Businesses need a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

If you have ever looked into CRM tools, you will know how useful they can be in improving your sales process. A CRM tool can do so much more than simply keeping track of customer contacts. You can automate tasks such as lead scoring, follow up, and tracking deal storage.

We’ll continue our CRM review series today with SugarCRM. SugarCRM claims to be the “#1 customer experience platform.”

To determine if it is as good as its claims, we will cover its features, ease-of-use, pricing plans and many other aspects. We hope that you find useful information for your business after you have finished this guide.

Let’s get started right now!

What is SugarCRM?

SugarCRM enables companies to create highly personalized experiences by managing customer relationships (CRM).

SugarCRM was established in 2004 and has been trusted by over 2 million users in 120 countries. California is the company’s headquarters. There are other offices in the US, Mexico and Australia.

SugarCRM allows companies to create marketing applications, retain customers, grow sales and execute marketing plans. These business applications can be used in many ways. They can be used to manage customer information databases and support customers.

SugarCRM key features

SugarCRM has broken down its services into three main categories to make them easier to understand:

• Sugar Market
• Sell Sugar
• Sugar Serve

Boom! It’s that simple! The three most important parts of any CRM system are marketing, sales, and customer support. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Sugar Market

Sugar Market is your all-in-one marketing automation tool. Its purpose is to assist mid-sized marketing departments in increasing their reach and tracking results. This feature allows you to attract visitors with built-in ads or social tools.

You can also use SEO and SEM to get your site noticed. This is all built into Sugar Market’s product.

You can also create marketing campaigns using drag-and-drop editors and landing page templates. Personalization is a key feature of CRM. You can personalize emails and copy to make sure your leads feel that these materials are written just for them. You can also score leads based upon their likelihood of converting.

Sugar Market lets you track and analyze your performance. No matter what pricing plan you choose you will get high-quality visual analytics that include charts and graphs. This makes it easy to understand the data.

Sell Sugar

This software aims to make salespeople top performers. A sales rep can immediately see the details of any individual by entering their name into the software. This includes insights, scores and social data. There are also live notifications for changes.

From the first contact to the last customer satisfaction survey, you can track each customer’s entire journey. It is important to keep track of everything in order to provide the best customer experience.

Sugar Sell can be integrated with many other tools and apps. Sugar Sell allows you to sync your emails, calendars, meetings online, and social media accounts. This makes it easy to keep track of the most important interactions while using the same dashboards. It creates a seamless experience and takes less time.

SugarBPM (Business Process Module) allows you to get quotes approved and routed to the appropriate department. This will eliminate bottlenecks and improve the customer experience.

Sugar Serve

Sugar Server makes it easy to resolve customer queries faster than if you had to go through complicated policies. The process is made simple and seamless by intuitive, easy-to-read dashboards.

Customers can solve their own problems using the self-service portal or knowledge base. This reduces support calls and helps you save money. Your customer support team can also view complaints and more complex inquiries on the SugarCRM dashboards.

You can monitor the performance of your employees with real-time reports as a business owner. This will allow you to spot potential problems before they become serious.

SugarCRM is easy to use

SugarCRM, while not the most beautiful CRM available, is very intuitive once it’s implemented. The top toolbar provides shortcuts to frequently used features so users can quickly access them. Users can navigate to Home, Accounts and Contacts from the top toolbar.

SugarCRM users are often frustrated by the many features it offers. SugarCRM can be difficult to understand. It might not be worthwhile to spend your time trying to learn SugarCRM if you’re a small-business owner with no prior tech experience.

Although it is easy to find information in SugarCRM documents, most business owners will need to spend more time and effort. SugarCRM can be difficult if you’ve never used a software product.

SugarCRM is almost impossible to use if you have an in-house technical team or one person who can manage the implementation and training.

SugarCRM pricing plans

SugarCRM offers five pricing plans. All of them are annual. You will need to make an initial investment and you can’t cancel the plan if it doesn’t suit your needs.

You will also need to budget for customization, training and implementation.

Sugar Professional starts at $52/user/month, which includes:

• SLAs for standard support
• SugarCRM Support Portal for Support
• 2 Contacts with support authorization

Sugar Enterprise: Starting at $85/user/month, includes:

• SugarBPM – Advanced workflow
• Reporting using SQL
• SLAs for Accelerated Support
• Support via SugarCRM Support Portal and phone
• 4 Contacts with support authorization

Sugar Serve starts at $80/user/month, which includes:

• 2 sandbox instances
• 60GB Storage
• Telephone support
• 4 Contacts with support authorization

Sugar Sell: Starting at $80/user/month, which includes:

• 2 sandbox instances
• 60GB Storage
• Telephone support
• 4 Contacts with support authorization

Sugar Market: Starting at $1,000/month for 10,000 contacts

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited email addresses and landing pages
• Telephone support
• 4 Support-authorized Contacts

SugarCRM services require a minimum of 10 users to be available at any level. SugarCRM is not suitable for small businesses or startups due to the minimum number of users and high prices.

SugarCRM security

Sugar employs a systematic and holistic approach to protecting customer data when it comes to cybersecurity and data privacy. Sugar offers the ability to deploy the solution locally, as well as in hybrid and hosted configurations. It is designed to satisfy a variety of regulatory and security requirements.

Sugar’s data centers are protected with powerful physical security measures, such as 24/7 secured access with motion sensors and security breach alarms. Security infrastructure includes strong encryption, firewalled network and advanced user authentication layers.

SugarCRM integrations

SugarCRM is open to third-party integrations thanks to its API. This platform can do everything, from integrations with legacy systems to call center capabilities and E-commerce capabilities, to almost anything in between.

The extensive guides for installing extensions and syncing external systems are also available, so you won’t have to go it alone. It is also compatible with PHP and JAVA.

SugarCRM integrates well with:

• Google’s most popular apps include Docs, Drive and Gmail
• Social media channels
• Online meeting platforms such as GoToMeeting or WebEx

…and many other things.

In April 2020, Sugar Integration was launched by the company. This cloud-based integration platform allows for seamless collaboration. This solution allows cross-application views of customers and supports automated business processes across multiple business systems such as ERP, sales automation, help desk, E-commerce, and marketing automation.

Sugar Integrate has many benefits:

• Integrating Sugar with other business systems can be done quickly, at a lower cost, and with less effort.

• Integrations that are interchangeable between different systems can reduce vendor dependence.

• Real-time integrations are supported to reduce data lag, automate inter-system processes, and automate data transfer

SugarCRM customer support

SugarCRM customers receive different levels of customer support depending on the plan they have. Sugar Support users are encouraged to search the Sugar Support website for answers to general issues in their Documentation Knowledge Base, Sugar University, Sugar University, Sugar University, or Community tabs.

Each plan will be assigned one to three support-authorized contacts for more complex issues. The Sugar product that you have subscribed to will determine the exact number.

SugarCRM’s customer service is rated highly by many users. SugarCRM has a large user base but it is easy to reach a live customer support representative over the phone. Developers and users will appreciate the ease of accessing basic technical information.

SugarCRM: The pros and cons

Pros:

• Flexibility/ Extensibility. This platform allows you to customize your app by adding features to the stock or custom application. SugarApplication can package and distribute each custom feature.

• Automation. Automated tasks can be performed by users, which reduces manual labor and helps save time.

• Integration. SugarCRM supports wide device deployment and social media integration.

• Customer service. Customer service is prompt, professional, and can resolve issues quickly.

Cons:

• Not budget-friendly. It is not affordable for all the features it offers, making it hard for start-ups and small businesses to use.

• Compulsed updates. Automatic updates reconfigure the system and make it more time-consuming to set-up each time.

• Data reporting. The system provides limited data reporting capabilities.

• There is a learning curve. SugarCRM is not an easy task to master, especially for new users.

Alternatives to SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a great product in many ways, but it may not be the right fit for your needs or environment. We’ve put together the top 3 alternatives to SugarCRM.

Yetiforce

Yetiforce, a cloud-powered open-source CRM platform, is available for both iOS and Android. Its community actively updates the platform module-wise with the most recent, cutting-edge features.

Flexible engagement models allow you to purchase add-on modules or individual models.

Yetiforce’s highlights:

• A simple dashboard shows all the modules and widgets in a single view

• Segmentation obvious of leads, accounts contacts, vendors, partners and competition

• Strong Sales module that includes sub-systems for opportunities, inquiries and quotes.

• An easy-to-use and customizable Calendar module that allows for task monitoring and assignment.

• Email module built in to help customers communicate

Snapforce CRM

Next, Snapchat Force CRM, a robust platform, can sync your customer database, phone system, and email. The Prodigy edition can be used on mobile devices seamlessly so you can work on the road.

Users found the system simple to use, and described its interface as refreshingly easy. There were some glitches but they were manageable.

Snapforce CRM highlights:

• Simple lead assignment for team members

• Automated conversion of quotations to sales orders

• A powerful enterprise account management module simplifies your accounts, contacts, and finances

• Quotes builder instantly generates accurate, professional-looking quotes.

• Integrated secure payment gateways allow payments to be received and disbursed securely

Apptivo CRM

Apptivo CMS, a cloud-based platform that offers a wide range of services and features, is the final option. Apptivo CRM is a highly-regarded tool due to its intuitive interface and strategic partnerships. Apptivo CRM offers premium features and seamless support for a low price.

Apptivo CRM’s highlights:

• There are many lead capture methods, including email-to and web-to-lead forms.

• Sales tracking tracks the performance of both individuals and teams

• Apps are designed to convert a contact into an opportunity and then into paying customers.

• Integration with G Suite and Office 365 and Slack allows for data import and team management.

The bottom line

SugarCRM is flexible and highly customizable, allowing you to make the most of your customer relationships. Its steep learning curve and expensive pricing might be reasons to reconsider.

Do you have any other CRM tools that you would like us to look at? We’d love to hear from you! We will review your request as soon as we can!