Salesforce.com versus SugarCRM for a growing business
Do you get what you pay for?
Does trying to save cash really cost you more and slow you down getting to where you want to go?
This is a decision between the SugarCRM open-source self-supported solution and costly Salesforce.com with its professional support to make you effective quickly.
Is it a Cost-Of-Ownership issue?
With Salesforce.com you pay the fees and it works with great eager assistance to ensure success. With SugarCRM you need to invest in getting to understand the system technically to support it internally for your business (if you’re a technical business).
I was always a person to hire the professionals to do what they do best and for me to focus on what I do best. But I dont want to decide on Salesforce.com and find I’m overpaying.
So, the question is to those who have installed and are using SugarCRM open-source installed on your own servers….
What is the time investment required on-going to ensure you have a working SugarCRM system for your business and does this compare to what Salesforce.com charge at E70 per user per month??
Any thoughts and experiences?


Well, the truth is each type of delivery method, on demand or on-premise open source; caters to a different segment of the market. To utilize open source your company must have savvy IT staff to implement and manage the open source system. Hardware is required. With Salesforce or any other on demand crm such as salesnet, netsuite, salesboom.com, and entellium and Sugar themselves(hosted) you outsource the IT to the provider.
In many case it can be cheaper to run open source CRM, but with the average customer in the on demand crm market with less than 20 seats; open source is not so appealing, and can actually cost more.
But even if one costs more or less than the other, what really matters is what to expect from a CRM system, and many companies will have better success with on demand than open source, and vice versaWell, the truth is each type of delivery method, on demand or on-premise open source; caters to a different segment of the market. To utilize open source your company must have savvy IT staff to implement and manage the open source system. Hardware is required. With Salesforce or any other on demand crm such as salesnet, netsuite, salesboom.com, and entellium and Sugar themselves (hosted) you outsource the IT to the provider.
In many case it can be cheaper to run open source CRM, but with the average customer in the on demand crm market with less than 20 seats; open source is not so appealing, and can actually cost more.
But even if one costs more or less than the other, what really matters is what to expect from a CRM system, and many companies will have better success with on demand than open source, and vice versa.
Well, the truth is each type of delivery method, on demand or on-premise open source; caters to a different segment of the market. To utilize open source your company must have savvy IT staff to implement and manage the open source system. Hardware is required. With Salesforce or any other on demand crm such as salesnet, netsuite, salesboom.com, and entellium and Sugar themselves (hosted) you outsource the IT to the provider.
In many cases it can be cheaper to run open source CRM, but with the average customer in the on demand crm market with less than 20 seats; open source is not so appealing, and can actually cost more.
But even if one costs more or less than the other, what really matters is what to expect from a CRM system, and many companies will have better success with on demand than open source, and vice versa.
You can have the best of both worlds by utilising Blacknight.ie’s hosting service for SugarCRM. Its about ?¢‚Äö¬¨100 a year I believe for an unlimited number of users.
thanks Joe, I must check out blacknight’s offering
Gents, as you mentioned our Sugar CRM hosting I thought I should clarify the costs. Our Sugar CRM hosting cost ?¢‚Äö¬¨42.99 per annum. Please see:
http://blacknight.ie/sugarcrmhosting.0.html
Does Blacknight also offer SugarCRM user and developer support?
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