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

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

SugarCRM’s 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.

• Essentials: $19 per user per month when billed annually. This comes with a three-user minimum and a five-user maximum. This tier includes lead, contact, and account management; basic workflows; reports; and support.
• Advanced: $85 per user per month when billed annually. This comes with a three-user minimum. This plan includes all Essential tier features plus advanced workflows, mobility, forecasting, and mail or calendar integration.
• Premier: $135 per user per month when billed annually. This comes with a three-user minimum. Businesses with this plan receive all Advanced features plus geo-mapping, guided selling, and enhanced support.

SugarCRM’s key features

Revenue tracking

With SugarCRM’s revenue intelligence solution, individual reps, teams, or managers can all view actionable insights into every client, product, and sale. Offering digestible reports and visuals, the CRM allows users to plan out schedules and meetings, take call notes, and view previous 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 questions answered instantly, and open cases for extra assistance. Allowing for 24/7 support means customers can engage with your business anytime from anywhere while also freeing up support agents’ time. This way, there’s both improvement on customer satisfaction and reduced service costs. To use this feature, businesses 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 with the company branding standards.

Predictive analytics

Predictive and prescriptive intelligence through SugarCRM can spot escalations, churn predictions, forecast deal closure, and analyze leads to predict their likelihood of conversion. The predictive lead scoring tool is especially beneficial to score both leads and accounts to strategize the best marketing and sales automations. AI predictive lead scoring with customizable rules and templates will send the most qualified prospects to sales reps.

Mobile app

SugarCRM’s mobile app for iOs and Android helps sales reps continue to provide stellar customer experience on the go, even when a wifi network isn’t available. The app comes with native device integrations like click-to-call, click-to-text, and GPS. ​Businesses can customize the app interface and create shortcuts and dynamic searches or filters to manage the most common actions or tasks.

SugarCRM pros

• Users report easy platform setup.
• Provides marketing, sales, revenue, and support solutions.
• Comprehensive reporting and analytics functionality.

SugarCRM cons

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

Alternatives to SugarCRM

HubSpot

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

If you want more info, head over to this HubSpot review.

Zoho CRM

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

Read this Zoho CRM review for more information.

Freshsales

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

To learn more, check out this Freshsales review.

Review methodology

To review SugarCRM, I used our in-house scoring rubric, which consists of criteria deemed most important when evaluating CRM software. I then compared SugarCRM against the industry standard for each criteria and subcriteria in that rubric. I referenced SugarCRM’s own online resources as well as real user feedback and scores.

The criteria breakdown I used to evaluate SugarCRM includes:

• Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Core 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 support: Weighted 10% of the total score.