Sugar CRM, How Sweet it is!

CRM solutions have been broadly recognized and widely implemented as part of any sales-focused organization’s sales and marketing strategy. These days, leveraging a CRM solution as a touch-point between sales, marketing and customer service is 21st century marketing 101. The challenge for small businesses or even medium-sized businesses working with ever-tighter budgets is that a CRM initiative can equal a significant increase to their operating overhead.

Enterprise-level solutions like SalesForce.com have recognized that they must tier their product, but even the lowest tiers can cost hundreds of dollars per employee, per month. Wouldn’t it be great to start off with a CRM solution whose tiers go all the way down to FREE? Meet SugarCRM.

SugarCRM simplifies implementation and adoption by cutting out everything but the tools you really need to develop a marketing engine that streamlines the sales process and quality customer support that keeps lost customer rates to a slow drip.

Sugar’s bottom tier (called SugarCRM Community Edition) is 100% free. You simply download a ZIP file and install it on your web server. If ever you find you outgrow the Community Edition, you can upgrade to one of their other tiers—which are a less expensive than a comparable Salesforce CRM tier.

Learn how to install Sugar Community Edition in this support article from our friends at jHost.

SugarCRM is used by big names like Coca-Cola, Men’s Wearhouse, GoDaddy and thousands of small companies all over the U.S.. Indeed, even JDM uses a customized version we call “SugarJDM”.

If budgets are tight or the time-frame for rolling out a CRM was yesterday, we highly recommend looking into SugarCRM, but don’t let the technical stuff bog you down. That’s something JDM can handle.

A little confused about the paid versus the the free version of Sugar CRM? Download this edition comparison chart.  It covers both the features included in each as well as pricing (as of 10/27/14).