Free and Open Source tool #14: SugarCRM
March 27th, 2008 | Published in Open Source | 2 Comments
Since I’ve been covering CRMs for the webinar today, I figured I’d switch categories on my free and open source software list. So for the next few tools, I’ll be describing CRMs (Constituent/Contact/Community/Customer Relationship Management). The first one is one that I’ve been using recently for my consulting business - SugarCRM.
Unlike CiviCRM, which is targeted to nonprofits, SugarCRM is a system targeted toward sales in for-profit companies. It has three versions: Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition. That’s the one I’ve been using. They also have a newer on-demand version (that is, software as a service, like salesforce.)
I’ve been hearing good things about SugarCRM from organizations that use it. It also gets kudos from NTEN’s satisfaction survey (it came in third, after CiviCRM and Salesforce.)
Anyway, SugarCRM is basically “enterprise class” CRM, and is worth a look.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:47 pm (#)
Michelle -
Is there an online community of NP SugarCRM users that you know of? Just came across a deal-breaking feature-not-yet-implemented in CiviCRM and I’m wondering if it’s easily implemented in Sugar (long-term pledges to a capital campaign).
April 20th, 2008 at 5:54 pm (#)
I actually don’t know of a particular community of NP tech SugarCRM folks. But, I’d send the query to both the nptech-related groups (like nten-discuss and nosi-discussion) as well as the Sugar folks - you might get some answers.
In general, because Sugar’s metaphor is sales, any nonprofit-focused feature is something that will require adjustments to your thinking and process. (Like “accounts” in Sugar CRM are “organizations.”)