#opensource software CRM comparison

[salesagility-blog]

Comparing CRM Software - Would you use SuiteCRM if compared to Salesforce?

With so many options available, choosing the right CRM application for your business can be a tricky decision. With multiple options available it’s easy to get confused. With such a business critical decision, it is important to get it right and not simply make a panic decision or to simply choose the brand you recognise. The bigger the brand the better? Well, that is not always the case.

CRM can be split into two main camps, paid / proprietary solutions or free and open source solutions. There are many advantages and disadvantages to both and therefore it is imperative  to do your research and look at what alternatives are available. On most occasions  you will find an alternative with a wider range of features at a lower cost if you take time to review and research.

Here I will compare and outline  the differences between Salesforce which is largest proprietary CRM application and SuiteCRM which is an award winning open source application.

What is SuiteCRM

SuiteCRM was created when SugarCRM turned their back on their community edition in 2013. SuiteCRM is viewed as an updated and  supercharged version of SugarCRM CE. It is written, supported and extended by SalesAgility. Although a  relatively new comer to the CRM marketplace, it is developing and growing at a great pace and has already won several awards. It has all the functionalities of the mainstream proprietary products such as Salesforce, SAP and Microsoft Dynamic. It is free to download and use, it can be modified and distributed freely. It  can be operational in your business at a fraction of the cost of a proprietary CRM.

What is Salesforce

Salesforce was created in 1999 with an intention to remodel CRM applications. It is one of the original advocates of cloud computing which means that the application is only accessible online. Being online it means there is no need for any particular software or hardware to run the application. It allows you to access or work from any internet device such as a tablet, laptop or smartphone.

Here are just some of the fundamental differences and similarities between both solutions.

Hosting Solutions

Salesforce provides a fully hosted cloud solution. It is the largest CRM solution provider, which means it has a very robust and refined cloud / SAAS offering. Cloud solutions allow employees to access their CRM from any internet ready application, it also updates the centralised database and CRM application simultaneously. It ensures that all maintenance related issues and updates are managed by the provider. There are no locally hosted versions of Salesforce available.

In contrast, SuiteCRM offers 3 hosted solutions for its users. SuiteCRM can be deployed locally on your own server, giving you the flexibility and comfort to know that everything is kept in-house. You can from there create a gateway which would allow you to access the CRM remotely or keep it to your internal network only. You can also choose your own cloud or server provider in order to deploy SuiteCRM. It gives you the flexibility to chose a server which reflects the usage, number of users and data storage required. This will can be accessed remotely through any internet ready device.

Finally, SuiteCRM also offer a SAAS solution where SuiteCRM is will deployed and hosed in the cloud for you on the SuiteCRM servers exactly like Salesforce.. This is fully supported and it offers telephone support this products. However there are cost associated with this cloud based hosting solution, there are no costs for the CRM.

Integration

Salesforce are a veteran of the CRM marketplace, and as such it benefits from a large number of integrations some of which which are written by their own developers and ��from third party software providers. Integrations allow your Salesforce CRM to speak to any third party application which has a CRM integration facility available.

SuiteCRM on the other hand has only been around for a few years and although there are a variety of integration made available naturally it has a much lower number available than Saleforce. However because of SuiteCRM's open source nature, the code can be easily accessed and a bespoke integration can be written by any software or PHP developer to work with any third party application. Developing your own custom code may be more expensive than an off the shelf integration however it will be bespoke to your business.

Flexibility

Both systems allow you to add and create your own dashboard to enable you to customise the application to best suits your needs. Both are relatively simply to administer and you can define your own reports depending on what you wish to analyse.  However as SuiteCRM is open source this makes it extremely flexible to the user as the source code can be altered to fit your needs. Both systems are very flexible and can be accessed from a number of locations and through a number of devices. However as Salesforce is only available as a SAAS solution, when compared to  SuiteCRM it would be considered to be less flexible.

Features and Functionality.

Both CRM applications are feature rich and have extensive functionality. As you would expect for such a premium cost product, Salesforce has more features and functionality than SuiteCRM. However if you review the standard functionality and core features both applications are the same. Both manage customer relationships and has functions available for marketing, finance, admin, customer service, issue management etc.

SuiteCRM makes all its feature and functionality available from the onset unlike Salesforce who give you limited functionality depending on what  price structure you take.

Scalability

Both applications have the flexibility of allowing businesses to scale up and down depending on the business requirements and the number of users.

Both applications are used by a wide spectrum of businesses. Both applications provide solutions relevant for small businesses as well as larger enterprises. However for Salesforce, the number of users who use the system will have a direct impact on the how much money the system will cost you on an ongoing monthly basis. Also as your requirements and needs increase  you also have to upgrade your package and your monthly commitment to include additional functionality.

License

Both CRM applications operate under different licenses. Salesforce operates under a commercial subscriptions license where as in contrast SuiteCRM operates under an open source GPL 3 license. The fundamental difference is one is a restrictive and paid for license and the other is a dynamic free license. It is best illustrated using the following example

The cost of 10 users on a professional edition for one year is £7,200 with Salesforce but is totally free with SuiteCRM. The cost for 50 users on an enterprise version would be £72,000 per year where as the enterprise ready version of SuiteCRM would still remain free.

Open source software and developers are part of an open source community that help innovate on publicly available code. This means that other open source projects often collaborate and help each others projects by adding code, bug fixes or extensions. This approach  makes open source software something which is hugely flexible and ever evolving.

Company ethos

Both companies strive to deliver the best solutions for their customer and put innovation and development as their key objectives, however the similarities on company ethos stop there. Salesforce has been designed from top to tail to make as much money as possible and is very successful at it as they are currently the most dominant player in cloud computing and SAAS and is self valued at $50 billion dollars.

Their CEO Marc Benioff owns a whopping 3 billion dollars of Salesforce shares and has recently frozen his salary at $1.55 million due to complaints from investors when they discovered his huge compensation package. By comparison SuiteCRM's “worth” is minuscule when compared SalesAgility who are the authors of SuiteCRM is an award winning Employee Owned Business which also puts its employees at the centre of it development strategy.

So from at a glance it would appear that Salesforce would be the obvious choice, however if you take some time to “have a look under the hood” then you might be surprised at what the natural choice would be

If you would like to discuss your CRM requirements or to find out more information on how SuiteCRM can transform your business please contact me on 01786 585 499 or by email amelia.campbell@salesagility.com