There is no doubt in saying that CRM is one of the most important tools that are required to run a business. To be frank, it offers many more features which cannot be acquired through your employees. The collaboration on a customer relationship management software is a lot more professional than the normal collaboration that is done manually. It tracks the business deals, automate the sales and other marketing activities, provide the real time reports without fail, helps with the document sharing, There are so many CRM software available in the market but among them Zoho CRM, Salesforce CRM and SugarCRM are most famous and cater so many amazing features for its users. If you are planning to buy a CRM, then this comparison of three best CRM solutions available in the market will help you.

Zoho is one of the top rated best CRM solutions available in the market. There are so many giant companies that use Zoho CRM to manage their business operations.

Salesforce CRM is the oldest CRM solution present among the three. This web based solution is crafted by considering important aspects that are required for the smooth running of business.

Last but not the least, SugarCRM is a must have CRM solution that can manage all types of businesses without any hassle.

Zoho CRM

As stated earlier Zoho CRM is one of the best and top rated CRM solutions available in the market. Most of the giant companies are using Zoho CRM in order to manage their relationships with the customers. Zoho supports the Google suite and other products of Google without any hassle and can be linked to them. You can directly access the Zoho CRM right from your Gmail account. You will be able to track the work, create leads, know about the tasks and even create the tasks from the Gmail itself without juggling through the tabs.

The Zoho workflow has point and click dashboard. This provides you with the automated email sending and task assignment feature. The Zoho reports will provide you with the details of all the clientele that you are dealing with.

Features of Zoho CRM

  • Amazing lead management feature
  • Full automation of sales
  • Integration of marketing tools
  • Mass emailing
  • Track all the steps that are implemented in the sales processes.
  • Web to lead form builder
  • Social CRM tools
  • Great support for all the Google products
  • Customization facility as per the requirements

Pricing

  • Free for startups- up to 10 users
  • Standard version for Small Companies- $12 per user/ month
  • Professional CRM for midsize companies- $20 per user/month
  • Enterprise version for large organizations- $35 per user/ month
  • Ultimate version with all the features- $100 per user/ month.

The marketing tools are limited and it is better if the companies that are looking for different types of marketing tools opt for the other two options. If you want the best integration facility and an all in one CRM with some commendable features, then you can use this Zoho CRM. At the end your requirement plays a huge role in deciding the best CRM for your company.

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM is the well known CRM in the market. As of now there are around 2 million estimated people who are using Salesforce CRM. Salesforce is one of the original and prominent SaaS company offering a complete cloud based application for its users.

It enables you with intelligible reports of all the deals that you have completed, working on. On top of that each department present in your company can customize it as per their requirement. Apart from the centralization of data Salesforce CRM platform offers the workflow that will help in the management of course of marketing campaigns and working with the prospects.

Features of Salesforce CRM

  • Offers so many customer support tools
  • Different marketing tools that will help in tracking and streamlining the marketing techniques.
  • Tracking of all the steps in sales processes.
  • Mass emailing facility
  • Chatting tool for the employees
  • Integration facility for the Google Apps
  • Customization facility to meet the requirements
  • Strong integration with various social media platforms
  • Web to lead form builder

Pricing

Salesforce offers four different packages for its users

  • Lightning essentials- $25 per user/ month and is billed annually
  • Lightning Professional- $75 per user/ month and is billed annually
  • Lightning Enterprise- $150 per user/ month and is billed annually
  • Lightning Unlimited- -$300 per user/ month and is billed annually

Unfortunately Salesforce doesn’t provide any free package for the startups and when compared to the other software, the pricing of Salesforce is a bit more. But the features that this software offers are of top notch and the price that you will be spending on it is totally worthy.

Although the CRM is most famous and one of its best, it is not recommended for the small businesses and the businesses that never have used any CRM before because one will surely get overwhelmed when they come in touch with the amazing features that are offered by Salesforce CRM. The Salesforce CRM is ideal for the large organizations because most of the features offered by salesforce are not even required for the smaller organizations. The point that you have to remember if you are about to buy Salesforce software is you have to spend some time for training because understanding the salesforce software is not everyone’s cup of tea. The larger organizations can go for it without any second thought.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a very unique software solution because you will be having access to a cloud based solution or a self hosted solution. As the software is open source you will be able to customize the entire interface and the database in the backend. The best thing about this SugarCRM is it can be integrated with so many third party tools without any hassle. It also accommodates add-ons in Sugarexchange. The best feature of SugarCRM that attracts most of the companies is the marketing tools that it offer. The users can plan the marketing campaigns and set up the newsletters with the help of this software.

The workflow can be seen on the dashboard and it also offers the notifications about the latest business activities. By using the robust CRM software you will be able to create various types of filters and then share those filters with the other departments.

Features of SugarCRM

  • Cloud based as well as self-hosted
  • Open source
  • Easy to customize and various amazing customization options
  • Mass emailing
  • Great tools for marketing
  • Limited social media integration
  • Support of some of the third party Google apps
  • Web to lead form builder

Pricing

SugarCRM offers three versions and all of them are paid

  • Sugar professional- $40 per user/month- offers sales automation, lead management, customization and reporting.
  • Sugar Enterprise- $65 per user/month- offers forecasting options, professional support all the time.
  • Sugar Ultimate- $150 per user/month- It has assigned technical manager and a separate private cloud.

SugarCRM is one of the good CRMs available in the market. Setting up and running the software is very easy. But the main problem with SugarCRM is the lack of free version. Not everyone could afford the free version and even the starting package price is at high end. It would’ve been better if the price was in mid range so that everyone would be able to afford it without any hassle.

The another main difference between Zoho CRM, Salesforce and SugarCRM is mobile focus. SugarCRM and Zoho gives access to free mobile access for all the versions whereas to access the Salesforce mobile version users has to pay $50 per user/month.

Bottom Line

Each and every CRM that has been mentioned above has its own pros and cons. You have to get a clear idea of what you want in your CRM and how you want to access it, the price and time that you can spend on your CRM also plays an important role. So get an idea first, then you will be able to access the software.