Salesforce vs SugarCRM vs Pipedrive: Right or Wrong for Your Business?
Many experts agree that CRM is a backbone of business growth. It would be hard for you to find a successful company today that hasn’t got a decent client relationship management software behind it. CRM is what drives sales and helps make clients return for more. It streamlines processes, automates many tasks, assists in keeping everything in order and staying organized. This, in its turn, nurtures scalability in business and fosters further development.
Organizations make a step forward when adopting a CRM solution, irrespective of their size. So, when the crucial decision to implement a client relationship management system, the other question of importance is which software to go with?
There are so many solutions on the market that their variety could make your head spin. But let’s put trust in other users’ opinions and dwell on the three great players on the market, which keep getting many new users, reviews and features. So, the matter at hand is Salesforce vs SugarCRM vs Pipedrive.
Pipedrive
Let’s start with the newest one of the three solutions in question – it’s Pipedrive CRM, started in 2010 and headquartered in Estonia. Its creators claim to have developed Pipedrive as the response to their own needs for a CRM. Consequently, they’ve included the features they were looking for, and it turns out, many users found it helpful too. It presents an intuitive interface that resembles a pipeline centered around the deals that lets the sales team stay focused on closing them effectively. Though young, Pipedrive is gaining popularity at the speed of light. Its well-thought design, ease of use and affordability make it a more and more frequent choice.
Who is it for? Pipedrive is perfect for small and mid sized businesses taken its feature set and pricing. It is also well suited for freelancers and solo entrepreneurs.`
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Easy-to-understand visual platform
- Highly customizable to adapt to specific business needs
- Simple integration with numerous business apps to extend functionality
Cons
- Lack of social CRM capabilities
- Analytics and reporting inferior to those from other CRMs in question
- Contacts/leads management features poor scalability for further growth
SugarCRM
SugarCRM has been around since 2004, and it’s reportedly world’s most widely used open source CRM. In spite of being not the cheapest cloud solution (Community Edition is available for free to download and use, but its support has been seized), it attracts numerous users by the ability to customize it in the way that suits their needs and rich out-of-the-box functionality. Apart from sales-force automation, it includes customer support, marketing campaigns, collaboration, Mobile CRM, Social CRM and reporting.
Who is it for? Due to its complexity, and maintenance that requires professional approach, lots of sophisticated “bells and whistles” and high prices (for hosted version), it is viewed as not the best choice for small businesses, being more an enterprise solution.
Pros
- Open source and highly customizable
- Can be installed on premise
- Knowledgeable support
- Free version available
- Superior analytics and reporting
Cons
- Is complex to install and administer
- Has an unintuitive interface
- Presents a steep learning curve
- Has a minimum of 10 users requirement for a start
Salesforce
Salesforce can be rightly called the frontrunner of the CRM industry. Founded back in 1999, it’s now a market share leader, powering thousands of businesses all over the world and having become somewhat synonymical to professional sales.
The feature that makes Salesforce so popular is its interface, designed with user in mind, not with management goals.
Salesforce groups its software into cloud suites, and Sales Cloud is the product that includes a CRM. It is a premium highly scalable solution presenting everything you’d expect from a CRM, like sales force automation module, that comes with basic marketing automation, partner relationship management etc.
Who is it for? Salesforce Sales Cloud cannot be called a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s geared more for medium to enterprise sized businesses. Experts don’t recommend to be tempted by its powerful feature set unless you’re a team of 50 and more employees. However, for smaller companies Salesforce Small Business Solutions might work.
Pros
- It allows adding or removing features depending on the business needs
- Intuitive and full-featured client relationship management
- Many sales people are familiar with it due to its popularity.
Cons
- Setup and configuration are complex and require special skills
- Multiple features can make navigation difficult
- Add-ons need to be purchased to accommodate certain business demands
- It is quite pricey, which can be an issue for smaller businesses
Conclusion
At the first sight, in the comparison of Salesforce vs SugarCRM vs Pipedrive the winner is pretty obvious. But famous and popular doesn’t necessarily mean the best. Moreover, what’s great for other businesses might be not suitable for yours. Therefore, take this brief overview as a pointer, and choose by yourself in which direction it will be better to move. The ultimate way to select the right CRM is testing all variants thoroughly and picking the winner.
Nevertheless, nobody is proof against mistakes, so if you happened to make the wrong choice, a CRM migration is what can set things right. Trujay is the tool that will handle it in no time and without any efforts or risks on your side. The Demo is at your disposal to test drive the service.