We’ve done all the research so you can figure out if SugarCRM is right for your business.

Pros

Extensive customization features
Solid quote/proposal tools
Good data visualization features
Good organization features
Only one sales plan...

Cons

...Which means not much variation in offerings
No KPI tracking
Not too many security options
Not too many digital selling tools

At a glance: SugarCRM is a CRM system that provides marketing automation, sales tools, and a great customer service platform. The system is designed for larger businesses, although the company does offer a package catered to small businesses.

Mobile-friendly, cloud-based, and with great sales tools, this CRM system provides a streamlined experience for your business and customers.

SugarCRM splits its offerings into easily digestible categories, including Sugar Market, Sugar Sell, and Sugar Serve. Selling, marketing, and customer service are the most important things a CRM system can help you with.

SugarCRM is a software as a service (SaaS) platform. It was previously open source, but in 2018 the SugarCRM team ended the open source project, and the corresponding Sugar Community Edition Project.

What Are SugarCRM’s Features and Benefits?

✓ Omnichannel Communications to Deal with Customers Efficiently

SugarCRM makes it easy to provide great customer service with its Sugar Serve solutions. Customer interactions can be streamlined so you can deal with enquiries and problems quickly and efficiently. Your customer service team will have one location from which to contact customers, whether it’s via chat, email, portal, or voice.

All communication and conversations with customers are recorded in one place, and can be accessed easily by your customer service team. This means customers won’t need to repeat themselves to several people or constantly be rerouted, giving them a much smoother customer experience.

Here are some of the features of Sugar Serve:

Service Console – this tool gives your customer service team the ability to find information quickly, and resolve cases more efficiently
Automatically manage and calculate your current processes against service level agreements (SLAs). This includes multi-region teams taking their relevant hours into account
Case routing means every customer is attended to with a rules-based method to route inbound calls and cases

✓ Marketing Automation to Build Effective Campaigns

Sugar Market is SugarCRM’s marketing automation solution. You can use its in-built scoring models to score leads, or build your own model in accordance with your needs. You can set up models to assign points for activities such as clicking a link, opening an email, or visiting a certain page on your website.

You can easily create marketing campaigns using drag-and-drop tools, or a code-your-own option. This gives you lots of flexibility around emails, campaigns, and your business messaging.

You can also plan campaigns in advance, and set up communication to be sent automatically based on certain triggers that you choose. You can keep on top of what’s going on using an integrated marketing calendar, where you’ll be able to take a look at your team’s email campaigns.

Did you know that the success of your emails landing in the right inbox comes down to your reputation? Sender reputation determines whether or not your emails are marked as spam. Much of your reputation is down to data management and sending practices.

Sugar Market provides spam diagnostics and evaluation to help deal with problems like inbox placement and high email bounce rates.

Another one of Sugar Market’s most useful features is that you can build custom landing pages to suit your business needs. These can be created in minutes, no experience required. The drag-and-drop tools mean you can spend more time ensuring the pages are created with your business as the focus, without needing to worry about complex code.

Sugar Market is SugarCRM’s most expensive package, with prices starting at $1,000 per month.

✓ AI Technology to Streamline Business Processes

SugarPredict is SugarCRM’s resident AI technology, which can provide accurate forecasts to streamline your business. With these predictive analytics, you can save time and resources, make more informed business decisions, manage risk and identity, and respond to opportunities much quicker.

SugarPredict can make predictions even with a limited amount of data. This tech uses external data, including companies and contacts, and feeds its findings into Sugar Market, SugarLive, and Sugar Sell. Often, your data won’t cover what Sugar Predict can find and analyze, so this tech means you’ll be able to make more informed and confident decisions for your business.

Using natural language processing (NLP) and automated machine learning (AutoML) across the Sugar platforms, SugarPredict can:

Predict the interest of a lead and the probability of it converting
Identify customers likely to leave, and provide options to strategically engage with them
Suggest add-on purchases during the right stage of the customer journey
Enhance customer engagement models through anticipative case routing and contextual data, providing a streamlined approach for your customer service team

Knowing which leads you should prioritize gives your business an edge and empowers your sales team to make more accurate decisions, boosting sales productivity. With SugarPredict, you can feel confident planning for the future and making decisions in line with the data the AI provides.

How Much Does SugarCRM Cost?

SugarCRM prices are only available in USD.

Package	Price (per month)	What you’ll get
Sugar Market	From $1,000 per 10k contacts	Includes: Unlimited users Unlimited emails and landing pages Phone support Four Support-authorized contacts
Sugar Sell	From $80/user	Includes: Two sandbox instances 60 GB storage Phone support Custom objects, tasks, dashboards, and forms Four Support-authorized contacts Lead scoring
Sugar Serve	From $80/user	Includes: Two sandbox instances 60 GB storage Phone support Four Support-authorized contacts
Sugar Enterprise	From $85/user	Includes: Advanced workflow with SugarBPM SQL-based reporting Accelerated support SLAs Support via phone and SugarCRM Support Portal Four Support-authorized contacts
Sugar Professional	From $52/user	Includes: Standard support SLAs Support via SugarCRM Support Portal Two Support-authorized contacts

Each plan, except Sugar Market, requires a minimum of three users and is billed annually. The annual billing can be quite pricey and a drawback if you’d rather have the flexibility of a month-to-month subscription.

This marketing package has many great features that make it easy to create and run marketing campaigns; but the price point puts it a little out of reach for small businesses, or those with a limited budget.

The Sugar Professional tier is specifically for small businesses, and is a more affordable option. SugarCRM doesn’t offer a free version of its CRM system, but there is a seven-day free trial for Sugar Sell. For its other packages, you can access a live demo so you can play around with the system.

The great thing about SugarCRM is its lack of hidden fees or costs, which means you can make a clear, informed decision for your business.

Is SugarCRM Right for My Business?

“I Run a Small Business on a Limited Budget”

SugarCRM offers Sugar Professional, a CRM solution specifically catered towards small businesses. Pricing starts at $52 per user, per month, though this package is billed annually, which can be limiting for some. You won’t be able to cancel if the system isn’t right for you, and so you will have to make a significant investment.

Sugar Professional includes sales and marketing automation, as well as customer service tools. With no hidden or add-on costs, you can be confident that you won’t be hit with any unexpected fees.

Despite the attractively packaged Sugar Professional being geared towards small businesses, the SugarCRM platform itself has a fairly complicated integration process. The system is clearly designed for larger enterprises with dedicated tech and development teams.

Your small business can still utilize this system if you have a tech-savvy team that’s willing to learn. There may be some kinks in the implementation process, but with SugarCRM’s 24/7 support you will have some help at hand. Sugar University, SugarCRM’s training and certification platform, is full of high quality courses to help you use this system with ease.

That said, the system is not very user-friendly and, without a dedicated team, it may be difficult to implement. As a small business, you may need to invest in training, implementation, and customization.

SugarCRM is extremely customizable, which is great as you can tweak it to your business’s exact needs. However, to integrate apps and make these customizations, you’ll need to work with the API. For small businesses without a tech team this can be difficult.

Although Sugar Professional is a dedicated solution for small businesses, it’s no simpler to implement or more user-friendly than SugarCRM’s other packages, so it may not be the best option for small businesses with limited resources.

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What Do SugarCRM’s Customer Reviews Say?

We’ve trawled the internet to find out what real SugarCRM customers have to say about this platform.

Have a read below:

“SugarCRM has really helped us to maximize our sales and marketing efforts. All our info regarding sales opportunities, accounts, contacts, leads, etc. are under one platform allowing us to get visibility into our sales efforts and pipeline. Also, automating most of the tasks by setting up workflows helps a lot in saving time and making the process efficient. It is very easy to use and very affordable and also well suited for most businesses. It covers most of the important functionalities required in any CRM, like workflow automation, analytics, leads and contacts management, etc. Overall it is a very robust and scalable CRM in the market for small to midsize businesses.”

Aastha Nasa, Sugar Sell customer

“Sugar is the main program for our company. It’s used across the whole organization. At the moment we’ve had small issues, such as sometimes it would get stuck, or at times certain information was not available on the right hand side at the time of putting notes on a case.

“Sugar allows us to keep records of the clients that the company has, such as new inbounds that are coming in hot, or clients that you have to follow up with. These last couple of updates that the system has made have been really helpful. Especially being able to link a phone system to the system and be able to dial out quicker.

“The support overall at least for us has been phenomenal. Anytime that the system has any issues at all, IT gets in contact with someone from support to get the system back up and running. Have never gone more than 30 minutes with the system not working. So overall I will definitely recommend this system to any other company that I may work for in the future.”

Sebastian Cuadras, Sugar Sell customer

“We reduced our marketing costs without losing any features our previous software had. However, we now spend more time organizing webinars, as that module is deprecated and too complex to use.

“Unlike other marketing automation software, Sugar Market has a single pricing plan at a competitive cost. Its CRM integration is also more streamlined than other competitors.

“Some areas haven’t been improved upon in a while (such as webinar management) and can be overwhelming for less technical marketers. UX can also use some improvement even in areas where the UI has been updated.”

Anonymous, Sugar Market customer

“My overall experience using Sugar Serve is satisfactory. This CRM is very effective and easy to use. I can see all my accounts and contacts in one place with a different view. I can see the prospect journey very easily and finding out any details in it is a piece of cake. I can upload the bulk data in just a few clicks, and the best part is I can customize the fields according to my need as well. I like the reports and dashboard as well as they are very easy to use and have a lot of information. So my overall experience is good.

“The thing that I like about it the most is the amazing support team, this what I think is the best part and an important part for anyone. The support team is very helpful and always ready to help.”

Anonymous, Sugar Serve customer

How Did We Find the Best CRM Software?

Our team of independent researchers looked at a selection of the best and most popular CRM software. After finding all the information we need, the researchers then compare each software against its competitors, allowing us to find the cream of the crop. The criteria we look at include:

Price: Simple enough – the platform with the lowest price tag scores the best
Customization: What does the platform allow you to toy with in order to make it suit your business?
Features: Again, fairly easy to assess. Whichever platforms offer the best variety of features are given a better placement than those that have a more skint collection of tools.
Team Infrastructure: How does the platform allow you to manage large sales teams?
Customer Support: Again, easy enough – look at the options available and see what each platform offers its customers when it comes to their support resources
Scalability: How much does each software allow your business to grow over time?

After factoring in all this information, alongside the scores they received, we were able to calculate a final overall score for each CRM platform.

Verdict

SugarCRM boasts several functions and benefits that make it a great CRM choice. But the system isn’t the most user-friendly on the market, so it’s best suited to larger businesses that have in-house tech teams, as this will make it easier to implement.

SugarCRM’s marketing, sales, and customer service tools provide comprehensive solutions for your business. The packages are great for scaling your business, as you can pay for the platforms you need as your business grows.

Plus, the ability to extensively tailor the system makes it a great choice for large or unique businesses who need this level of customization.

The lack of a free version can be problematic if you’re running a startup or small business, as it can be a big investment to commit to a CRM system. You might find the seven-day trial fairly limiting as it’s a short period, and the system might be difficult to implement.

For your small business, SugarCRM may not be the best option. However, if you have experience with implementing similar software, or your team has good tech experience, you’ll be able to manage the implementation of this system.

We’ve given you our expert verdict on SugarCRM and its offerings. You can now make an informed decision on whether or not this is the right system for your business.

If you’re still not convinced, you can use our free comparison tool to match you with suppliers customized to your exact requirements.

You simply give us brief details such as your team size, what you need a CRM system for and what system you’re currently using. We then do all the work for you, and match you up with trusted CRM system providers that can cater to your needs. They’ll then be in touch with tailored, no-obligation quotes for you to compare.

Our tool is completely free and is the easiest and quickest way for you to compare the right CRM systems for you.

What Other CRM Systems Could I Consider?

Still not decided? Check out our other in-depth CRM reviews to compare other prominent Canadian CRM systems.

Zoho CRM	Read review
Salesforce	Read review
Freshworks	Read review

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SugarCRM: Reviews & Pricing