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By an anonymous user on Mar. 13, 2008

Email Campaigns - Email is one thing that is lacking in both sugarCRM and vtiger but if I had to pick one I'd go with vtiger.

Importing Data - Comparable, but SugarCRM's update feature has the edge because it allows for massaging post-upload

User Roles & Rules - SugarCRM has the edge in this category. it is more robust and scalable from an enterprise solution standpoint.

Ease of Customization - SugarCRM Studio is great in concept but also leads to several issues which get harder to track as you increase the # of changes.

All in all - I'd pick SugarCRM as the solution - more features, more support, larger community, larger user base - are just some of the few reasons why.

By an anonymous user on Mar. 13, 2008

SugarCRM sucks. We've tried to implement this multiple times, using both the downloadable code and the virtual appliance, in the last 6 months and always ended up hitting a brick wall. Don't waste your time and go with Salesforce.com

By an anonymous user on Mar. 13, 2008

I've worked with vTiger, when I ran into a brick wall with Sugar's community edition. vTiger is built off Sugar's community edition, I believe, or they have some older nexus, perhaps in original developers.

vTiger is very, very similar to Sugar, with a few proprietary extensions.

What I noticed was that the Sugar community was much more active, and the community forums were well attended and fairly active.

By an anonymous user on Mar. 17, 2008

It doesn't. vTiger is the Hyundai and Sugar is the BMW of Open source CRM applications

By an anonymous user on Jun. 30, 2008

Installation: Sugar wins.

It could be a bit complicated for non tikkies, but I still see it way better than vTiger though there were no indication Sugar was creating the database or it just stucked.

UI: Sugar wins.

vTiger 4 was exactly as Sugar but in vTiger 5 they went too far with tabs and sub-tabs. What was more confusing is seeing a module repeated in many sections.

Adding modules: Sugar wins.

An installer is there to add new modules, the fact that those features are in Sugar makes you wonder: what additions vTiger made to the core? I started to get the feeling that vTiger CRM is Sugar with some aimless modifications and some modules.

Diversity of modules: vTiger wins.

I missed Products module, Orders module though I didn't check the community yet. Someone may have already done them.

Administration area: Sugar wins.

Sugar is really great when it comes to administration. Though vTiger is based on Sugar, I have seen in vTiger's code they have disabled some features that were built-in Sugar such as mandatory custom fields.

Theming: Sugar's Smarty is way better than vTiger's. I really think it's easier to theme Sugar.

Code base: Sugar wins.

I really liked Sugar's code over vTiger's. It's still clean and tidy. I believe I can do things faster on Sugar than on vTiger.

To sum up: I generally believe if you have no problems with SugarCRM liesence then you go for it. It will give you way better stability and scalability than vTiger. If you're a coder seeking a better code then go for Sugar. I'd only recommend vTiger in case it will fit your needs without any developing, otherwise you may end-up wasting some time which you could save doing it with Sugar.

as summary we can say that

1- SugarCRM support Thunderbird (Sugarbird) Mail System

2- Sugar NoteIn* is an open-source module for sugarCRM wich provides a VoIP integration with Asterisk.

From: http://erpegypt.com/forum/index.php?topic=45.msg83

By an anonymous user on Jul. 16, 2008

vTiger is as good if not better than sugarcrm unless you're looking to deploy this across GE financial! There is a good demo http://www.vtiger.com/products/crm/demo.html - check it out for yourself

By an anonymous user on Jul. 16, 2008

...and

- SugarCRM censors any mention of vTiger on their forums

- SugarCRM deletes posts questioning licensing

- SugarCRM deletes certain criticisms

- SugarCRM forbids you from running the OS edition if you subscribe to or HAVE subscribed to SugarCRM Pro or Enterprise

- They (SugarCRM) effectively hijack your customer data once you subscribe to Pro or Enterprise

By El Spamolito on Jul. 19, 2008

I realize @anon is rooting for the underdog here but vTiger has some serious shortcomings especially in its email campaign module. It isn't intuitive at all and Sugar just blows it away. If you really want a headache-free solution you should look at Salesforce.com - its $ but eventually any of these (vtiger, sugar) will cost about as much when you take hosting and maintenance into account.

By leehj hj on Sep. 01, 2008

I realize @anon is rooting for the underdog here but vTiger has some serious shortcomings especially in its email campaign module. It isn't intuitive at all and Sugar just blows it away. If you really want a headache-free solution you should look at Salesforce.com - its $ but eventually any of these (vtiger, sugar) will cost about as much when you take hosting and maintenance into account.

By an anonymous user on Oct. 01, 2008

I am a programmer who has developed business application over the past fifteen years. I have been using both for about a month - hoping to see which one wins out. At this point, I seem to be leaning towards vTiger, although I really wanted SugarCRM to work for me. SugarCRM seems to have much more activity surrounding it, more online support, many more third party add-ons, and additional tools. However, vTiger seems to be more responsive, clean and uncluttered, and I find myself moving around vTiger easily. Most reviews seem to compare them as pretty much the same, but there is a major difference. vTiger does include many of the features in SugarCRM; however, seems to be moving in the direction of a small business management solution, rather than simply a CRM centric solution. By this I mean that vTiger incorporates a business workflow in addition to the CRM functionality, including the ability to create quotes, sales orders, purchase orders, and invoicing from your CRM data. This functionality does not exist in SugarCRM. If vTiger continues to develop these modules with the ability to handle payment management, basic accounting etc..., it will clearly has some distinct advantages over SugarCRM for those who wish to have web-accessibility to that financial data. Although I continue to use both (I have low volume transactions at the moment) so that I can continue to explore each one's merits, it should be interesting to see what is in the next major version for each one.

By an anonymous user on Oct. 23, 2008

I have been programming for over 12 years.... if you want a paid solution.. go with salesforce.com.... if you want a true open source solution for most business... unless you are HUGE... go with vtiger.... the only thing I find it missing is document management which is not a big deal because the gains in features and speed is much better. if you know PHP vtiger is your choice otherwise you stuck with sugar. suagr lack the most important feature (unless you go paid) is team management which I think is a HUGE feature for any business with employees. Every CRM will have a learning curve.... but I find vtiger the best because I know PHP and I can do what I want with it. It depends on what is easy for you... web admin screen modifiaction... sugar. php modifications... vtiger.

By an anonymous user on Nov. 13, 2008

Im not a programmer but from a business point of view vTiger is by far the easiest and most flexible solution out of the 2.

Sugar looks nice and gives the impression of flexibility (lots of downloadable modules in their community). However, half the modules only work with the older versions, you get a whole load of errors when try to use the ones that should work and half the functionality you'd expect as standard with a CRM (quoting and invoicing for example) are simply not there...

vTigers emailing system could be better but IT WORKS!

We wasted days trying to get Sugar working for us and gave up... we discovered vTiger and had it up and running within an hour!!!

By Sugar CRM on Mar. 20, 2009

Sugar stinks bad. I went in for an onsite with a salesman (excuse me) saleswoman and the freakin' building smelled like stinky fish and bad pantyhose. There's no testosterone within the building, atmosphere was so weak, I noticed all women working in there. Maybe a few guys here and there but they looked you know :/ confused about what gender they really were. Anyhow addressing the issues for why I was there for initially

By Sugar CRM on Mar. 20, 2009

Every answer I asked, my AE sweated, ran in and out. Came back after 20 questions with her manager only to get "I'll pass the information to engineering to resolve the issues" blah blah blah!!!! 8 months later I hear no resolution. 2 years in with Sugar and now it's looking like ShitCRM! Please advise how simple integration is with VTiger.

By Sugar CRM on Mar. 20, 2009

Paid support with Sugar was a complete joke,,,,

By Opensource Ravan on Oct. 22, 2009

I have'nt tried VTIGER much, but problem with SugarCRM is we need to pay for reporting module.

And for me reporting is the most essential part. I tried with many other modules for reporting but they never worked.

In name of open source, they are charging for the main component, whats the definition of open source here now ?

By Patricia Kemke on Oct. 27, 2009

I am an MCSE, I do not know php or have much coding experience (I get by OK). I built our site with FrontPage but hosted on an Apache shared server. So I can't use ASP and Access. Which I would be comfortable doing.

Our shared server allows php and MySQL. For this reason I chose Vtiger it uses php and MYSQL.

My expereince - Vtiger installed with little problem using the 5.1.0 souce code option becuase I installed it on our web server.

Configuration is easy. Especially if you have experience with Role based security (profile, Role and Group access restrictions).

Duplicate email sending had me confused for a short while. Searched the forums and found answer to stop this behavior (be aware of the opt out function or you could send unwanted emails.)

To me this is a completely customizable solution. And has all the modules you could ask for; sales, email (with customizable automation templates), document manager (with merge templates), products, quoting, invoicing, webmail and marketing, reporting, metrics, faq, trouble tickets... What else could someone ask for and it is free.

Also FYI Vtiger runs on Sugar's original source code. You can find a long discussion on the vtiger forums regarding Sugar's unhappiness with Vtiger for repackaging Sugar's work. That is how open source works add some increased functionality and you can charge for support - which is what Vtiger does. One area I feel they are lacking in is documentation. They do have a downloadable manual that costs $14 and is worth the price. Ever so much more affordable than a Sugar user licence at $360 or so per user per year and salesforce.com costs $99 (a month - pricey).

One more thing if you plan to use this on a shared server you may find a need to upgrade to a VPS with dedicated resources because if your shared server is very busy you may experience some lagging with the application. My opinion Vtiger is the best open source (free) option. You may need a little help from your hosting company but it is worth the effort.

BTW InMotion Hosting has fabulous support 24/7 ( I call them regularly at 3 in the morning) from USA based facility with friendly techs. They also have fair prices for what you get. I imagine if you installed this on a local LAN it would work great but you would have to use the WAMP or LAMP installer. Try it you'll like it!

Other suggestions for great open source software: GIMP and InkScape. Thanks to all of the dedicated developers working on these projects and Vtiger too!

By Patricia Kemke on Oct. 27, 2009

I am an MCSE, I do not know php or have much coding experience (I get by OK). I built our site with FrontPage but hosted on an Apache shared server. So I can't use ASP and Access. Which I would be comfortable doing.

Our shared server allows php and MySQL. For this reason I chose Vtiger it uses php and MYSQL.

My expereince - Vtiger installed with little problem using the 5.1.0 souce code option becuase I installed it on our web server.

Configuration is easy. Especially if you have experience with Role based security (profile, Role and Group access restrictions).

Duplicate email sending had me confused for a short while. Searched the forums and found answer to stop this behavior (be aware of the opt out function or you could send unwanted emails.)

To me this is a completely customizable solution. And has all the modules you could ask for; sales, email (with customizable automation templates), document manager (with merge templates), products, quoting, invoicing, webmail and marketing, reporting, metrics, faq, trouble tickets... What else could someone ask for and it is free.

Also FYI Vtiger runs on Sugar's original source code. You can find a long discussion on the vtiger forums regarding Sugar's unhappiness with Vtiger for repackaging Sugar's work. That is how open source works add some increased functionality and you can charge for support - which is what Vtiger does. One area I feel they are lacking in is documentation. They do have a downloadable manual that costs $14 and is worth the price. Ever so much more affordable than a Sugar user licence at $360 or so per user per year and salesforce.com costs $99 (a month - pricey).

One more thing if you plan to use this on a shared server you may find a need to upgrade to a VPS with dedicated resources because if your shared server is very busy you may experience some lagging with the application. My opinion Vtiger is the best open source (free) option. You may need a little help from your hosting company but it is worth the effort.

BTW InMotion Hosting has fabulous support 24/7 ( I call them regularly at 3 in the morning) from USA based facility with friendly techs. They also have fair prices for what you get. I imagine if you installed this on a local LAN it would work great but you would have to use the WAMP or LAMP installer. Try it you'll like it!

Other suggestions for great open source software: GIMP and InkScape. Thanks to all of the dedicated developers working on these projects and Vtiger too!

By Phil on Nov. 24, 2009

All, I have been using SugarCRM for several years without issues & I wish the folks at SUgarCRM would make their customer self service available in the community edition as well as developed a knowledge base module based on their Case Management module. I recently started playing with Vtiger & I find it to be very user friendly and more than a CRM application, perhaps is not fair for neither software to be compared with each other. I love SugarCRM with the exceptions mentioned above but in terms of Vtiger I would recommend to most my customers but, does anybody know how to get Financial reporting out of it? I love all the extra modules at no cost but if I do not have a way to setup chart of accounts (financial structure) and report PNL, Balance Sheet, etc I would need to build an interface with my financial system to integrate it or are there any plugins to manage this process?

By Mark Bascom on Nov. 26, 2009

vTiger is a fork of SugarCRM. As you would expect with most forks it has pluses and minuses when compared with the original.

+ Open Source License: Vtiger forked because they disagreed SugarCRM's License. SugarCRM is under the GPL v3. Personally, I don't think licensing is a good reason to fork.

+ SugarCRM development has continued to progress far ahead of vTiger simply because SugarCRM invests a lot of engineering and development effort into the code. By comparison, vTiger invests relatively little. This is typical of many code forks that happen for political or licensing reasons as opposed to technical reasons.

+ Some specific areas in which SugarCRM has progressed far beyond the time when vTiger forked their code:

++ User Roles & Rules - SugarCRM has the edge in this category. it is more robust and scalable from an enterprise solution standpoint.

++ Installation: Sugar wins hands down. If you are a Microsoft Windows user it's also available in the Windows Application Installer. I'm not sure why a previous comment by Patricia Kemke, MCSE, suggested vTiger for better Windows platform support. SugarCRM has much better Windows platform support, runs on SQL Server, Windows Azure and is in the Windows Application Installer.

++ Administration area: Sugar is really great when it comes to administration. Though vTiger is based on Sugar, I have seen in vTiger's code they have disabled some features that were built-in Sugar such as mandatory custom fields.

+ The comments about installing SugarCRM versus a paid SalesForce account also baffle me. That's like comparing apples and oranges. If you want a paid on-demand offering SugarCRM has a fantastic offering. If you want to run your own system on your own servers you can't do that with SalesForce. Comparing SugarCRM on your own servers to SalesForce SaaS is comparing two completely different things. If you want a SaaS offering just buy SugarCRM on-demand.

By pp ass on Feb. 03, 2010

SugarCRM's email integration is terrible. I got totally out of sync with my gmail account.

vtiger makes a very good job syncing with my gmail account.

So if you are going to send emails from your CRM, chose vtiger

By pp ass on Feb. 03, 2010

SugarCRM's email integration is terrible. I got totally out of sync with my gmail account.

vtiger makes a very good job syncking with my gmail account.

So if you are going to send emails from your CRM, chose vtiger

By pp ass on Feb. 03, 2010

SugarCRM's email integration is terrible. I got totally out of sync with my gmail account.

vtiger makes a very good job syncking with my gmail account.

So if you are going to send emails from your CRM, chose vtiger

By bestboards livin on Feb. 16, 2010

The guys at Executive Telephony, Inc. did a nice job of integrating vTiger in to their PBX. It's nice because you can simply point and click on a telephone number of the customers record and the phone does all the dialing. We've been using the system for about a year and a half now and love it. I wish we could do more with the campaigns though. I called ET and they explained the limitations were in vTiger. I get it.

By paul utlas on Jun. 04, 2010

My 2p worth. Tried both SugarCRM and vtiger. Sugar installed without a hitch and made entries under programs - very neat.

Then I tried vtiger. This was OK too but not very informative - like a plumber who swears like hell but carries on working then leaves without explaining anything.

vtiger made no entries on desktop or under programs. It is a complete package but I expected lot better. Niggles: no pickup lists for products etc. Invoice/PO/Quotes not easy to change layout on these.

Paul

By Spastic Monkey on Jul. 21, 2010

Coming at this from a turnkey open source solution perspective:

Both offer a lot of functionality. Sugar is more "enterprisey" and vTiger has more features useful to a smaller organization.

VTiger's licensing is fairly straightforward.

Sugar's licensing is psychotic.

GPLv3 combined with closed source? No reporting?

Can't revert to community edition if you decide enterprise support blows?

If you hate reports, and want a system that makes reporting impossible, then SugarCRM is for you.

I'm also flabbergasted by other comments about SugarCRM being easy to install, it's a mess. And apparently it has been this way for years.

VTiger seems a bit better in this regard, though the English instructions suffer a bit.

If you are looking for a truly open source CRM solution, there's no argument. vTiger wins.

If you don't care about open source, and just want a free CRM system that you can customize, Sugar may be a better fit.

If document management is critical, go with Sugar.

If you might ever want to pull any sort of report whatsoever, go with vTiger.

If you want to do bulk email campaigns, hire someone else to do them, seriously, because dealing with bulk email, spam filters, and blackisting on a server you own will make you want to punch kittens, regardless of platform.

By Pete Longes on Jan. 04, 2011

... talking tiger I would need to talk "crook" so I better don't even start!

Though I change my mind now. It's no longer osCommerce which I had for a long time at the front of my list of "worst software hack" but VTIGER!

By Joel De Bareis on Oct. 25, 2011

As a business owner I am always on the hunt for new tools that can make me or my employees more productive. I have tried vTiger and even SugarCRM but the local hosting management and the compromises on speed are a big draw back. I tried Karma CRM among other online resources that worked better for me. Karma has the majority of the features i needed and the developers don't mind building a feature on demand if it makes sense.

Here is my contribution: KarmaCRM (http://bit.ly/odqZwk)

I found this online based CRM 5 months ago and it has drastically improve collaboration, quality of service and has cut tasks time to at least half. Best of all is FREE to try and there are plans for every budget. I hope it helps other like it has helped me.