SugarCRM Review (2024): Pricing, Features, and Alternatives

SugarCRM is a customer relationship management software that offers sales, marketing, and service solutions all in one platform. SugarCRM’s robust CRM features include powerful sales and marketing automations for efficient lead and account management. Emphasis is placed on data security with cloud backups, data retention, access control, and flow. SugarCRM also offers industry specializations in niche markets such as staffing and recruiting, privacy equality, public sector, commercial banking, and manufacturing.

SugarCRM Pricing

The SugarCRM software pricing breakdown includes three premium tier options. Each plan is billed per user and must be paid annually, with no monthly billing option.

• The essentials:$19 per user per month when billed annually. This includes a minimum of three users and a maximum of five. This tier includes lead, contact, and account management; basic workflows; reporting; and support.
• Advanced:$85 per user per month when billed annually. This includes a minimum of three users. This plan includes all the features of the Essential tier, plus advanced workflows, mobility, forecasting, and email/calendar integration.
• Prime minister:$135 per user per month when billed annually. This includes a minimum of three users. Businesses on this plan receive all advanced features, plus geo-mapping, guided selling, and enhanced support.

Key Features of SugarCRM

Income tracking

With SugarCRM’s revenue intelligence solution, individual reps, teams, or managers can view actionable insights about every customer, product, and sale. By offering easy-to-digest reports and visuals, the CRM allows users to plan schedules and meetings, take call notes, and view past customer interactions all in one place. Example metrics to measure include quota attainment, pipeline values, conversion rates, and total revenue.

Digital self-service portal

SugarCRM’s self-service portal allows customers to search your knowledge base, get answers to their questions instantly, and open cases for additional assistance. By enabling 24/7 support, customers can interact with your company anytime, anywhere, while freeing up the time of support agents. This improves customer satisfaction and reduces service costs. To utilize this feature, companies create a comprehensive knowledge base of their solution and business process and then customize the end-user experience with a WYSIWYG design tool to match the company’s branding standards.

Predictive analysis

Predictive and prescriptive intelligence through SugarCRM can detect escalations, predict churn, forecast deal closure, and analyze leads to predict their likelihood to convert. The predictive lead scoring tool is especially beneficial for qualifying both leads and accounts to design optimal marketing strategies and sales automations. AI-powered predictive lead scoring, with customizable rules and templates, will send the most qualified leads to sales reps.

Mobile application

SugarCRM’s mobile app for iOS and Android helps sales reps continue to deliver a great customer experience on the go, even when there’s no Wi-Fi network available. The app comes with native device integrations like click-to-call, click-to-text, and GPS. Businesses can customize the app’s interface and create shortcuts and dynamic searches or filters to manage common actions or tasks.

Advantages of SugarCRM

• Users report that setting up the platform is easy.
• Provides marketing, sales, revenue and support solutions.
• Comprehensive reporting and analytics functionality.

Disadvantages of SugarCRM

• Only a 7-day trial agreement.
• Limited billing and subscription options.
• Users report poor software UX/UI.

Alternatives to SugarCRM

HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular CRM provider that also takes the top spot on this list of the best free CRMs. It’s a powerful solution with AI tools that can connect data, sales and service teams, and customers. HubSpot also comes with more possible native and third-party integrations. Compared to SugarCRM, HubSpot is a more scalable option with a robust free tier and enterprise-level plans.

For more information, check out this HubSpot review.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is another popular solution that is considered a marketing and collaboration-type CRM software. While SugarCRM also offers omnichannel communication and marketing automations, Zoho CRM’s marketing functionality is more extensive, with advanced automations, workflows, and cross-departmental collaboration opportunities.

Read this Zoho CRM review to learn more.

Fresh sales

Freshsales is a top-notch CRM for small businesses. This is because of its combination of affordability plus AI-powered tools and personalized sales sequences. Like SugarCRM, Freshsales also has top-notch data security and AI capabilities. Freshsales also has more end-to-end sales features like role-based actions, weighted pipelines, personalized sales activities, and more.

For more information, check out this Freshsales review.

Review methodology

To evaluate SugarCRM, I used our internal rating rubric, which consists of criteria considered most important when evaluating CRM software. I then compared SugarCRM to the industry standard for each criterion and subcriterion in that rubric. I consulted SugarCRM's own online resources, as well as reviews and ratings from real users.

The breakdown of criteria I used to evaluate SugarCRM includes:

• Cost:Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Main Features:Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Customizations:Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Integrations:Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Ease of use:Weighted 10% of the total score.
• Customer Service:Weighted 10% of the total score.