Home > CRM Software > Zoho CRM > Zoho CRM vs SugarCRM

Zoho CRM vs SugarCRM

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

Our analysts compared Zoho CRM vs SugarCRM based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CRM Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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Product Basics

Zoho CRM enables an organization’s sales force to work more effectively and close more deals. It incorporates lead management, marketing automation, contact management, multichannel forecasting, territory management, and a host of other capabilities.

Built with conversational AI, it supports users by predicting lead and deal success, offering a voice assistant, and suggesting activities to automate based on behavior analysis. Users can leverage workflow automation to streamline manual tasks and stay on top of performance with real-time reporting and analytics.

SugarCRM is a comprehensive platform that effectively manages the customer lifecycle with a set of modules that support each stage of the funnel. It helps organizations locate prospects, nurture leads, close more deals and retain customers. Some capabilities include quote management, forecasting, campaign management and a customizable interface.

It supports multiple currencies and 35 languages with the option to develop support for additional languages. It can integrate with mobile device management offerings as well.

$14/User, Monthly

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Tailored to your specific needs

$19/User, Monthly

Free Trial is available →

Get a free price quote

Tailored to your specific needs

Small

Medium

Large

Small

Medium

Large

Windows

Mac

Linux

Android

Chromebook

Windows

Mac

Linux

Android

Chromebook

Cloud

On-Premise

Mobile

Cloud

On-Premise

Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation

In Person

Live Online

Videos

Webinars

Documentation

In Person

Live Online

Videos

Webinars

Phone

Chat

FAQ

Forum

Knowledge Base

24/7 Live Support

Phone

Chat

FAQ

Forum

Knowledge Base

24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

Real-Time Data Analysis: Track KPIs across the sales cycle with advanced analytics tools providing visibility for everyone from the C-suite to sales reps. We set up dashboard widgets and customized the metrics displayed, so we could surface the most important data. The system includes standard and custom reports, which you can filter to locate specific information and blend to create multidimensional reports.
AI-Powered Performance Optimization: Use Zia is the system’s conversational AI assistant and helps users get more done and work smarter. We searched through our database by sending a request via text. You can use Zia to improve data accuracy, optimize timing for emails and calls, and understand the sentiment behind the emails your leads and customers send.
Automated Lead Creation: Use the email parser tool to automate lead creation by sending email enquiries to the parser email that extracts the information. You can then reduplicate and approve the leads to ensure they’re good. We could add and color code tags, create custom views for leads and view leads in Zoho sheets.
Support Mobility: Mobile CRM apps for both Android and iOS devices provide users with immediate access to important information, no matter where they are. Sales reps can view daily activities and optimize in-person meetings with geo-location. They can also manage records even while offline — all changes automatically sync once their device reconnects. The card scanner app, supported on iOS and Android devices as well, enables users to digitally capture business cards at events and meetings.
Personalized Solutions: Use the developer platform for full control over your software ecosystem. Unify data across business systems, develop apps and boost the capabilities of the CRM interface with a combination of tools including widgets, a REST API and SDKs for web and mobile. We found that it incorporates both code and WYSIWYG elements so users of all technical levels can leverage it successfully.
Easy To Set Up: Speed up the onboarding process via Zwitch, with the help of Zoho support staff or use the built-in tools to transfer from other CRM platforms. We liked how easy it was to navigate the header-style menu. Add new products, contacts and accounts with the same form style. Set up was also a breeze with helpful pop-ups and links to knowledge base articles if we got stuck.
Tailor-Made Customizations: Create your own workflow rules. We tested out adding a “Big Fish” tag when leads recorded an annual revenue of above $100,000 and a follow-up automation. You can also use the Kiosk Studio to build page layouts and automations, its a bit more technical but offers helpful pop-ups and tips. We were also able to create a rule that assigned all leads that started with a 222 area code to a specific user.

Improve Productivity: Streamline regular tasks through integration with email and calendar apps. Archive customer communications and quickly sync email information with various modules in the CRM.
Centralize Info: Bring sales rep activities like calls and meetings into a central location for easy tracking.
Ease Service Demands: Reduce the customer service workload by creating and managing a repository of searchable, self-service help articles.
Leverage a Flexible DesignLeverage a Flexible Design: Make code-free custom layouts, fields and relationships. Customize modules and plugins to match internal processes and configure core functionality at a system or module level.
Stay Informed About Activities: It’s easy to monitor record updates, create posts and comment, with all activities aggregated into a single stream that’s configurable and available from several different screens.
Save Time: Keep work flowing in an efficient manner by building and applying automated business processes.
Maintain Security: Keep data secure and ensure everyone has the appropriate access with permission privileges that use a combination of roles and team membership settings.
Find Information Quickly: Access data using filters and tags for fast searching globally or within a single module.

Sales Force Automation: Automate tedious sales tasks such as lead generation and routing, data entry, email notifications, field updates and more. Optimize lead management, deal management, account management, contact management, and manage workflow and assignment rules.
Process Management: Enable your sales team to follow a standardized sales strategy. Use the blueprint feature to log offline processes such as order management or deal closure, ensuring consistent execution. Create automated approvals for common activities such as vacation time requests, capital expense reports and pricing discount requests. Additionally, you can set rules for assigning leads, escalating cases and validating CRM data.
Opportunity Management: Keep everyone’s antennas tuned to the same channel with Zoho’s activity tracking for all customer interactions like emails, calls, tasks and notes. Create deals and associate them with campaigns with drop-down fields and generate multiple pipelines using the standard template or your own personalized fields You can create a custom Kanban view using dropdown options and fields.
Multichannel Support: Connect with your email platform to send emails directly from the CRM. Connect your brand’s social media channel to respond in real-time, follow relevant conversations and automate lead generation. Use the Phonebridge integration to enable sales reps to easily log and track information from calls. You can also embed live chat and lead capture forms on your website to facilitate sales, marketing and customer service efforts.
Sales Enablement: Aid sales reps in their daily jobs using features like quotes and purchase orders (via integration with Zoho’s Finance Suite), a documents library, integration with Zoho’s presentation and document creation applications, and external-facing portals for partners and vendors. It also offers a calendar, a feature called SalesInbox for prioritizing the most lucrative emails, a web meeting platform through the Zoho Meeting integration, real-time notifications, collaboration feeds and more.
Performance Management: Gauge how a product, team or region is performing with forecasting tools. Group customers based on shared attributes (region, product, etc.) with territory management and gamify elements to encourage friendly competition that boosts performance among sales reps. Zia can also help improve performance by helping you target leads that are most likely to generate revenue. Your sales reps can engage with website visitors via chatbots for web and mobile, so every query receives attention even if they’re away from their desks.
Marketing Automation: Streamline marketing efforts by segmenting customers using a range of criteria, automating lead nurturing follow-ups, creating code-free web forms to gather customer information, scanning and uploading business cards, and analyzing campaign spending. Use capabilities like end-to-end event management, email campaign capabilities, surveys, and marketing details like budgets and performance metrics. A hierarchy feature lets you hook sub-campaigns to related main campaigns.
Team Collaboration: Use Feeds as a central location for collaborating, sharing announcements and offering advice. You can integrate chat functionality to facilitate everyday tasks and automatically send real-time sales updates. Users can leave notes on records or activities and tag other team members. Other features include groups for collaborating around specific events or for specific purposes, as well as project management tools via integration with Zoho Projects.
Third-Party Integrations: Connect with more than 50 third-party apps for collaboration, document management, live chat, telephony, messaging, events and meetings, quote management, document signing, lead management, marketing automation, social media, storage and more. Integrations include G Suite, Office 365, Slack, Shopify, Mailchimp, Facebook Ads, QuickBooks, GoToWebinar, DocuSign, Dropbox and Zapier.
Security: Store critical business data in secure vaults, choose where you want your data stored (U.S. and EU data centers) and encrypt data fields. Use audit logs to track activity, enable two-factor authentication and designate which IP addresses users can use to log in. Real-time backups on multiple servers ensure you won’t lose data due to a system-based or natural disaster.

Campaign Management: Offers multi-channel support and streamlines every aspect of marketing campaigns by:

Benchmarking to see what works and what doesn’t.
Gathering campaign performance data for measurement and real-time updates.
Capturing email metrics such as bounce rate, click-through rate and open rate.
Collecting visitor info via web forms that don’t require technical knowledge to use.

Lead Management: Data insights show channel profitability and allow tracking of campaign effectiveness. Also helps:

Segment based on source, channel, industry or other factors.
Route leads to the right sales rep based on business rules to define and automate the handoff from marketing to sales.
Replicate successful campaigns in a few steps.

Reports and Dashboards: View real-time, customizable data to analyze critical KPIs for a number of metrics such as leads, opportunities and sales rep performance. Also offers data on sales trends, customer profiles based on different criteria and case reports.
Sales Forecasting: Models include likely, best case and worst case. Also has:

What-if scenarios for more accurate predictability, using past revenue as the basis for sales predictions.
Worksheets for monitoring sales team performance and assigning quotas.
Customization options to handle complex sales cycles and situations like staggered or recurring purchases.

SugarBPM: Offers a visual interface for designing workflows, alongside tools that speed up troubleshooting and dashboards that save snapshots of tasks and workflows.
Case Management: Customer service reps can efficiently and accurately handle customer cases by viewing all cases per account and receiving reminders for fast resolution. Also includes:

Priority levels that help agents respond quickly to the most urgent cases.
KPIs like customer satisfaction and response times.
Configurable user journeys.
A portal where customers can create tickets, upload and update info, and follow cases to resolution.

Knowledge Base: Delivers self-serve information to customers via a portal. Also allows creating an article based on support case details and includes stock fields that can be modified based on needs.
Bug Tracking: Agents can view details including resolution status as well as track product problems and bug frequency.
Project Management: Includes common project management features such as Gantt charts, task management and dashboards to manage projects like campaigns and customer cases without needing a third-party tool. Also offers management of emails, calls and more from one spot, as well as a place to store call records.
Integrations: Including:

Popular Google apps such as Gmail, Docs and Drive.
Social media channels so companies can engage with customers more effectively.
Online meeting platforms like GoToMeeting and WebEx to start, schedule and join meetings directly from SugarCRM.

Mobile App: Offers a mobile app for phones and tablets, with features such as filters, dynamic search, GPS mapping, click-to-text, click-to-call and offline sync.
Quote Management: Easily manage all aspects of customer quotes using a drag-and-drop interface and grouping options that categorize quoted items in an organized fashion. Also includes out-of-the-box customization for formulas and field calculations.
Tags: Allows selecting which modules to include in global search results and changing selections as needed. Filters include multiple criteria for locating data, while tags are phrases or keywords that can be grouped together to organize information.

Product Ranking

#9

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#42

among all
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Analyst Rating Summary

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User Sentiment Summary

85%

of users recommend this product

Zoho CRM has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 11200 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

75%

of users recommend this product

SugarCRM has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 75% when considering 1126 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (20)

5.0 (16)

4.1 (2656)

3.7 (572)

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3.8 (341)

4.3 (6776)

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4.5 (797)

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4.2 (951)

3.7 (197)

Awards

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Work Offline: Users who mention this feature say the platform functions well even when used in offline mode.

Business Management: The system monitors business performance, populates the website with suitable visitors and keeps a tab on productivity and output, eliminating unmatched customers and removing hassle according to users who mention this aspect.

Affordable: Users said the software is budget-friendly as compared to other CRM systems and has considerably more adaptive features for the price.

Integrations: Reviewers appreciated Zoho’s integration with in-house tools that support unified workflows, flexibility and email functionality.

User-Friendly: Of users who review the functionality and interface, 66% mention the platform is intuitive and easy to adapt to.

Customer Service: The customer support is very responsive and helps fix issues quickly, according to 60% of users referencing it.

Automation: Can handle most daily tasks, helping save time and eliminating manual work, suggest 80% of users who mention this feature.

Integration: The application features wide device deployment and complete social media integration, according to 80% of users citing this element.

Customization: The software is highly customizable, making it flexible for every business need in the experience of 71% of users who reviewed customizations.

Learning Curve: Users mentioned some features and customization requires additional time and learning to implement.

Customer Support: Zoho’s customer support and inquiry resolution isn’t very responsive, according to users who refer to support. However, the chat support is comparatively better.

Lags and Delays: Reviewers noted there is sometimes a lag in notifications for email tracking and updates.

Not Budget-Friendly: The system is pricey for the features offered, say 66% of reviews about pricing.

Compelled Updates: 100% of users reviewing this indicate that the automatic updates reconfigure the system, making it time-consuming to set up every time.

Data Reporting: he system offers limited data reporting functionality and forces the usage of line items, quotes, forecasts and the renewal console, according to 66% of users mentioning this.

Lacks Responsiveness: The dashboard is very cumbersome and takes time to respond, suggest 75% of users reviewing this aspect.

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based CRM solution that serves businesses of all sizes and across various industries. It provides users with real-time data analysis, AI-powered sales performance optimization and extensive automation and customization. You can streamline workflows and improve sales efficiency with lead nurturing, deal management, and third-party integrations.During our test run of their free trial, we loved working with standout features like the customizable dashboard, automated lead creation via the email parser and drop-down linking for account, product, lead and quote creation.However, users report a learning curve associated with full feature utilization and customization. Additionally, some advanced features and functionalities require upgrades to higher tiers making it expensive for smaller teams. Overall, Zoho CRM offers an interoperable solution for businesses looking for a customizable, affordable CRM platform.

SugarCRM provides a wide array of features that the majority of users report are user-friendly. It automates workflows for easy operation and integrates with almost all apps that are used on a day-to-day basis. Feedback also indicates the customer service is a key benefit. Some limitations include forced updates that hinder productivity, limited reporting and analytics, and a slow dashboard. Users also say it’s on the expensive side given the features available. While there are notable drawbacks, it has plenty to offer businesses looking to automate their sales and marketing efforts on a highly customizable platform.

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FAQ

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