SugarCRM

[paultgreen]

Hi to all, does anyone among us use SugarCRM? I've just installed their free version for a one month trial here (my choice, not a software limitation), and having used Act! and in house systems for many years, I have to say I'm quite impressed.

So far it's integrated in to our Asterisk box to provide directory lookup, and also connects in to our email to log any client emails that are sent out (will be working on incoming too over coming days)

If it works, I'll spend a bit of time getting a Joomla module so it copies leads straight in to the crm from our website.

How do you all find this software?

[leemason]

Don't use it on a daily basis but I'm seen the Asterisk integration and it is pretty good. vTiger is also pretty good and I believe that it's based on SugarCRM as well.

[trevorwood]

I'm looking at using is and writing an events management package that'll integrate with it - however it's a long term project and probably won't see the light of day for at least 6 months

[paultgreen]

Originally Posted by trevorwood

I'm looking at using is and writing an events management package that'll integrate with it - however it's a long term project and probably won't see the light of day for at least 6 months

Sounds like fun.. when you say events, are we talking functions and conferences, or festivals and concerts?

[trevorwood]

I was thinking conferences, functions, networking events, etc. but I don't see why it shouldn't work for festivals & concerts. I'll keep that in mind, thanks

[Alan2011]

I don't use this software , we always use quickbook to manage my clients and the capital , it is very easy to manage and install , i suggest you could install and try to use it .

[paultgreen]

is quick book cloud based or local software?

[trevorwood]

Originally Posted by Alan2011

I don't use this software , we always use quickbook to manage my clients and the capital , it is very easy to manage and install , i suggest you could install and try to use it .

I use Quickbooks for invoicing, but it doesn't have the event management & CRM capability that I need - after all it's an accounts package

[diggersjohn33]

A number of my clients are moving to Sugar... I've heard some really good things about it!

As good as this though??: CRM Cloud Software | Microsoft CRM Office 365 Cloud Solutions

[paultgreen]

Hmm.. not a fan of hosted solutions - I like my data to be on my servers with my encryption etc..

I'd love Dynamics, but we're probably not big enough to use 2% of what it's capable of.

[AdamW]

Nothing wrong with hosted solutions if you trust the provider. It's their speciality and unless you are a server geek there is no guarantee that yours is any safer.

It is the question though when it comes to hosted / self hosted solutions. The last taboos and one which I often struggle with.

[paultgreen]

I'm a bit of a server geek, yeah.. There's also the fact I like things to talk to each other - many of the hosted providers for CRMs will never dare give you access to their central tables via odbc

[trevorwood]

you don't have to go to a hosted provider to use SugarCRM - you can plug it in behind your own website or - if you can set up a webserver on your PC (apache/IIS with PHP) you can run it on your local PC

[AdamW]

Originally Posted by paultgreen

I'm a bit of a server geek, yeah.. There's also the fact I like things to talk to each other - many of the hosted providers for CRMs will never dare give you access to their central tables via odbc

Well no of course not. But they often provide APIs, action URLS, etc to get your data out or to integrate with something else.