use helps significantly reduce Sugar's TCO sine external consultants are not required to make the system changes that Clients want on a regular basis.
August 17, 2016

Sugar CRM Review

Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The marketing and sales department used it for the tracking of vendor contacts, partnerships, trade show contacts and lead vendors. We also used it to track project management for different sales and marketing initiatives. In the system, emails were tracked against contacts. New opportunities for projects and trade shows were also managed. For all of these different functions, we had simple workflow actions that made notifications for certain business events and triggers. We also used the system for sales and marketing reporting on ROI and forecasting for sales.
  • Open source code which allows your developers to customize it however needed. It also did pretty well integrating with other products.
  • The Sugar CRM community is pretty vast and the user community is very engaged so you can find great resources and answers to questions and problems.
  • Our team really liked the custom reports we were able to create inside the application. They were visually appealing, user friendly and worked very well for our business unit's needs (forecasting, ROI, campaigning etc).
  • Official documentation is not a strong point for this application. I wish there was more reference material to guide people new to the system from an admin and developer side.
  • There are fewer bells and whistles to the application than other CRMs.
  • Since it is open source, you don't have any sort of support plan options like other bigger applications like Salesforce.com or Oracle etc.
Small businesses may find use of the application because it's low cost. Or companies that have a pretty straightforward sales process and won't require a lot of heavy customization. Heavy customization is fine in the framework, however you need a skilled developer to be able to manage it.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Sugar across our sales/marketing/account management teams to organize and track our customers and prospects - particularly our sales/marketing funnel.
  • Sugar's reporting is pretty simple to use once you get trained up on it.
  • The pricing is good for an organization of our size.
  • Ability to customize also good - again, once you get trained up on it.
  • Really, really find it a hassle (at least right now) to sync Sugar with our marketing automation software. We use a 3rd party API as our connector between the two systems but I find glitches in it that concern me and make me wonder if all my information is being accurately transmitted and matched up.
  • Sugar wasn't very intuitive when I first began using it. We recently had a 3rd party come in to redesign the system for us and once it was customized, it was much better.
  • Search function doesn't always seem to work in the top nav bar- frustrating when I'm trying to find something fast and don't want to go into a module to do it.
I think Sugar is the kind of thing that can be used out of the box but shouldn't. We needed help to go back and rethink the design of it for our organization and once we did that, it became a better solution.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is used by marketing and sales to track prospects and customers and provide reports.
  • Customized reporting is a strength.
  • Customizable to user needs.
  • Getting to a point of being usable can be difficult.
  • If something is customized and SugarCRM updates, things can go wrong.
  • If something is customized, it had better be dialed in the right way, or things can go wrong.
I believe with proper support a more complex sales force would appreciate SugarCRM. Simpler sales operations or those who do not have backend support might want to look at a simpler product. Social and marketing is underdeveloped at this point. Other products offer more if you are looking to integrate.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
SugarCRM is being used as the main engine to support Sales, it starts with adding Leads, upon further analysis and contact with the leads, those leads get converted into Opportunities, SugarCRM is very flexible and efficient at handling this process due to the workflow integration where approvals and notifications can be set. Opportunities then can be closely tracked, upon further client management, the goal is to transform, those Opportunities into actual accounts, that is signing contracts and again execute and keep track of all the workflows within SugarCRM, that involves the interaction with several other departmewnts in the company that are connected through SugarCRM to produce documentation, notifications and Approvals to bring in new accounts into our sales system in SugarCRM.
  • Excellent on supporting customized processes
  • Workflows can be easily created and existing workflows can be easily modified
  • Notifications and approval processes are easily created
  • 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.
SugarCRM is so flexible than can be adapted to handle multiple Industries and customized processes, for developers, the configuration is very intuitive and for end users the overall experience is positive since end users can customize their own dashboards or request changes to the way workflows and notification are handled throughout the system. Several business processes can be implemented for Sales, HR, Facilities etc.
Chin Uba (MBA, MSc, MCITP, MCSE) | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SUCRM as we call it, is used across the whole organization and I have deployed it for a few clients. We have used it primarily as a CRM and for client follow up.
  • Excellent database system. Can be copied to other servers.
  • Custom fields.
  • Ability to link CRM data to deals.
  • Good user interface.
  • Provide portable versions.
  • Probably provide platform independent CRM system.
It is a very stable CRM and that is what it is! However, I will recommend it more for businesses in healthcare, manufacturing, IT, accounting and logistics. In fact any business where there is a need to keep customer records in a pliable way and be ready for retrieval is where SugarCRM plays well.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The entire organization used Sugar CRM as a way to keep in touch with our thousands of clients. We had five companies under the same corporation and used Sugar CRM to discern which contact went to which company, as well as keeping track of their notes, which products they had or had used, and each time an employee reached out to them/vice versa.
  • Everything is available at all times, cloud-based
  • You can add extra functions if needed
  • The ability to search through a funnel based on specific requests/inquiries (Ex: City/state, company, etc)
  • It's slow. VERY SLOW.
  • Crashes constantly; makes it difficult to use. Frequently have to log in. You can't have more than one (or two, if you're lucky) windows open at a time, making searches very, very sloooowwww.
  • Very difficult to use. If you need to update or change functionality on a platform, it's almost like pulling teeth. We had to frequently consult with Sugar CRM's staff members to understand how to do so.
I think the biggest issue that we had is that we had so many customers and prospects spanning over 20 years. It made it very slow to search for anything, and many times if we tried to change something it wouldn't actually save. It's very glitchy. I don't really have a specific scenario for best or worst-case, but it'd likely do better in an industry where you don't have tens of thousands of people to sort through.
February 12, 2016

Queen of the Details

Marissa Schuchat | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is being used to track and note web service Requests. My use was specifically in that capacity, though the software is used throughout the organization. We needed a way to be able to monitor the workload of incoming requests, as well as a way to communicate actions taken on each request.
  • SugarCRM includes a number of fields for details, so the requests are complete in their level of detail.
  • SugarCRM has a number of dropdowns that exactly capture the description of the service.
  • SugarCRM integrates with email, so users get an email update whenever a status is changed.
  • Initially you discover that using the Back button is futile, and you have to navigate via the breadcrumbs in the page hierarchy. Having Back button capability would be great.
SugarCRM is functional for back-end/in-house IT services tracking. The software was used to track inventory as well as web services rendered, and a large amount of data. I can see SugarCRM being used in a sales or fundraising capacity as status indicators are really clear as well are the emails that come along with any status changes.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is a good way to organize your contacts and accounts. It helps larger departments stay in touch with what is going on with all of the customers. The biggest thing SugarCRM can help mitigate is turnover in the organization, and lack of understanding of what has been discussed already with a client and not making the client re-explain themselves to a new account manager.
  • Contract & Document Organization.
  • Workflow.
  • Account Management.
  • Upgrades are not smooth for us, it requires a lot of IT support. Our SugarCRM instance is self-hosted.
  • Speed, at times it runs really slow.
  • More customization for setting users up, preload dashboards and dashlets etc.
It's a good cost effective solution and available to be self hosted. At times the software seems to not make sense and the upgrades are quirky. Some modules are taking longer than expected to upgrade from their old layouts. Third party plugins are hit or miss, and at times not written well and unstable for upgrades.
September 29, 2015

Partner's view of SugarCRM

Jeff Bickart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Our entire organization uses SugarCRM. We utilize Marketing Automation, Leads, Opportunities, Contracts, Quotes, Projects. It provides us with the ability to have single tool to view all information as it pertains to each touch point we have with our current and prospective customers.
  • Account Managment
  • Integration with many 3rd party tools such as Marketo and Act-On
  • Choice of deployment; On-premise or On-Demand
  • Documentation is functional but it is not great
  • Updates to the product are not earth shattering
Will you be using a partner to help with configuration and customization of the product? Will you be using your own in house staff to provide your services? Will you be integrating with 3rd party systems or your own in house systems?
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized

We utilize SugarCRM to track our leads and customers. It is being used across the whole organization (sales, marketing, support, etc)

It allows us to keep all data under one roof instead of having to use multiple software pieces to do this.

  • SugarCRM delivers a full project management solution combined with the sales management, marketing automation, and customer support used by employees to manage customer-centric activities.
  • SugarCRM allows you to access client information from your tablet or smartphone and also lets you add info in real time.
  • SugarCRM features a great customization studio as it allows its users to integrate with the existing CRM products with ease.
  • SugarCRM's lack of good integration with Outlook for e-mails is a major flaw.
  • Having the ability to have a desktop application would open the market to more companies who like the best of both worlds.
  • The minimum user count of 10 is definitely a drawback for those smaller companies.
If they want a desktop solution, SugarCRM is out. If they want a mobile/web solution, then SugarCRM is near the top of the list and affordable.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It was being used for sales. Following leads and converting them into accounts and clients. It was also being used to give an overview of the projects that we were pursuing for old and new clients alike. In this fashion it was partially tracking income from the projects and providing a target for new sales opportunities. The main problem it addressed was the lack of accounting that we had for this type of work.
  • SugarCRM had a very complete feature set. The modules covered everything we needed to track.
  • The free Community Edition was hard to pass up. It was also easy to install and host locally.
  • The customizability of the Community Edition was nice.
  • Although the modules covered most of what we needed, it was hard to make things work for the edge cases. They didn't always integrate with each other in the way that we liked.
  • The themes available were hideous. We ended up creating a custom theme, but even that was not ideal.
  • The integration with 3rd party products and services (like MS Exchange server) was somewhat lacking.
I think SugarCRM is best suited for an aggressive sales department that is not already tracking data. The project management features were not great. Some important questions to ask are: how many people do we have working in sales (a greater number of people makes it a better investment to use SugarCRM)? Do we need a custom workflow for the sales process (I hope not!)? Do we need to track contacts, clients, leads, and opportunities?
Zoe Leanza | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SugarCRM is being used in the Sales department to aid both Sales Representatives and the Marketing Department to identify products of interest to a wide variety of customers. It addresses the specificity of advertising materials sent to groups of customers, aiming for more specific and less redundant advertising. The whole organization does not use SugarCRM but has access to it. A potential transition away from SugarCRM is in the works, as it is not the most efficient way of organizing and profiling customers.
  • SugarCRM is easy to learn and can be mastered in a matter of hours. It is laid out in a very intuitive manner and can manage thousands of entries and customers.
  • It can record a wide variety of information - not only customer names and contact informations - but also a description of their work and an ability to select biotechnological tools in which they may be interested.
  • Profiles can be annotated and updated constantly; and grouped into larger laboratories. The corresponding profile of each customer can reveal Sales Representatives and their interactions with each customer, which is helpful in avoiding redundant or irrelevant cold calls.
  • When trying to edit or annotate a subsection of a customer's profile, a new page opens entirely. Thus, rather than being able to see all the information at all times, you have to navigate back and forth in a very inefficient and frustrating way. It makes entering things into SugarCRM very tedious.
  • Duplicate entries are a regular occurence in SugarCRM, thanks to the program's inability to differentiate between small differences (such as a capitalized first name or a suffix).
  • SugarCRM does not allow you to very easily merge duplicate entries, and data will get lost in the transfer or consolidation of information.
SugarCRM is appropriate as a customer profiling database for small projects (ie, fewer than 1,000 customers) but with larger projects it gets very tedious and repetitive, presenting a number of frustrating issues with redundancy and a meticulous attention to detail. Thus, I would recommend this to smaller projects; but it is less appropriate for larger tasks with multiple contacts or locations. Another thing to consider is its user-friendliness. If the employees using SugarCRM have minimal experience with marketing or customer profiling, it is a good choice since it is so easy to learn and navigate - a simple and intuitive layout that resembles a social media site.
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