We’ve pulled together some of the key functional differences between the Professional and Community Editions of SugarCRM. Certainly for small organisations with less than 20 users it makes a lot of sense to go Pro. Not only will it cost less in the early years it will be a lot simpler to implement and maintain and your users will be a lot happier.
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Caveat: SugarCRM Community Edition is a free product so I will say now that for what you get out of the box, it is simply a great product. Your investment cost is not in the software but in making it work for your business and it is here that you need to weigh up the pros and cons over SugarCRM Professional Edition.
Overall, if you are a company of less than 20 users, and you plan on adding some of CE’s missing features, your initial investment cost may be significantly lower if you opt for the Professional Edition. However, since there is an on going recurring license fee for Pro, longer term, the cost of Pro may be higher but you need to consider other factors too.
1. Upgrades are less straightforward and more costly with CE. For example, if you install a custom report writer this separate application (module) may have its own upgrade process so you have to factor in multiple product upgrades not just the one product.
2. With each upgrade, you may find that custom components are not compatible with the new version of SugarCRM so you have to wait for the third party component supplier to keep up.
3. It’s the little features that make users happy. Being able to complete a task without thinking about it from a technical perspective has a lot of kudos. Professional Edition is much easier to get on with and enjoy using.
That said CE has its place if you are thinking of purchasing a bespoke system. For example, SouthwestCRM has supplied SugarCRM CE to businesses that require large scale development of additional custom modules over and above SugarCRM CE’s standard modules. In these scenario’s CE can make more commercial sense than Pro.
The bottom line is to consider what you want and what the benefits will be to your business before deciding on which technology piece is right for you. Either way, SugarCRM as a product is a smart choice.
