BEST SUGARCRM ALTERNATIVE

1. Poor Customer Support

Support responses aren’t always right and support executives need more training and knowledge.

“Trainers and customer support need more training as well”

Apart from the CRM Software’s ability to solve their business problems, customers also look for 24/7 support in Software. Exceptional customer support not only keeps the customer happy but is also a free marketing for any business.

“unfortunately we had some issues with the initial setup of the system and the customer support was really poor”

Customer support from SugarCRM is only as good as the pricing plan you choose. For example, call support is only available for top-tier pricing and it isn’t the best ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Even if you pay a premium price for the support, the support executives aren’t trained enough to handle customer questions and understand scenarios.

“The lack of phone support without paying an increased premium.”

“Support not owning the initiative of resolving cases.”

You won’t get 24/7 support unless you’re paying a premium price. So, when a non-premium user needs support on weekends, all they can do is wait.

Unlike SugarCRM, Apptivo Customer Support operates 24/7 throughout the year and supports Live Chat, Email, Call, FAQs, and User Guides for all its users irrespective of the plan they’re using.

2. Forcibly Expensive

No matter what your needs are or what plan you choose, you have to buy at least 10 licenses if you want to use SugarCRM. Apart from that for phone support, you have to pay extra, for each user.

“It may be less expensive at first but it will cost you in the long run.”

Price is one of the main factors businesses carefully research before choosing a Software. If you’re just getting started with your business, then SugarCRM cost alone would burn up all your revenue.

In order to use SugarCRM, you have to buy 10 licenses even if you don’t have 10 employees. This seems kind of forced. One other frustrating situation is that even when an employee leaves, you cannot get any credit or transfer the license to another employee.

“We moved from a less capable system but are finding Sugar to be annoying to use and too expensive. Plus, they require payment in advance and you do not get any credit if one of your employees leaves and you aren't using all of the licenses.”

Software cost is not the only thing you issue you have to worry about. If you want to get phone support you have to pay a premium price on top of the software cost. So, it’s just one expense after the other.

“If you are a smaller company, SugarCRM is most likely too expensive for you.”

This is where Apptivo stands out from the rest of the other CRM apps out there. Apptivo encourages businesses to pay for licenses solely for the employees who will be using the system. In addition to this, Apptivo also provides flexibility in pricing based on user volume and you get the same premium support for free irrespective of the plan you’re on.

3. Confusing Interface

The user interface has a lot of buttons and buttons which can be daunting even for experienced users at times.

A big concern for most SugarCRM users is a complex and confusing interface. CRM is supposed to get things done swiftly for it to be flexible and user-friendly and SugarCRM is nowhere close to it. Unless and until you are an expert in the business features and settings, it is really a pain to get around the software, fully understand it, and use it to your advantage.

Regarding the complexity of the interface, a review of a customer goes by:

“The interface looks like it has not been updated since 1995, and nobody cares. Tried to set up email functions, but failed, and the interface again is a turnoff. Everything is bad here.”

Even with so much feedback from customers, SugarCRM has made very few changes to its UI. Customers cannot customize UI or make changes to fit their needs. It becomes harder and tedious when you are trying to make hundreds of contacts. You get barred with various limitations that make it harder for you to proceed with your business process.

“The user interface is sometimes a little raw. There can be many great changes that can take place to make the user interface a little easy to use.”

With so many UI problems, SugarCRM wouldn’t be the best for any businesses that are looking to get things done quickly. The platform gets extremely complicated, and figuring out the process without any customer support training will leave you desperate.

Keeping all this in mind, Apptivo CRM offers you a completely customizable software solution. You can customize almost everything and the dashboard is completely customizable to fit individual user needs.

4. Sub-Par Reports

SugarCRM reports aren’t easy to run and don't have any room to run custom reports. Expensive customer support doesn’t help either.

Creative no custom reports are really where I feel it could be improved. The programming it takes to build the report in the way you want is cumbersome and difficult for me.

Unlike Apptivo, SugarCRM reports lack many custom filters and lack many advanced features that any business would look for. The default built-in basic reports that they provide might suffice new businesses who are starting with a Customer Relationship Management app but as they grow into it they’d come to realize the limitation of the SugarCRM reports.

Businesses use reports to identify the areas where they can improve the business strategy and customer experience and SugarCRM isn’t going to help much with its basic reports.

Given below is a customer review about the reports in Vtiger

“Creating reports seems to be a challenge.”

Some users feel that creating reports itself a challenge because of its clunky UI. After going through all the frustrations to get the reports generated, the business feels that it is still a waste of time because of its limitations.

Few customers posted reviews online saying:

“Also querying reports is not easily done.”

“Reports are difficult to create and run.”

Unlike SugarCRM, Apptivo with its advanced reports and the ability to generate custom reports coupled with user-friendly UI proves to be a better choice of the two.