SugarCRM, Concursive And Vtiger Open Source CRM Overview
Sourceforge.net is the most popular open source project hosting site today. Searching the term ‘CRM’ on sourceforge yields more than 400 results. Obviously, many of this projects there are dead, but you will find about 30 active projects. Some of the projects offer more than CRM-mostly a bundled ERP+CRM offering.
Open Source CRM Guru will focus on 3 ‘pure’ CRM solutions. CRM applications have evolved dramatically in the past few years. In the past, some of the CRM functionality was embedded into ERP systems. But with the increasing competition on smart, informed customers, the demand for business applications, dedicated to managing the customer life cycle, increased exponentially. Stand-alone CRM appreciations became a competitive edge for many organizations.Soon, open source CRM solutions began to emerge.3 of them will be covered here.
SugarCRM
SugarCRM is currently the most popular open source CRM application. I tried out Sugar several years ago, when it was still a completely free,non-commercial,no-support CRM solution. And right off the gate, it was a great business application. It was very simple to setup and you could get your company running on Sugar within a couple of weeks. The UI was intuitive and Sugar has a robust sense to it.
One of the reasons for the huge success of SugarCRM is the decision to write it for the LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). The LAMP platform is so popular and there are so many people that feel comfortable around it that SugarCRM installation began poping all over. Not only that, the entire platform is free to download and use, and has evolved as a viable alternative to commercial platforms.
Another advantage SugarCREM initially had wast that it was web-enabled by definition. Running the SugrCRM software from a web browser made it easy for new users to learn and feel comfortable with. The fact that Sugar can be offered in a SaaS (Software as a Service) model also contribute to its commercial success.
SugarCRM is now a commercial open source CRM, offering paid subscriptions for its software, along with a free, community edition. Its a full featured CRM solution, easily competing with commercial CRM solutions.
We will provide extensive coverage of SugarCRM.
Concursive
As oppose to the PHP-based SugarCRM, Concursive is a Java application. The Java platform is very common in enterprise business applications. Most large companies use Java applications to some extent and employ skilled personal that knows how deploy,customize and implement Java applications. That makes Concursive a very strong offering for the Enterprise.
Concursive was formally called Centric CRM, and was re-branded earlier this year to emphasis it is not only an open source CRM application but a complete front-office solution. Concursive offers several collaboration tools in conjunction with it’s CRM functionality and pride itself with the high level of performance and scalability demonstrated by some of it production customers.
Concursive offers a very flexible deployment model -SasS, Managed and On-Premise, allowing its customers to go from SaaS CRM deployments to On-Premise and Vice-Versa.
Vtiger
Vtiger is the ‘purest’ open source CRM offering of the three. They also develop their CRM application in PHP running on a LAMP platform, although it is possible to replace Apache with IIS. Using LAMP means easier development,customization and software deployments on customers sites or in a CRM SaaS model.
They have an impressive list of partners, and for open source business software vendors, expanding the partners channel is the most important aspect of business development. The strength of the partners ecosystem will be the main factor in the success of Vtiger and other open source business solutions.
Vtiger is a traditional open source company, offering its entire CRM suite completely for free to download and use. They do offer paid support and migration services. Vtiger is a privately held company and never raised funding.
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4 Responses to “SugarCRM, Concursive And Vtiger Open Source CRM Overview”
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Thanks for covering vtiger CRM. Good luck with the blog!
-Sreenivas (vtiger Team)
Concursive probably shouldn’t be considered Open Source. Concursive uses a non-OSI-certified license that does not allow you to distribute their source code. It’s more like what IBM is doing with Jazz, they’re allowing you to look at the code, but they admit it’s a commerical product that isn’t licensed for free use. Concursive should admit the same and quit calling their product open source.
And because of the restritive licensing, not much of a community has really built up around the product, and most likely, none ever will.
If it comes to open source CRM Vtiger is the best bcoz they are not promoting any commercial edition Unlike Sugar CRM and they recently released API tool to create our own modules.
Just wanted to point out that vTiger started from SugarCRM source code.