SugarCRM Community edition has been a great daily driver for my music business. It's reliable, and has enough functionality to enable me to record all the key data that I need. The ability to self-host the platform is fantastic, because it helps keep costs down, and when you work on a small-scale, you don't need all of the processing power of a paid hosted solution. Definitely a great option if you have the savvy to install and maintain your own instance on your web server.

I used the self-hosted community CRM for several years for my own music business. It has a ton of functionality that matches a lot of the basic features you find in Salesforce Classic. It's a great tool for keeping track of client data, deal tracking, etc. It's also nice to be able to self-host the platform as well as it's a lot more affordable than using a paid SaaS solution.

SugarCRM Community Edition looks pretty dated. If you don't have a lot of experience with the typical CRM data model concept, it can be hard to figure out how to use the system. The interface could be modernized to make it easier to navigate and find your way around. Another downside to being the Community Edition is that you need to know how to install and maintain the platform on your own server, but this is also a plus if you do have these skills.

With SugarCRM, I keep track of new campaigns (account management), I am regularly reminded that I have performance discussions with my customers and I can switch to the corresponding customer account to find all the important data and get in touch with the customer. In addition, thanks to the ticket system, I do not forget to work on important tasks for my customers and other projects. In addition, I can optimally and smoothly inform my teammates about changes utilizing comments and notes in the customer accounts. All in all, I can only say that it is a super complete CRM solution.

What I like most are the synergy effects of the use of the tool by our large sales teams spread over several locations (in Spain and abroad) and our various marketing teams. We combine all customer contact points in an extremely flexible way across all departments. This simplifies our internal communication and knowledge exchange among ourselves, as well as communication with customers. The interface can be used very intuitively for an extensive CRM system thanks to its focus on a single clear navigation bar. In addition, the tool can be linked very flexibly with other systems via APIs, such as SAP, various campaign management tools, and much more.

It isn't easy to become familiar with all the relevant interface features in a short time to take full advantage of these synergies. Here, you must explore using patience and occasionally, trial and error. However, you will certainly behave similarly to other enterprise-level CRM solutions.

It is so easy to understand the features of SugarCRM. SugarCRM is so amazing.

I do not see difficulties when using SugarCRM.

You get what you pay for. It's an average platform with some significant drawbacks that aren't realized until you've signed on the line and are trying to onboard it. We use Sage as our base platform and had intended to use Sugar to allow our teams to work in one system and have it communicate with Sage. In theory, this saves us time, entering data in one window instead of multiple tabs in Sage. However, in many instances, Sugar cannot write to Sage. That's a one-way street, so many tasks still require manual entry in Sage. It's also very clunky. The data refreshes/synchs very slowly, so you're rarely looking at real-time data. It will refresh and reload pages while you're actively working in them, deleting your progress and forcing you to start the process over. Creating dashboards and reports requires the user to be literate in tech talk and computer logic. Trying to navigate the back end to find the data you're looking for takes ages. I haven't even tried playing with the workflow builder because I can't find the time to teach myself how to build a report or dashboard, much less anything more complex. We have identified numerous shortcomings, but when we contact Sugar Support, they tell us it's a bug they're working on with no timetable for a solution. Apparently, there are a LOT of bugs.

The system is easy to use in theory. The UI is decent and processes are intuitive. The price point is attractive since the company boasts that it parallells other higher-priced options in features and functionality. The onboarding was fairly simple and adjusting to the system was not difficult.

Customer service is abysmal. Our original contract included six limited use licenses designed to let our leadership team review content across all areas of the system (able to view all, but not edit certain elements). However, they did not work as promised and we ultimately had to purchase the more expensive licenses to allow our team access. When we made the purchase, the team at Sugar deactviated all other licenses on our account, despite the fact that we were only half way through our annual contract, which we'd already paid for. I tried calling their domestic customer support line and got voicemail. I eventually reached technical support via email, who had to relay my request to another department. Our business was effectively offline for half a day while this was sorted out and our access was restored. Two weeks later, I received an EMAIL from our Customer Success rep. She apologized for her late response and asked me to outline the issue. I did so and requested a call to discuss the incident. I never received another follow-up email, much less a phone call. Between bugs with the licenses, bugs with the search/filter, email issues, and zero customer support, I cannot understate how disappointed I am in this purchase and this company as a whole.