SugarCRM vs Salesforce: Price, Features & What’s Best

In comparing SugarCRM vs Salesforce, both offer customer relationship management (CRM) tools that provide advanced functionality around partner management and workflow automation. However, because of its advanced reporting and higher introductory pricing, SugarCRM is the better choice for larger businesses while Salesforce is better for businesses wanting an affordable and scalable, long-term solution.

When to Use Salesforce

Salesforce is the best choice for businesses that only want access to the features they will use. The platform offers a range of meaningful tools like account and pipeline management, collaborative forecasting, lead scoring, user-based permissions, and team management. It also offers an affordable entry-level price point for growing sales teams.

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When to Use SugarCRM

SugarCRM is better for businesses that want an on-premise CRM solution with enterprise-level features. The platform is feature-rich and offers advanced structured query language (SQL) reporting and integration with Microsoft Active Directory services, in addition to basics like contact and pipeline management. Plus, pricing starts at $40 per user, per month, with a minimum requirement of 10 users.

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SugarCRM vs Salesforce at a Glance

How We Evaluated Salesforce vs SugarCRM

SugarCRM and Salesforce are software tools that provide businesses with robust lead and contact management, process controls, and visibility into the activities driving sales. This makes them both highly desired by teams in need of more advanced customer relationship management functionality than found in the average small business CRM.

Therefore, we evaluated SugarCRM vs Salesforce based on the following criteria:

• Price: We compared the price ranges and affordability of both CRMs, including a comparison of features.
• Ease of use: We analyzed user reviews to determine how intuitively each CRM tool is laid out, enabling ease of use.
• Customization: We looked at how well each tool can be customized to reflect the unique sales processes of individual small businesses.
• Contact management: We examined how well each platform facilitates lead and opportunity management.
• Privacy: We also examined encryption protocols and the ability of each tool to facilitate privacy compliance.
• Reporting: We compared each CRM’s capabilities around reporting and analytics.
• Workflow automation: We evaluated whether each CRM offers automation features and how many workflows are included with each plan.
• Customer support: We considered options for customer support post-sale, such as online resources as well as chat, email, and telephone accessibility.

We chose Salesforce as the best CRM for small businesses due to its comprehensive functionality, affordability, simple installation, and comparative ease of use. Businesses that want enterprise-level functionality, such as relationship intelligence or access to a software development kit (SDK), may find that SugarCRM offers a better fit.

SugarCRM vs Salesforce: Pricing & Features

In comparing Salesforce vs SugarCRM, we compared each provider’s plans and the features included at each price point. SugarCRM’s high introductory price reflects a feature-set that is well-suited for larger businesses. Salesforce, by contrast, offers features that are more likely to be useful to smaller businesses, as well as more cost-friendly entry-level pricing. However, teams looking for an on-premise solution may appreciate SugarCRM’s flexible hosting model.

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce offers an introductory plan that includes email integration, customizable reports, and essentials like account and deal management for just $25 per user, per month. Two additional plans build on this base plan with more advanced features like workflow rules and range from $75 to $150 per user, per month.

Salesforce Tiered Features

Essential

The Essentials plan from Salesforce is $25 per user, per month, and offers up to 25 users full access to account, contact, lead, and opportunity management tools. This includes customizable deal stages and reports. The system mirrors internal processes, enabling small business sales teams to work with familiar information fields.

With email integration for Gmail and Outlook and native mobile apps for Android and iOS, Salesforce Essentials beats every one of the plans from SugarCRM, which offers integration with Google email services as an add-on service only. That is why Salesforce Essentials is our recommendation for sales teams with fewer than 25 users and who are using Gmail.

Salesforce user dashboard

Professional

Salesforce’s Professional plan is $75 and introduces collaborative forecasting, price books, product lists, quotes, and territory management. Compared to the $65 plan from SugarCRM, it packs many of the same features and, for just $10 more, offers some comparatively unique attributes like lead scoring and deal registration.

With rules-based lead scoring and opportunity registration, two capabilities that SugarCRM lacks entirely, teams can prioritize leads by their potential value to the company and recognize partners who drive sales. This makes it our choice for businesses that want more automated structure around lead management and for those seeking to award channel partner engagement.

Salesforce lead management

Enterprise

The Enterprise plan from Salesforce adds automated approvals and workflows as well as a web services application programming interface (API). Sales teams are also included, permitting administrators to split accounts, leads, or forecast views by team. It also carries with it a monthly per-user price of $150.

Salesforce also offers an Unlimited plan with restriction-free workflow and approval automation rules. Businesses desiring such utility can have it, plus 24-hour support and configuration services, for $300 per user, per month.

SugarCRM Pricing

SugarCRM offers three plans. The entry-level option is $40 per user, per month, and includes product lists and significant file storage in addition to account, contact, and opportunity management. Its other plans range from $65 to $150 per user, per month, and build on this functionality with tools like workflows and product-level forecasting.

SugarCRM Tiered Features

Sugar Professional

The Professional package from SugarCRM is $40 per user, per month, and includes core functionality such as account, contact, deal, opportunity, and task management. Despite being slightly more expensive than the introductory plan from Salesforce, it includes a few features its competitor offers as upgrades like quote management, products, price books, and forecasting.

Sugar Professional includes team management and a mobile SDK. For this reason, we recommend Sugar Professional for teams wanting a comprehensive, affordable CRM plan with the flexibility to develop proprietary mobile apps.

SugarCRM quote management

Sugar Enterprise

For $65 per user, per month, Sugar Enterprise introduces multilevel approvals and automated workflows. Not only does this make administrative tasks like lead routing simpler and faster, but it also prevents important tasks from falling through the cracks.

Unlike Salesforce’s middle tier, none of the packages from SugarCRM offer rule-based scoring of leads, nor does it offer deal registration. However, Sugar Enterprise does offer the ability to configure role-based views, just like Salesforce’s middle tier. That’s why it’s a good choice for teams that do not need built-in prioritization of leads and for businesses transacting only direct sales.

Sugar Ultimate

The Ultimate plan is SugarCRM’s most inclusive with 250GB of free cloud storage and a total of five cloud-hosted sandboxes at a monthly price of $150 per user, much more than 20MB of per-user storage offered with Salesforce’s Enterprise plan. This can equip teams with the bandwidth for sharing and testing new resources and ideas.

This package builds on a long list of features built-into every SugarCRM plan, such as campaign dashboards, a campaign wizard, pipeline management, case management, and automatic case creation from inbound emails. That’s why we recommend Sugar Ultimate for large and small businesses that are committed to using a large CRM platform for marketing, sales, and service activities.

SugarCRM file storage

SugarCRM vs Salesforce: Ease of Use

SugarCRM and Salesforce offer customer experiences similar to those of other high-powered platforms according to CRM software reviews. Both tools boast feature-heavy user interfaces that may require new user training and, in terms of ease of use, neither is a clear winner.

Salesforce Ease of Use

Salesforce is a large, powerful platform with a web layout that can be overwhelming to new users. Although it can require end-user training upon initial setup to speed adoption, users tend to become more comfortable with the system and even the introduction of new features over time.

SugarCRM Ease of Use

Like Salesforce, SugarCRM is a large platform. However, because there are so many built-in features, its users may benefit most from an initial training and ongoing training as well. However, small businesses may find that these implementation challenges do not merit the additional costs, such as the costs of hiring administrators and trainers.

SugarCRM vs Salesforce: Customer Service

In our comparison of SugarCRM vs Salesforce, we reviewed each of their customer service options as well as how well each makes supplementary resources readily available. Neither platform has a distinct edge. Both offer self-service portals with web resources, including the ability to open new email support tickets, and both charge additional fees for access to telephone support.

Salesforce Customer Service

Salesforce provides users with multiple resources to supplement their post-purchase experience. Product information and release notes, as well as an entirely separate knowledge base with previously answered user questions, are available directly from the Salesforce homepage. Customers can also log into their accounts to access the email ticketing system to engage a technical support representative.

SugarCRM Customer Service

In addition to email support and a paid option for telephone assistance, SugarCRM’s self-service portal is available to users of all three plans. With online documentation, a knowledge base, a community forum, webinars, and self-paced learning, SugarCRM customers are furnished with multiple avenues for obtaining assistance.

SugarCRM vs Salesforce: Customer Reviews

Customer reviews provide insight into the post-implementation experience. To find out what it’s like to use SugarCRM and Salesforce, we researched and compared reviews from users of both products.

Salesforce Customer Reviews

Some say the tool can be difficult to navigate, but most of our readers rate Salesforce highly, especially for customization, integration with other tools, and reporting capabilities.

SugarCRM Customer Reviews

SugarCRM users say the tool can help manage lead and contact records, but that search and reporting functions do not always work smoothly. Some also report issues with obtaining problem resolution through customer service.

Bottom Line

Salesforce and SugarCRM are CRM tools that empower sales teams with tools to manage customer activities. Both have features that support customization and automated workflows. SugarCRM is designed for large enterprises that want the ability to leverage relationship intelligence to drive analytics and process improvement. Salesforce, however, is the better choice for most small businesses.

Salesforce offers comprehensive functionality that is flexible and affordable enough to meet the needs of businesses without overwhelming them. Learn more about Salesforce by visiting the website or start your free trial today.

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