SugarCRM vs Salesforce Compared 2023: Is SugarCRM or Salesforce Best?

It is time to finally compare two popular open-source CRM systems: SugarCRM against the mighty Salesforce.com. Which CRM is better? Which one is more affordable? What tools and features are superior in either Salesforce CRM or SugarCRM? Let’s find out.

What is the difference between Salesforce and SugarCRM?

The ultimate difference between SugarCRM and Salesforce.com often comes down to one perception: Salesforce CRM is better for large enterprises thanks to its sophisticated sales force automations, while SugarCRM is a good startup and small business platform.  

However, this might no longer be the case, as the rest of this article will explain. If you’d like to dig deeper into the features, pros, and cons of both tools, make sure to check out our Salesforce review, as well as our SugarCRM review.

SugarCRM vs Salesforce CRM comparison chart

Here’s a basic overview table for SugarCRM vs Salesforce:

Salesforce vs SugarCRM: Pricing

With both of these sales and CRM software solutions, pricing is not perfectly simple, but can range depending on the tools and package of your subscription. Salesforce has different prices for each department, with Salesforce Sales Cloud Essentials beginning at $25 per user per month billed annually, and the professional edition is $75 per user per month billed annually. The Salesforce Service Cloud also starts at $25 per user per month billed annually, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement starts at about $1,250 per month billed annually.

SugarCRM pricing also splits up its prices by each module. Sugar Market begins at $1,000 per month billed annually, Sugar Sell starts at $49 per user per month billed annually, and Sugar Serve is $80 per user per month billed annually. Sugar Enterprise edition is the total on-premise Sugar CRM solution and starts at $85 per user per month billed annually, and gets you access to Sugar’s API. 

Winner: Tie

Both of these customer relationship management platforms have plenty of pricing options for you to consider, and therefore it is difficult to truly say one is better than the other in this category.

Salesforce vs SugarCRM: Customer support

SugarCRM offers its customers the option to subscribe to various tiers of customer support packages (in some cases they are formerly called Sugar Ultimate but not really anymore). For example, the standard support is 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, while enhanced support is also 12/5 but with live chat support and phone queuing priority. The best support is globally 24/7, you get priority case routing and a dedicated senior support team.

Salesforce customer service also gives you choices. The standard support included in all plans is mostly self-service, and you can submit support issues online. Paid support plans include 24/7 support through online submissions and telephone service, coaching and account management.

Winner: SugarCRM

With SugarCRM, you get slightly better customer service included as part of the standard package with whatever plan you subscribe to, and therefore, we say that SugarCRM has the better customer support.

Salesforce vs SugarCRM: Knowledge base & learning

Salesforce offers all of its users access to a variety of self service options. They are called the Salesforce Success Center, and include Trailhead, Trailblazer Community, and other customer success events. The Success Center has many FAQs, guides, tutorials and other useful resources.

SugarCRM has something they call the Sugar Club for their users. This also acts as a sort of knowledge base full of information and tutorials. You can communicate with other Sugar subscribers to exchange questions and tips, and even participate in Q&As with product developers. 

Winner: Salesforce

After spending a good deal of time with both of these knowledge base and other self service features for both SugarCRM and Salesforce, it has been determined that it is easier and more efficient to find the answers you are looking for with the Salesforce system, though this is not to say that Sugar’s learning tools are ineffective, because they are.

Salesforce vs SugarCRM: Ease of use

When it comes to being user friendly, it is obvious that the people behind both SugarCRM and Salesforce have taken this factor very seriously when designing their platform and various tools. However, it is simply not possible that every single feature can be instantaneously learned and easy as pie to use. The more tools, and the more advanced they become, it is natural for the ease of use factor to slide.

That being said, here is a quick rundown of the ease of use rating. SugarCRM will definitely appear simpler when you first get started, and as you go on, the level of difficulty can be hard to remark. Salesforce, on the other hand, might seem like it requires a bit more effort to learn and master, but once you do, you could find yourself feeling like a natural pro once you get to the more advanced stuff.

Winner: Tie

We know ties can be frustrating when all you want are straight answers. However, it is just not possible to give the number spot for user friendliness to either SugarCRM or Salesforce, as both are relatively easy, but will also have their difficult moments. It all depends on the user.

SugarCRM vs Salesforce.com features & functionality

Now that the broad strokes are out of the way, it is time to turn to the specific tools of each system and see who does better in each category.

Marketing features

Marketing is often considered the first step in the three-part system of: marketing, sales and support. Both SugarCRM’s Sugar Market and Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud offer many of the basic tools, including marketing automation workflows, email marketing, templates, audience segmentation, and analytics on marketing campaigns.

Winner: SugarCRM

SugarCRM’s marketing campaign builder is really easy and fun to use, and you can create amazing email marketing ads or other marketing templates. There is good multi-channel marketing automation, and solid interactive marketing dashboards to get feedback and review your ROI. Salesforce can do a lot of this too, but its marketing tools like Pardot, the B2B engagement tool, are sold in separate products like a data platform or an audience engagement platform, and for this reason, SugarCRM wins.

Contact management

Contact management deals with every individual name, contact, customer or client in your CRM’s network database. Common tools include detailed customer profiles, full communication and engagement histories with each contact, and tools to pull more data off social media to keep your records up to date in real-time, like when someone updates their job or company on LinkedIn.

Winner: Salesforce

Again, both SugarCRM and Salesforce will be great tools for contact management. Salesforce wins this time because it provides amazing holistic and detailed views of your contacts, has an excellent social media data collector, and makes it easy to collaborate with sales team members in dealing with contacts. Sugar Sell’s contact management does get you great 360 degree contact information views.

Lead management

After the work of marketing is done, you hope that your efforts have produced some new leads. Leads are contacts, or potential contacts, which have engaged with your marketing or sales team, but are still primed to travel down the sales life cycle to become actual paying customers. 

Winner: Salesforce

Once again, Salesforce wins the lead management category in our comparison review article. New leads in Salesforce can be automatically routed to the best sales rep to increase the chances the lead will become an active opportunity, and you get good lead scoring. Salesforce’s lead management also feeds data back to your marketing analytics. SugarCRM’s lead management does the trick, however, when it comes to prepping leads for the sales journey.

Opportunity management

If a lead has taken the first bite and has shown some interest in becoming a paying customer for your goods or services, that lead has become an active opportunity. It means they have entered the sales pipeline, and now it is a matter of tracking them, keeping them engaged, watching out for the drop-out points in your sales experience, and converting them to loyal customers.

Winner: Salesforce

It should be no surprise that when it comes to contact, lead and sales opportunity management, we have the same winner for all three, as these modules follow one from the other in an almost linear or sequential fashion. So Salesforce is the winner once again. However, SugarCRM’s tools for opportunity management are no weak sauce.

Forecasting

In business, everything is money. Time is money, but also, information is money, because with the right information, you can not only understand the past, but work more effectively in the future. For example, with solid marketing or sales forecasting, you will plan more accurate marketing campaigns with higher ROIs. Both Salesforce and SugarCRM offer comprehensive sales pipeline forecasting features.

Winner: SugarCRM

SugarCRM analyzes the activity in your pipeline and can then provide decent forecasting on metrics like likelihood to buy, likelihood to drop out, as well gauge the seriousness of seller commitments. Salesforce’s pipeline forecasting also leverages real-time data and has customizable KPIs. In the end, however, SugarCRM’s various forecasting tools edge out Salesforce in this category, though you will not find Salesforce too lacking.

Sales pipeline management

Many might ask, what is the difference between sales pipeline management and opportunity management? Well, the answer is, while opportunity management deals with specific contacts moving through the pipeline, higher-level pipeline management is all about perfecting the customer journey.

Winner: SugarCRM

With SugarCRM’s pipeline management, you get clear visibility and actionable insights regarding the overall performance of your pipeline or of your sales reps as they work inside the funnel to move their contacts forward. It shows you stats on what is working, and what might need to be improved, then makes it easy to make those changes. Salesforce CRM’s use of predictive AI in their pipeline management is good too, but a bit difficult, which is why SugarCRM wins.

Team collaboration and communication

Unless you are a solo entrepreneur, no business is an island of one. Individuals in the same departments work together a lot, like marketing teams and sales teams, while at the same time, there must be good inter-departmental collaboration and communication. Some common tools include chat tools, notifications, and collaborative document creation. 

Winner: SugarCRM

This is a tricky category to declare a single winner for. Much of Salesforce’s team collaboration and communication tools are spread out over various products, with the bulk of them actually being in Service Hub. Meanwhile, SugarCRM has team communication and collaboration tools available with most of their products and pricing packages, and therefore, SugarCRM deserves to take this number one spot.

File storage

Perhaps the category of file storage does not belong with the features, but should have been discussed with the broader comparisons above. Maybe we will make that adjustment next time. Nonetheless, the importance of comparing file storage should be clear: More storage is better, though in both cases, it generally depends on which pricing tier you select.

Winner: Tie

When it comes to data storage, Salesforce offers with most of its plans about 10 GBs of data storage and anywhere between 1 GB and 10 GBs of file storage depending on the plan. SugarCRM offers 7 GBs of data storage and 7 GBs of file storage with the essential plan, and that goes up to 15 GBs and then 30 GBs with the next two premium plans. It’s a tie because while Salesforce gets you more at the low end, SugarCRM offers more storage at the upper end.

Mobile app

If your current CRM does not let you work on your mobile device, it’s time to switch. Some platforms just have responsive screens that adapt to smaller sizes in your web browser, while other systems have dedicated mobile apps, which is always better,

Winner: Salesforce

Both Salesforce CRM and SugarCRM have mobile apps for iOS and Android, and the two apps are pretty decent for taking your CRM work on the road. We have mulled it over and decided that the Salesforce mobile app is just a tad better than SugarCRM for ease of use and a sleek user interface. 

Integrations and add-ons

With integrations, you can allow your CRM for sales tools to share data with other business SaaS and get some cross-functionality. Add-ons are another way to add new tools or capabilities, though these usually come from the vendor themselves.

Winner: Salesforce

SugarCRM has SugarOutfitters (formerly called Sugar Exchange) which is your one-stop shop of a SugarCRM marketplace for integrations and add-ons, as well as for modules and themes. Some good add-on tools include ERP features, finance, reporting and other Sugar professional applications. There are also basic Salesforce integrations with apps like Gmail, Slack and Quickbooks. Then there is the Salesforce AppExchange with more add-ons and solutions. With connectors like Zoho, either tool can be integrated with any other major software providers, for example, an Oracle or Microsoft app.

Which is better, SugarCRM or Salesforce? Our takeaways

And so, Salesforce just about beats SugarCRM by no more than a hair’s width when it comes to crossing that finish line for which app is better. Of course, there is a level of personal taste involved, so if you don't 100% agree, that’s cool.

Still not sure these are the right tools for you? Make sure to check out our crm tools comparison article for more options!