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What Is SugarCRM?

SugarCRM combines AI technology with advanced CRM capabilities to improve customer engagement, accelerate sales cycles and boost marketing impact. Renowned for its exceptional customizability, seamless integrations, and superior customer service, Sugar is ideally suited for B2B organisations ranging from 50 to 5,000 employees. Global firms like Sennheiser, Tetley, Agfa, and CBRE trust SugarCRM as their single source of truth to fuel their operational excellence and business growth. Learn more.

Who Uses SugarCRM?

Designed for B2B organisations ranging from 50-8,000 employees. We cater to B2B organisations in USA, APAC, Middle East and Europe, including the UK, DACH, Nordics, Benelux, France, Italy and Spain.

SugarCRM Software - Access reliable and real-time reporting and dashboards for actionable insights.
SugarCRM Software - Everything you need to engage with prospects or customers is at your fingertips.
SugarCRM Software - Utilize AI-powered insights to identify high-conversion opportunities.
SugarCRM Software - Uncover revenue opportunities with the Renewal Console from SugarCRM.
SugarCRM Software - Automate processes and save time with SugarCRM's BPM (Business Process Management) capabilities.

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Reviews of SugarCRM

Average score

Overall
3.8
Ease of Use
3.7
Customer Service
3.7
Features
3.8
Value for Money
3.8

Reviews by company size (employees)

  • <50
  • 51-200
  • 201-1,000
  • >1,001
Micheal
Micheal
Business Owner in Canada
Verified LinkedIn User
Construction, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

SugarCRM is the best and will always be the best.

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Awesome experience, and I would recommend them to others.

Pros:

I like how easy it is to find the information I am looking for from projects, leads and contacts

Cons:

The cost would be the least I like about the software, but it is still a very good price, not the worst and it could always be a bit cheaper.

sanjay
Marketing Specialist in Italy
Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 10,000+ Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Robust Platform to have wide customer relationship

4.0 2 years ago

Comments: SugarCRM is a robust and feature-rich platform that can help businesses of all sizes improve their customer relationships and streamline their operations. It has a large and active user community, with regular updates and new features being added to the platform to ensure that it remains relevant and competitive in the market.

Pros:

SugarCRM's lead management capabilities can also help to streamline sales processes. By providing a platform for managing leads, assigning them to sales reps, and tracking their progress through the sales pipeline, SugarCRM enables sales teams to work more efficiently and effectively. This can help to reduce duplication of effort, improve collaboration between different teams, and ultimately drive higher revenues and profits.

Cons:

SugarCRM's contact management capabilities also provide powerful analytics and reporting tools that can help businesses to gain deeper insights into their customer interactions. By leveraging this data, businesses can identify trends and patterns in customer behavior, adjust their marketing and sales strategies, and ultimately achieve better results. This is a least like about my softwares where i can get the same feature in the other platform like salesforce.

Stacey
Marketing in US
Packaging & Containers, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

SugarCRM - Look elsewhere for small business

3.0 2 years ago

Comments: We don't need SugarCRM.

Pros:

I like cloud based updates, but that's all I like.

Cons:

Constant planned increases in price without keeping pace with new functionality. Forced to purchase through constantly changing reseller network. Having to pay for integration with Quickbooks. This is a dinosaur trying to avoid the tarpit.

Johannsen
Johannsen
Senior Consultant in Philippines
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Perfect for business process automation

4.0 2 years ago

Comments: Overall, I would recommend SugarCRM to businesses that are looking for a CRM solution that can automate their processes and provide customization options. While there may be some upfront costs and a learning curve involved, the benefits of using SugarCRM are likely to outweigh these considerations in the long run.

Pros:

Automation capabilities: SugarCRM has a range of automation features that can help businesses streamline their processes and save time. For example, it can automatically assign tasks and follow-up actions to team members, send personalized emails and alerts, and track and report on progress.Customization options: SugarCRM allows users to tailor the platform to their specific needs and processes. This is great for businesses that have unique workflow requirements or want to integrate the CRM with their existing systems.Scalability: SugarCRM can accommodate businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. It offers a variety of pricing plans and can be customized to meet the needs of different teams and departments.Integration with other tools: SugarCRM can be integrated with a wide range of tools, including email, calendars, and social media. This makes it easy for businesses to track and manage customer interactions across multiple channels.

Cons:

Cost: SugarCRM can be on the pricier side, especially for smaller businesses or those with limited budgets. However, it's worth considering the long-term benefits of automating business processes and the ROI that the platform can provide.Learning curve: While SugarCRM is generally easy to use, it does have a bit of a learning curve. It may take some time for users to get comfortable with all of the features and functions of the platform.

Orianne
Orianne
Specialist Marketing in Spain
Verified LinkedIn User
Telecommunications, 10,000+ Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Most powerful and easy-to-use CRM to support all corporate sales and marketing activities

4.0 2 years ago

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Tom
Customer Experience Manager in US
Chemicals, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Lots of bugs, terrible customer support. Spend a little more for something that works.

2.0 3 years ago

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 501–1,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Indeed a great CRM with effective results

5.0 6 years ago

Comments: Overall my experience with this CRM is great. I am using it daily and I can say that my daily work is incomplete without it. It is so simple to use and provides amazing results for reports and dashboards, their customer's support team is very responsive.

Pros:

I am using it for more than three years and like almost everything about it. This CRM is very easy to use because of its simple design and easy to use user interface. I like the way SugarCRM provides reports and dashboards which is very easy to understand. SugarCRM provides secruity of data and information and now I can handle the different campaigns, create a different campaign for anyone and even get a complete picture of it very easily.

Cons:

I would like to highlight one thing that I dislike about it which is its overall cost. A small organization may not afford this CRM but overall it is worth to spend on it.

Eric R
Eric R
Chief Product Officer in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Facilities Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Sugar CRM is inexpensive, functional and quite dated

3.0 3 years ago

Pros:

Sugar CRM is a functional CRM that works reasonably well for tech-minded folks who don't mind getting used to its unappealing interface. It has the basic tools and functionality one would expect from a CRM and some of the integrations are solid (for data imports primarily).

Cons:

The interface feels old and doesn't give the user much power to reconfigure it to work in a way that will help the user's specific needs. The marketing automation integrations are clunky, too.

Paul
Consulting Manager in Colombia
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Ok application, better, cheaper alternatives exist

4.0 4 years ago

Comments: It is an OK application, Sugar has stood still in time and, when you consider the app out of the box, its pretty much standard. Sugar has divided its stack into various products for marketing, for sales, for support only making it a very expensive when you consider other options in the market

Pros:

Very stable, solid easy to use, administer Easy to implement and deploy Reporting is good and allows fro complex reports to be built

Cons:

It has not changed in a looong time (perhaps years?) For the functionality, it is expensive - better options exist Marketing is poor (unless you go for Sugar marketing apps which are expen$ive!)

Adam
SysAdmin in US
Real Estate, 201–500 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Great, customizable CRM

4.0 last year

Pros:

Easy setup. Cloud-hosted environment means low maintenance. Easy for small teams to customize without requiring developers.

Cons:

Cloud hosting means no direct DB access, or config changes, instead relying on UI tools to customize and export. Nothing crazy though.

Mashudu Hilary
Freelancer in South Africa
Computer Software, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

An effective software to keep a great relationship with your custormers and clients

5.0 3 years ago

Comments: Sugar CRM has been a great software for my business. Ever since I started using it, I have been able to manage and sort out organization structures easily. The way I deliver customer service and manage a relationship with them has changed for the better.

Pros:

Sugar CRM as a software is great because it comes with a customizable home page since it is an open source platform. Features such as the new user wizard tool, shortcut bar and downloadable plugins are just ingenious. I like how the software comes in a diverse range of languages which number 9 in total. Sugar CRM provides data and information security meaning I am assured of protection from internal and external corruption which might have dire consequences. The software can be intergrated with other software such as Zendesk, Happy fox or Pardot just to mention a few. Sugar CRM is a very good marketing platform which has aided my small business to grow exponentially. With the software, I am able to keep track of client data and track deals with ease. With the lead management feature, I am able to generate potential business clientele, acquire and manage potential clients up untill the point where a deal can be closed.

Cons:

From my time using the software I have found the software to be very slow when running through Sugar's own servers. The sheer number of options present on the dashboard can be perplexing, especially for users who might not have much expirience in CRM data models. Lastly, over the years the software has become a bit dated and this has forced me to move to other CRM software such as HubSpot.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

CRM for contact and deal management: Needs more feature

3.0 3 years ago

Comments: It was good contact and deal management tool. All the sales and marketing-related engagements were updated and it was acting as a source of truth to the whole team. Deal values and projection can be seen from the sales pipeline

Pros:

UI looks simple and training new users was easy. It is a great tool for contact and deal management with amazing filter options. Native integration to mail and document sharing software is good. Logic builder is one of the good features of Sugar. Resources are extremely useful and detailed explanations for each and every feature are provided there.

Cons:

Slow speed (in Inspite of fast internet) Hanging problems Do not have readily available APIs for 3rd party integrations

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Oil & Energy, 501–1,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

An Easy to use Basic CRM Tool

3.0 3 years ago

Pros:

It is comparatively inexpensive and provide all necessary basic functionalities

Cons:

GUI is basic, features are also quite basic.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Sugar was one of my first forays into the world of CRM and covers all the basics

3.0 7 years ago

Comments: I learned how to work a CRM. I kept track of all customer records, ranging from revenue and profit and order amount and contact list and order dates and essentially everything related to my job operationally as a purchasing coordinator. Definitely made my life easier.

Pros:

Very customizable to your needs. Straightforward, no nonsense UI. Easy to read and find things. Sugar is a perfect entry into CRMs that aren't salesforce, because its useful across all industries and departments. Its simple while being complex. You can create functions and layouts that are very specific to your needs, but without it cluttering and looking like there's a lot of information.

Cons:

Its not very pretty. Sort of looks like it was made in the early 200s and they just kept the look since. People are always talking about professionalism, and this definitely looks less polished than other CRMs. Because of this, some of the information can blend together and be difficult to find if there are long lists of things you are looking for.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Banking, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Base level reporting CRM

3.0 2 years ago

Pros:

Sugar CRM has interesting potentially especially for small companies that have low budget. It's a great pro having the possibility to host it in proprietary servers.

Cons:

Local host means having a slow CRM and also it's hard customizing reports and data visualization tool to track activities.

Gaurav
Senior Web Analyst in US
Food & Beverages, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Complete CRM Tool with Analytics Integration

3.0 5 years ago

Comments: I have been able to solve the business problem of tracking new prospects who eventually became customers, which channels drove that new customer acquisition and how much revenue those new customers generated. As well as, providing insights to my marketing team around which customers are planning to quit so they can try running some nurture campaigns to avoid losing those on-the-fence customers. In short, SugarSell helped improve both quantity and quality of customer leads at low cost.

Pros:

As an analyst, I use SugarSell to track new prospects who submit become a customer form to become customers of my food service company. The feature I find most productive is the ability of SugarSell software to assign a source of website, social, email, sales representative, campaign, etc. and track customer journey from acquisition to conversion. As well as, integrate with Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, so my marketing team can run both customer acquisition and customer retention or nurturing campaigns. As a result of this prospect tracking and seamless connection with Salesforce, targeting those prospects for customer acquisition and retention became more automated and efficient. Hence, both quantity and quality of those leads continued to grow year-over-year and resulted in higher sales for our business. In the nut shell, we got high long term value with low short term investment in a CRM software.

Cons:

I struggled with adding a new source of voice assistant, chatbot and mobile app to SugarSell CRM reporting tool. Because it needed additional development resources who could modify implementation code. The second source of challenge was not easily able to connect Google Analytics UTM campaigns tracking with SugarSell CRM leads tracking. So, it was difficult to correlate the two data sources to each other in a single table using a common key and build a marketing data lake. Similar concerns existed when trying to bring CRM data, campaigns data and invoice sales data from MicroStrategy into one warehouse. So, it will be nice if SugarSell added some big data enhancement capabilities to their tool.

Phil
Managing Partner in US
Real Estate, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Great at first but degrades over time

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

We could customize it in-house without paying a lot of outside consulting fees

Cons:

Storage space is an issue and your forced to buy more storage even when its Sugar's temp files building up.

Dominic
Systems Architect in US
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

A good open source CRM, but lacking modernization

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: It allowed us as a small business to track, bill, and market to our customers and potential customers.

Pros:

Of course you can't beat free when it comes to software. There are so many open-source applications out there that you can almost always find one that meets your needs in this day and age. SugarCRM has been around a long time and has become a mature CRM with all the basics you'd expect. It even handles customization fairly well. Dashboards are great for tracking the simply stuff and you can build your own as well.

Cons:

SugarCRM has now split into 2 tracks. There's a paid-for premium version that is typically hosted by SugarCRM. Then there's the Community Edition that's still open-source and free. For years they co-existed side-by-side perfectly fine, but a few years back, SugarCRM decided to stop updating the Community Edition. CE is eternally stuck on version 6.5. And then in April 2018, they've removed it entirely so now you're stuck with the Pro or Enterprise editions which are paid-for.

Ian
Ian
Vice President, Fishbowl Partner Nation in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer Software, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

This was always going to be a stepping stone for us

3.0 6 years ago

Comments: Implementation was rough, but most of that was on us. We should have hired a consultant and had rock solid best practices in place, but we didn't. Growth and support was a nightmare because we didn't employ a full timer with the right skill set to maintain it. Have since corrected those mistakes and moved to SalesForce. So much better!

Pros:

A big step up from our legacy CRM (ACT). With the right resources, it was manageable.

Cons:

We did not allocate the right resources and opted to implement the free community version. We paid for that dearly with disorganization and mistakes. We should have hired a consultant to help us.

Deepa
Deepa
Campaign Specialist in India
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Make more sales with SugarCRM

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

SugarCRM has a good support team, which makes it a reliable system that is easy to use and maintain. The process of adding leads, nurturing them is way easy. We can create segment anytime using the filters.

Cons:

I feel user interface can be improved. The UI look bit outdated. There is again possibility that the user experience could have been improved. The platform might be times when it is bit slow time to time.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

The new Sugar can go head to head and surpass the greats

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: As a marketer, I use Sugar to track how our leads and contacts interact with our marketing content, as we've integrated the CRM with Sugar Market, our marketing automation software.

Pros:

Customization - pretty much anything you want to achieve with CRM can be done with Sugar, regardless of company size or industry. Integrations - Sugar can be connected to a vast library of software with out-of-the-box and partner-built integrations.

Cons:

The admin panel can be improved from a UI/UX point of view. It's one of the areas where Sugar hasn't been updated in a while.

Alejandro
Alejandro
Networking Manager in Venezuela
Verified LinkedIn User
Telecommunications, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Have too much to config and set up, rgreat custom stuff but kinda plain and boring

3.0 7 years ago

Comments: if you need an online crm this can do good for you, Others are also less expensive but with less features.

Pros:

Is a very good software at least the on-demand version I use. as a CRM is very good but it also tries to be a help desk and it is not. very reliable and love to extract the raw data to excel and do whatever I want with the data

Cons:

Much complicated, too much to customize, and configurate, the access levels and roles are not easy to set up. takes times to deploy, and cost per seat, is kinda expensive.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Overall the product is good but fought with performance due to customizations.

3.0 7 years ago

Comments: Increased data capture on our sales interactions.e

Pros:

Web-based interface that is compatible with modern browsers, well-documented API, good user interface, a large number of integrations, good mobile applications.

Cons:

API is throttled too low for our ETL requirements, support, and overall experience-dependent upon third-party reseller quality. Customizations generally require programming and will cause continuous support issues as new releases will break customizations.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Real Estate, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

An easy way to have records of you clients info, sales and follows up.

5.0 6 years ago

Comments: When I was working in real state, keeping track of the future clients, the clients that already bought and the cancelled contracts it was hard and overwhelming until we started to use CRM at the office. I would say that yes, even there are pros and it needs a lot of time in training to be able to use it, it is worthy!

Pros:

It is a great app to follow track of all your clients, having all their contact information, the amount of sales, and being able to send massive advertisement emails to your customers.

Cons:

It needs an intensive training to be able to use it as some functions requieres knowledgments that are not easy to learn for new users. It an expensive software.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Very hard to learn and very disfunctional.

3.0 7 years ago

Comments: Client management and service case tracking. We also used the email service to mass email our client list.

Pros:

It gave us a one-stop place to store our client information and to track service cases. It offered custom reporting. Tabs are somewhat customizable.

Cons:

Very difficult to learn how to use. Reports are are very finicky and usually don't show all of the information they should, even when you KNOW the filters are correct.